By Robert C. Jones Jr.
UM News

From left, Steve Hunsicker, field-based recruiter for the Peace Corps’ Southeast Regional Recruitment Office; Peace Corps director Carrie Hessler-Radelet; Knight Foundation President Alberto Ibargüen; and UM President Donna E. Shalala.

CORAL GABLES, Fla. (April 22, 2015) – He spoke of creating a new “army,” not one of tanks and rifle-toting soldiers, but teachers, engineers, agricultural scientists, and other civilians who would give two years of their lives to help people in countries of the developing world. When President John F. Kennedy issued his executive order establishing the Peace Corps on March 1, 1961, a new generation of leaders was born.

Among the first volunteers to enlist: Donna E. Shalala, a recent graduate of the Western College for Women, who turned down her father’s offer of a new car to stay home, and instead went to Iran, where she lived in a mud village and taught at an agricultural college from 1962-1964.

The Peace Corps made Shalala a “citizen of the world,” she said last Wednesday during a panel discussion, “Stories of the Peace Corps,” in which returned volunteers shared how serving in the U.S.-operated program shaped and influenced their lives.

“I know what poverty smells like. I know what those mud villages, which represent so much of the world, look like. I know how people struggle to take care of their families,” said Shalala. “It transformed me in ways that I saw in later years. It’s 50 years later, and I’m still excited talking about my Peace Corps experience. When people ask me what’s the best job I ever had, I say it’s the Peace Corps.”

Carrie Hessler-Radelet, the director of the Peace Corps, who taught secondary school English as a volunteer in Western Samoa from 1981-1983, and Knight Foundation President Alberto Ibargüen, who served in Venezuela from 1966-1968 and then as a programming and training officer in Colombia from 1969-1971, joined Shalala for the panel discussion at UM’s Student Activities Center.

A long-time supporter of the Peace Corps, UM was recently ranked 24th among medium-sized colleges nationwide for Peace Corps volunteers, with 13 alumni currently in service and 396 alumni who have served since the agency’s founding.

During her tenure as UM president and throughout her career in public service and academia, Shalala has encouraged young graduates to consider Peace Corps service as a stepping stone to a successful career.