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Posted 09/30/02
In an Oct. 2 ceremony the United States Peace Corps will recognize Dartmouth for being one of the Corps' top ten colleges with graduating classes under 5000 and among its top volunteer-producing colleges of all time. A panel discussion organized by Career Services and featuring Dartmouth graduates who have made contributions to cross-cultural understanding will follow at 7:30 p.m. in Room 1 of Dartmouth's Rockefeller Center.
"Dartmouth's contribution to Peace Corps is extraordinary," said James Arena-DeRosa, the New England Regional Manager for the United States Peace Corps. "Dartmouth contributes more alumni than many schools twice and three times its size."
Arena-DeRosa notes that 519 Dartmouth alumni have served as part of the Peace Corps, with 18 currently serving around the world. Dartmouth is tied for fifth among colleges with graduating classes under 5000. (Dartmouth typically has a graduating class of 1100.)
Dartmouth's Peace Corps participation dates to the inception of the program in 1960 by President Kennedy, who famously encouraged Americans to begin to look outside their borders. By 1962 alumni were stationed around the world. Dartmouth also played a key role in helping to develop the Corps' language acquisition programs and later, in the 1980s, initiated a program which allowed Dartmouth undergraduates to serve overseas through the Corps. That program, known as GOING GLOBAL, was extended nation-wide a few years later.
"For those who have watched the immense changes in the academy over the last forty years, the Peace Corps reminds us that these changes have not occurred in isolation but rather are a reflection of larger social trends," said Dartmouth President James Wright, a historian. "It seems to us to be no accident that Dartmouth's emergence as a leader in establishing an international perspective among its students coincided with America's new global interest embodied in Kennedy's Peace Corps, or that these two initiatives were so closely intertwined in Hanover."
"We are extremely pleased that the Peace Corps has chosen to recognize Dartmouth in this way," said Jim Larimore, Dean of the College. "It is a great source of pride for the College that we have had such a long and productive relationship. Involvement in service and internationally-focused efforts have long been among the hallmarks of the Dartmouth experience."
The panel discussion will feature five Dartmouth alumni who have helped to contribute to cross-cultural understanding. They are: Barrett Hightower, a 2001 Dartmouth graduate who spent time in Uganda during her undergraduate career and recently returned from two post-graduate internships in southern Africa; Heather Halstead, a 1998 graduate of Dartmouth who founded Reach the World, which develops on-line interactive sailing expeditions that bring students and teachers into contact with the world's environments and cultures; John Tansey, an administrator in the Off-Campus Programs Office and former Administrative Officer with the Peace Corps; Timothy Geithner, a 1983 Dartmouth graduate and Director of the International Monetary Fund's Policy Development and Review Department; and Peter Geithner '54, his father, who is currently a senior advisor to the Asia Center at Harvard University and previously spent 28 years with the Ford Foundation where he held program management positions mainly concerned with Asia.
"These individuals have done a great deal to contribute to our understanding of the world outside our borders," said Skip Sturman, Director of Career Services at Dartmouth. "They have much to say that will be of interest to those in the Dartmouth community who are considering work in the Peace Corps or in related work which promotes cross-cultural understanding."
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