Thirty-one Brown alums are currently volunteering as members of the Peace Corps, putting the University at No. 13 on the organization's 2006 list of medium-sized colleges and universities that produce the greatest number of Peace Corps volunteers.
This year marks Brown's fourth consecutive appearance in the Peace Corps' top 25 list of medium-sized schools producing volunteers. Brown debuted at No. 17 in 2003 with 23 volunteers, according to Joanna Shea O'Brien, public affairs specialist at the New England Regional Peace Corps Office. Brown retained that position on 2004's list and climbed to No.11 in 2005 with 38 volunteers, the University's highest yield to date.
Volunteering for the Peace Corps entails spending 27 months in communities in developing countries, including an initial three-month orientation, according to the program's Web site.
The Peace Corps designates medium-sized colleges and universities as those institutions that have between 5,001 and 15,000 undergraduate students. The University of Virginia - which, according to its Web site, currently enrolls 13,401 undergraduates - topped the medium-sized school list for the third year in a row with 80 volunteers.
Leia Reisner '06, who applied to the Peace Corps this fall, said she was not surprised by the number of volunteers Brown produces.
Peace Corp volunteers, she said, "have to be very motivated; they have to be willing to challenge themselves and others to succeed, and I think Brown both attracts and produces that kind of person."
Reisner also referred to the health care coverage the Peace Corps provides as a benefit for its volunteers. Other benefits include loan deferment and noncompetitive eligibility for federal employment, according to the Peace Corps' Web site.
Returned Peace Corps volunteer Jessica End '01.5 echoed Reisner's sentiments, saying Brown's open curriculum requires students to demonstrate personal initiative.
"That's what you need to be a successful Peace Corps volunteer too, because there's no supervision once you're out there," she said. "I think there's also an element of 'do-gooder' at Brown - I have so many friends from Brown who did community service."
George Rutherford, the Peace Corps' recruiter at Brown for the past three years, wrote in an e-mail to The Herald that he recognizes the same service-oriented attitude among students he has met during on-campus visits.
Nearly 70 percent of all Brown students complete a sustained community service project by the time they graduate, according to the Swearer Center for Public Service's Web site. Since the Peace Corps was founded in 1961, 555 Brown alums have completed service as volunteers, according to a Jan 30 Peace Corps press release.
O'Brien said various factors compel volunteers to make this commitment.
"We have people who have always been really outdoorsy and love 'roughing it', which many would say is the stereotype of a Peace Corps volunteer," she said. "But we also have computer science majors from MIT who gave up lucrative job prospects so that they could take their knowledge to the Dominican Republic."
The only common ground, O'Brien said, is a commitment to grassroots sustainable development and international understanding.
End agreed that "there isn't one kind of person or one reason or one path that leads you to the Peace Corps." Immediately after graduating from Brown with a biology degree, she spent six months in New York City doing prison reform research for the Vera Institute of Justice.
But End's profile also includes study abroad in Bolivia and Costa Rica and a penchant for Spanish.
"I'm definitely a 'people person,'" she said, "And pretty quickly I realized that there was little room in biology for that part of me."
End said these were the reasons she boarded a plane for Nicaragua two and a half years ago to teach environmental education in the small town of Las Mangas.
Reisner is one applicant with a particular region in mind. A Middle East studies concentrator who studied abroad in Egypt last year, Reisner said she was inspired to join the Peace Corps after immersing herself in a language, people and culture that were completely foreign to her.
"The Peace Corps would be a wonderful opportunity," she said. "I wouldn't just be sitting in a classroom learning Arabic, I'd be out there with people, learning and teaching in an alternative setting."
Reisner said it is this unique learning experience that compels many people to choose the Peace Corps over graduate school.
