UO Hits Top Rankings for Peace Corp Volunteers

By Wade Nkrumah, The Oregonian, Portland, Ore.

Jan. 22–The University of Oregon’s No. 9-ranked men’s basketball team is being upstaged — momentarily, at least — by another university group.

The Peace Corps announced that Oregon ranked No. 6 nationally in 2006 with 78 graduates serving as volunteers in the worldwide service organization.

Oregon also ranked sixth in 2005 with 75 graduates, said Maria Lee, public affairs specialist for Peace Corps’ Northwest Region. In 2004, 83 alumni were volunteers.

“University of Oregon historically has been a top producer of Peace Corps volunteers,” Lee said last week.

The 2006 ranking ties Oregon for the second consecutive year with University of Texas at Austin in the large college and university category of schools with more than 15,000 undergraduates.

The top-ranked school nationally for the Peace Corps is Pacific-10 conference rival University of Washington with 110. Rounding out the top five are the University of Wisconsin at Madison (106), University of Colorado at Boulder (100), University of Michigan (82) and University of California at Berkeley (80).

Peace Corps is an international program that sends U.S. students mostly to underdeveloped countries to help with wide-ranging service-oriented and outreach projects.

Since its inception in 1961, the Peace Corps has inspired 907 volunteers at the UO, giving it a No. 29 placement overall, Lee said. UC Berkeley is No. 1 with 3,282 volunteers.

The 2006 rankings also include Lewis & Clark College and Willamette University. The schools tied for No. 9, with 20 alums each, in the small school category of institutions with 5,000 or fewer undergraduates.

“The Northwest Region has been a top producer of Peace Corps volunteers,” Lee said. “We’ve definitely focused a lot of our efforts on these schools that have consistently made the top colleges list.”

Peace Corps’ Northwest Region includes Alaska, Idaho, Montana, Oregon and Washington. Lee said the organization’s education and agricultural programs draw the highest interest among volunteers in the Northwest Region.

In Oregon, Lee said, the organization has campus recruitment offices at Oregon and Portland State University. Recruiters work with a manager and recruiter based in the Seattle regional office, Lee said.

Seattle-based recruiters visit Lewis & Clark, Oregon State University, Southern Oregon State University and Willamette, she said.

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