By Nancy Tarnai
Through the master’s
international program, UAF’s presence is expanding globally. For nearly a decade, students have been able to combine
graduate studies with Peace Corps service, earning a master’s degree and
gaining relevant and valuable international experience at the same time.
The School of Natural Resources and Extension has three
volunteers in the field — in Fiji, Gambia and Mexico — and soon one
more will go. By next year, three new MIP students will be on campus, along
with one or two more Paul D. Coverdell Fellows (returned volunteers). The
College of Rural and Community Development has one MIP student in Paraguay. Add
the mix of volunteers who aren’t affiliated with MIP or Coverdell but who
choose to study in Fairbanks, and you’ve got intercontinental flair.
MIP student Teresa Anderson is studying natural resources
while awaiting her PC assignment. “I’ve always wanted to do a science master’s
and do Peace Corps, but it wasn’t until senior year at UAF that I realized the
option of combining them both,” she said. “I always think I’m well-rounded and
have a good perspective on the world right up until experiencing something new
and realizing just how naive I was before. After years of this cycle, I know
that after Peace Corps I won’t be able to imagine how I ever lived without it.”
Anderson expects that having a good attitude will serve her
well in the field. “In this case, good should be defined as patience,
understanding and humor,” she said. “I am preparing myself for feeling like a failure while I
try to do my job in the Peace Corps. I understand that what I will get out of
Peace Corps will be the emotional highs and lows of my life and I will leave
behind funny stories about that one Peace Corps volunteer from Alaska. “The value of PC is much more a cultural exchange rather
than the development of a developing country. Those are the most lasting
effects.”
Her classmate Lauren Lynch is preparing to take off for
Togo, in West Africa. The Amherst College alumna knew she wanted to earn her
master’s degree while serving in the Peace Corps. When she studied schools with
MIP programs, she discovered UAF. Being awarded a fellowship sealed the deal.
Lynch thought the Peace Corps would help her learn about
working with people and how to make sure that her natural resources management
research is relevant to people. “The Peace Corps is a good opportunity to
make sure what I do is useful in some way,” she said.
“The partnerships are growing,” said Tony Gasbarro, UAF PC coordinator and
two-time PC volunteer. He has been with the UAF program since its inception and
takes a personal interest in every MIP and Coverdell student.“I love UAF,” she
said. “The classes are really good. I like the grad student community and
everyone in this department.” Gasbarro believes Alaska is the draw for most of the PC
faction at UAF. “Alaska is a resource state and the students equate it with
adventure,” he said. “Alaska is attractive to them. The cross-cultural
opportunities are greater here. The students who come to UAF for or after PC service are
high-energy, high-quality people, Gasbarro said. “They contribute in the
classroom and are very participatory.”
Associate Professor Susan Todd, the SNRE PC coordinator and
advisor, said, “The Peace Corps students have this energy around them; they
bond and feed on each other. They’re interested in impacts, changing things and
making things better for people as well as the environment.” The program provides what many students interested in
becoming volunteers need. “You get the degree and the Peace Corps,” Gasbarro
said. “Without this program some students are afraid if they go in the Peace
Corps they won’t finish their degree and if they go for the degree they won’t
do Peace Corps.”
Returned volunteers fare well in the career market, Gasbarro
said. “Having Peace Corps service on your resume is a shoe-in at some jobs.”
Employers know that PC volunteers have rural experience, are not easily
flustered and know how to work with indigenous people, he explained. “And they are resourceful,” Todd added. “They have tenacity
and they are undaunted.”
UAF’s first MIP graduate (May 2009), Erin Kelly, is a
perfect example of using her education and PC service to find the right job.
After serving in El Salvador and completing her master’s, Kelly is working for
the New York Department of Labor as an agriculture labor specialist. “Oh my gosh,
I love it,” Kelly said. “It’s a really good use of my skills.”
Kelly works with farmers and farm laborers, making sure the
farms are in compliance with labor laws and that laborers know their rights. “I
work with a really good team and I feel I’m making a difference,” she said. “I
get to use my interpersonal skills and my Spanish.” The challenges have been
learning the labor laws and how to maneuver through bureaucratic levels. The
joy is getting to visit farms three or four days per week. “It’s similar to the
Peace Corps in the cultural aspects,” Kelly said. “It’s very rewarding.”
Brooke McDavid, who loved her PC assignment to Fiji so much
that she stayed a third year, got a bonus out of her service. She married a
villager. “Solo courted me with coconuts, bananas and play dates in the sea,”
McDavid wrote in an email to Todd. “He took the time to explain the intricacies
of village tradition and helped me feel at home. He taught me the Fijian word
for the Milky Way and that the moon has a wife. He told me a three-hour bedtime
story about the history of his clan, including the name of every single third
cousin, and how they came to be here. He has a big heart and a certain
disregard for the rules. A perfect combination. Together we just have so much
damn fun!”
