UCSD in Nation's Top 25 for Peace Corps Recruits
Peace Corps National Director Visits Campus

Ioana Patringenaru | Oct. 29, 2007

UCSD has become one of the top 25 universities in the nation for the number of students it recruits into the Peace Corps. To mark the achievement, Ronald A. Tschetter, the national director of the Peace Corps, visited the campus Oct. 15.

Peace Corps National Director Ronald A. Tschetter.

In all, more than 550 UCSD graduates have served in the Peace Corps since the organization set up an office on campus in 2002. Currently, 51 volunteers on assignment around the world have earned a degree at UCSD, including undergraduate and graduate diplomas. The university ranks 24th in the nation for the number of volunteers who join the Peace Corps — higher than UCLA, UC Irvine or UC Santa Barbara. Tschetter said he believes the university’s outlook allowed it to become a successful recruiter for the Peace Corps.

“The whole ethnos of this university is not only about academic excellence, but also about using this excellence to serve the world,” he said.

On Oct. 15 , he visited UCSD’s Career Services Center and met with Chancellor Marye Anne Fox and Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs Penny Rue. Tschetter gave Fox a certificate of appreciation, thanking the university for its support of the Peace Corps Program. The two talked about UCSD’s focus on internationalization, one of Fox’s main goals.

Tschetter’s visit was a great opportunity for UCSD to showcase its successful recruiting techniques, said Andy Ceperley, director of the campus’ Career Services Center, home to the Peace Corps’ recruitment office. “It was very, very exciting,” Ceperley said.

Tschetter presents Chancellor Marye Anne Fox with a certificate of appreciation, thanking the university for its support of the Peace Corps.

Asked about the cause of UCSD’s success, Ceperley points to the collaboration between the Peace Corps and the Career Services Center. Diana Gomez, the Peace Corps recruiter based at UCSD, has access to all of the center’s resources, he said. She can hold presentations and take part in job fairs, for example.

Gomez has been instrumental in increasing the number of students who volunteer for the Peace Corps, Ceperley added. She was herself a Peace Corps volunteer at a school in Armenia and knows how to share her passion for service with students, he said. She is so passionate about her job, in fact, that Career Services Center staff members joke they have to remind her to go home at the end of the day. “She’s that excited about what she does,” Ceperley said.

Ceperley also said the university has been benefiting from students’ renewed interest in service work. An increasing number of students seem to want to give back after they graduate and before they go on to more traditional jobs, he said. The Peace Corps today has 8,000 volunteers in 74 countries, more than it’s had in since the late 1960s, Tschetter said.

“It’s flourishing,” he said.