Dartmouth celebrates 50 years of Peace Corps partnership

On Tues­day Dart­mouth cel­e­brated 50 years of unique part­ner­ship with the Peace Corps by host­ing a panel of alums who served in the Peace Corps and screen­ing a doc­u­men­tary fea­tur­ing the re­la­tion­ship be­tween the two in­sti­tu­tions. The col­lege has played a crit­i­cal role in Peace Corps re­cruit­ment and vol­un­teer lan­guage train­ing, using the renowned Ras­sias method of learn­ing.

Pete Kit­las '09, who did not at­tend the event as he was on his way home from serv­ing in the Peace Corps in the Mo­rocco at the time, saw Dart­mouth as play­ing an im­por­tant role in lead­ing him to the Peace Corps after grad­u­a­tion.

“Dart­mouth cer­tainly had an im­pact on my de­ci­sion to join. The peo­ple, aca­d­e­mic at­mos­phere, and extra cur­ric­u­lar ac­tiv­i­ties [at Dart­mouth] all sup­port vol­un­teerism and com­mu­nity val­ues. These have been huge as­pects of my Peace Corps life,” Kit­las said in an in­ter­view.

A panel of Dart­mouth Alums who have served in the Peace Corps shared their ex­pe­ri­ences with stu­dents and other for­mer Peace Corps vol­un­teers in Loew Au­di­to­rium. The Panel in­cluded alums Shari Hu­bert ’92, Di­rec­tor of Re­cruit­ment; Kiva Wil­son ’04, Di­ver­sity Out­reach Spe­cial­ist, vol­un­teered in El Sal­vador; Henry Home­yer ’68, Mali Coun­try Di­rec­tor, vol­un­teered in Cameroon; Ellen Meyer Shorb ’78, vol­un­teered in Hon­duras and Michelle Glas­sama ’01, vol­un­teered in The Gam­bia.

For­mer vol­un­teers en­cour­aged stu­dents to join the Peace Corps, say­ing that their ex­pe­ri­ences were un­for­get­table and have in­formed most major de­ci­sions in their lives since.

“The Peace Corps taught me every­thing I know,” Glas­sama said. She now works with an AIDS pro­gram at a Mon­te­fiore Hos­pi­tal in the Bronx, after falling in love with her work on HIV/AIDS as a Peace Corps vol­un­teer in The Gam­bia.

Fol­low­ing the Panel, Pres­i­dent Kim hon­ored John Ras­sias and Charley “Doc” Dye ’52, Dean Emer­i­tus of the Tucker Foun­da­tion. Both men played in­te­gral roles in de­vel­op­ing lan­guage train­ing and col­lege re­cruit­ment for the Peace Corps in its early years, after Pres­i­dent John F. Kennedy founded it in 1961.

“The Peace Corps, thanks to John Ras­sias, now knows how to teach lan­guages,” Home­yer said.

Dye spoke about his in­volve­ment in the Peace Corps as a young dean at Dart­mouth in the 1960s, and dis­cussed how he was per­suaded to serve two years in the Philip­pines with two young chil­dren and a preg­nant wife in tow, as well as the mishaps and suc­cesses that en­sued.

The event in Loew ended with a doc­u­men­tary made by Film and Media Stud­ies Pro­fes­sor Jim Brown, fea­tur­ing in­ter­views with alumni vol­un­teers and a brief his­tory of the re­la­tion­ship be­tween Dart­mouth and the Peace Corps.

The con­sen­sus seemed to be, as Dye put it, that the Peace Corps has an “in­deli­ble im­pact on [vol­un­teers] and their sub­se­quent lives.”