In Vanua Levu, McDavid has conducted a community needs
assessment and trained villagers to give the survey, worked with women to
create vegetable gardens and study financial management, and started a mangrove
nursery. Her current project is researching social networks to document how
people get their information. She is the village’s first Peace Corps volunteer so feels
she had a blank slate to work on. The people are poor but not starving,
education and health care are lacking, and there is disparity between urban and
rural areas.
“The Peace Corps has made me appreciate the simple things in
life a lot more,” McDavid said. “I have learned to slow down the pace of life,
and there is a huge sense of community, something I’ve never had before. It’s
like a big extended family where everyone knows your business, but we
collectively work together to achieve things.” She is so impressed with that sense of community that she
said wants to have it the rest of her life, “whether it’s in Fairbanks or
Fiji.” “What Brooke has accomplished has blown me away,” Todd said.
The Peace
Corps is, of course, not all sweetness and light. UAF students have
gotten gravely ill during service, been prematurely pulled out of countries
where violence erupted and even suffered near starvation.
UAF’s second MIP student, Matthew Helt, served in Paraguay
for two years as an agroforestry volunteer. He did a lot of gardening, cooking
and mentoring young people. In service, he was struck down with appendicitis
and to this day has a horrendous scar to prove he was operated on in a
developing country.
He had studied government and international politics at
George Mason University and wanted something more tangible, so he selected
natural resources management. “What better location than Alaska?” he said. “I
had heard my dad talk about wanting to visit Alaska since he was my age.”
Helt said his desire to serve in the Peace Corps came about
because he had taken for granted what it’s like to live in a country with a
functioning government, to have parents who love and care for you, and to be
enrolled in an education system that sets you up for success. “In America, we
have many amazing material things that everyone around the world wants,” he
said. “What they need are good governance, loving parents and quality
education; I learned to appreciate those. I also got an extensive course in
Murphy’s Law.”
Thankfully, Helt lived to laugh about his adventures in
Paraguay.
Samantha Straus, currently serving in Gambia, frightened her
professors back at UAF when they learned she ended up at a clinic in West
Africa, malnourished. Food supplies are so scarce that Straus lost a lot of
weight and succumbed to illness. Luckily, her conditions improved and she was able to stay in country.
Deforestation is Straus’s area of research and work. She has
worked with villagers to raise bees and harvest honey. “Bees need trees and
trees need bees,” Straus said. Her colleagues have become more interested
and dedicated to the task of growing trees if only to help their honey
production thrive. Last year, nearly 100 cashew and 50 moringa trees were
planted in the community.
Community members rely heavily on trees for fuel wood, medicine,
food, timber and fodder. Beekeeping adds a lucrative and attractive
income-generation opportunity, which has galvanized the community’s interest in
tree planting.
When people ask Straus why there is no honey, she responds
that the bees are eating all the honey they produce because there are not
enough trees for them to feed on. The rural village where she serves is also
threatened by erosion as deep gullies continue to ruin farmlands and the
structural integrity of homes. Trees have many secondary uses, including soil
stabilization. “More trees can only help the community in all of the
above mentioned areas, and beekeeping is one of the ways they are getting
there,” Straus said.
Ben Rance had served in Honduras for 18 months when all
volunteers were yanked due to safety concerns. In the field he worked on
everything from gender equality to constructing 55 new latrines.
“I had an unconventional Peace Corps experience,” he said.
“I kind of felt like a failure. I would start projects, get going and have to leave. “I wish I had had the opportunity to serve two years, but
sometimes that’s not how the world works.”
Looking back, Rance said he learned the value of
understanding cultural, social, political and economic realities in a
community. He observed that monitoring, evaluation and follow-up are virtually
non-existent in the PC, at least in his experience. And he worries that
sometimes the program might create dependence on outside help.
Nevertheless, the value is seen by Todd in the big picture.
“This enriches UAF,” she said. “Our students and faculty say it is the best
thing that has happened to our school. It’s a commitment to the betterment of
society and not just what’s in it for me.” “It makes this a stronger university,” Gasbarro said. “It
keeps us connected to the rest of the world and makes us not quite so
provincial.”
UAF Chancellor Brian Rogers agrees. At a PC gathering on
campus in fall 2013, Rogers said the Peace Corps programs are a natural fit for
UAF. “Tony (Gasbarro) talked me into it,” he said. “I had seen Tony’s
presentations over the years. When he tells his stories people get excited. The
opportunities the Peace Corps creates are really amazing.” Rogers encourages all students to study abroad at some
point. “Having international, cross-cultural experiences is part of what it
takes to be successful,” he said.
