JMU 14th in Peace Corps participation
Madison moves up from medium to large-school category
By Mary Frances Czarsty, assistant news editor
Posted on January 25, 2007

JMU graduate Leah Goodman is in the process of packing everything she owns into no more than 80 pounds of luggage to travel to the Dominican Republic. In February, she will join the ranks of 54 other JMU grads currently serving as Peace Corps volunteers across the globe.

“My decision to join the Peace Corps was not to change the world or be a hero,” Goodman said. “I think this is an opportunity for me to really grow and experience something very unique.”

Goodman isn’t the only one.

According to the Peace Corps Top Colleges 2007 list, JMU moved out of the medium-sized school category, where it ranked second last year, and claimed a new spot at No. 14 for large schools.

JMU owes its new place to an increase in student enrollment. Medium-sized schools are defined as having between 5,000 and 15,000 undergraduates, and as of fall 2006, JMU’s undergraduate enrollment swelled to 15,653 students.

Michelle Moravec graduated from JMU in 2005 and said her experiences through the Alternative Spring Break program and working for Community Service-Learning were driving forces behind her decision to join the Peace Corps.

“I think the JMU environment encourages individuals to care about the people and the world around them and also to choose the path less traveled,” Moravec said.

She will be doing just that this May, when she leaves to start her 27 months in the Phillipines to work as a coastal resource manager where she will teach better environmental practices and initiate coastal resource conservation programs.

Rich Harris, director of CSL, said the strong service ethic present on campus may be part of the reason students like Moravec and Goodman choose to make service an integral part of their lives.

“We’ve seen this not just through the programs that CSL offers,” Harris said. “There were so many group who did Katrina relief outside of us. Academic departments are now even starting to run their own trips.”

More than 315 JMU alumni have volunteered for the Peace Corps since its inception in 1961, making the university the 129th top producer of all time.

Harris said the number of Peace Corps volunteers began to increase dramatically in the mid-1990s, and JMU was no exception to the trend.

“As our Alternative Spring Break programs and CSL offices grew, so did the number of Peace Corps volunteers,” Harris said.

Still, Moravec said she was not necessarily ready to jump right into the corps after graduation.

“It seemed as though everyone was applying to the Peace Corps after graduation,” Moravec said. “It took me a bit longer to realize that that was what I wanted to do as well.”

Goodman said she, too, didn’t consider volunteering as her primary goal after graduation.

“I heard about it my senior year and thought about it seriously,” Goodman said, “then put it on the back burner while I completed grad school.”

While both entered the working world before ultimately deciding on the Peace Corps, it wasn’t the right fit. “I entered the 9 to 5 world too quickly and I wanted to take a step back, challenge myself and travel before I settled down,” Moravec said.