Nevin Dawson spent his first few weeks in Senegal alone in his hut, dedicating five hours each day to reading. Eventually, he started reading fewer books as he forced himself to explore his new village. What he found there was not only an accepting community, but a newfound sense of belonging. After four months’ time, he said he had hardly touched another book.

Dawson, like thousands of others before him, spent two years and three months abroad as a volunteer in the Peace Corps, dedicating his time and skills to a village in need. Cam McNutt is another of these volunteers.

“I was in a rut coming out of college. There was a scarce amount of jobs available in my field, and I wasn’t ready to go to grad school,” said McNutt, a former graduate student who worked in Fiji as a secondary level science teacher.

John F. Kennedy established the Peace Corps in 1961, intending it to be the symbol of American efforts abroad.

Its three main goals, according to Allen Renquist, the campus Peace Corps recruiter and former Peace Corps volunteer, are “to help countries that request help by matching and taking those skills overseas, to help promote a better understanding of Americans and to help promote a better understanding of other people to Americans.”

According to Renquist, a volunteer who serves in the Peace Corps goesthrough three months of training in the skills, language and culture ofthe country in which that volunteer is placed. Upon completion oftraining, the volunteer moves to a permanent location and lives and works there for the next two years.

“When you are overseas, you are not working for the Peace Corps, but for the community. You are literally becoming a part of that community,” Renquist said.

According to Charlene Reiss, a former graduate student who volunteered in Slovakia, the Peace Corps not only aids countries by providing necessary services, but enables its volunteers to take away valuable, life-changing experience.

“From the Peace Corps literature, I expected to get two years in another country teaching the locals a few things,” she said. “What I actually got was so much more than that. What I learned there far, far outweighed what I could ever have taught.”

Though volunteers dedicate their time and skills to the community intowhich they are assimilating, according to McNutt volunteers oftentimes have leeway to exhibit and transfer their skills in a variety of modes, in many cases participants decide in which way they want to complete their service.

“You don’t have someone over your shoulder saying ‘Do this, do that,'” McNutt said. “You’re on your own… you can make as much out of it was you want.”

According to Renquist, the average age of Peace Corps volunteers is 27. However, because there is no upper age limit for volunteers, people from every facet of life are eligible to join. Recognizing this, the Peace Corps provides two services for those who wish to both complete graduate school and volunteer through the Peace Corps.

The Peace Corps’ Masters International program allows graduate students to both become volunteers and to incorporate their overseas experience into a thesis. Typically, upon completing one year of study on campus, the graduate student serves as a volunteer for the Peace Corps for 27 months — which is recognized by the university as credit — and returns to the university to complete the thesis and any final course requirements that may be needed.

“The Masters International program offers a great opportunity for students looking to do international research for their graduate degree. There are few if any other ways for graduate students to have such comprehensive and long-term support while doing research abroad,” Nevin Dawson, a former Masters International graduate student in agroforestry, said.

There are 50 graduate schools participating in the Masters International program. N.C. State provides this program for environmental engineering, forestry, natural resources and engineering graduate students.

For former volunteers who have completed their service, 37 universities offer scholarships specifically to returned Peace Corps volunteers. Though four more universities are in the process of developing the fellowship, NCSU is not included in this group.

Reiss graduated from the University in 1999 with a degree in Public Administration, and the Peace Corps assigned her to Michalovce in Slovakia in June 2000 as a non-governmental organization development volunteer.

“Most Slovaks called [Michalovce] ‘koniec ;’ or ‘the end of the world!’,” Reiss said. “For me, it was a wonderful new world and my home for two years.”

According to Reiss, her job was to use her former experience in American nonprofits to aid native Slovaks in operating their nonprofit organizations.

“I do think I contributed to some of the progress that these organizations made, but what I really had to offer was not what I expected to contribute,” she said. “I brought an American optimism and willingness to take risks that I didn’t even know I had. I only had a few new ideas, but I had plenty of enthusiasm for trying them.”

Because the Peace Corps is a governmental institution, volunteers are eligible for benefits upon completing the service.

According to Renquist, volunteers’ living expenses are covered by the Peace Corps while they are serving, and a readjustment stipend of $225 a month — totaling about $6,000 — is given to the volunteer upon returning to the United States. Student loans are frozen — interest does not accumulate – and deferred until the volunteers return.

Returned volunteers also hold a one-year, non-competitive status forpositions within the government. According to Renquist, their resumesare placed at the top of the list of applicants for that job.

“The Peace Corps is a very substantial, positive thing to have in yourresume,” Renquist said.

However, according to Renquist, those who choose to volunteer should do so only if they are truly interested in making a difference within the community and themselves.

“Don’t do it for the resume,” he said.