The Toughest Job They've Ever Loved

By LANI HINKLE '82
In a recent letter to Colorado College President Kathryn Mohrman, Peace Corps Director Mark Gearan announced that the college ranks 25th among all small colleges and universities producing Peace Corps volunteers.
Since 1961, when President John F. Kennedy signed the executive order that created the Peace Corps, more than 200 Colorado College graduates have joined its ranks and taken on what the Peace Corps hails as "the toughest job you'll ever love."
"CC is a very receptive place," says Lauren Mitchell, regional representative for the Peace Corps in Denver. "Liberal arts students and graduates seem more willing to give themselves to something."
Three alumni - who now have careers in human services, science and business - provide a good picture of what CC and the Peace Corps have offered each other through the years.
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Susan Aiken '62 joined the Peace Corps in its first full year of existence. Sent to teach English at a secondary boys' boarding school on the outskirts of Ethiopia's capital city, her experience was largely shaped by the newness of the program and the social and political events of the early 60s.
"When my plane landed in Addis Ababa with our Peace Corps delegation aboard," says Aiken, "it was the largest group of foreigners that had ever landed in that airport. The people there seemed to be very taken with who we were and what we represented."
The first Peace Corps teams also had a distinct honor that was sadly missed by later volunteers: they were invited to the White House Rose Garden by President Kennedy. "Kennedy was very motivating," Aiken remembers. "He was one of the reasons I was interested in the Peace Corps."
Under congressional scrutiny in the start-up years, the Peace Corps also took extraordinary measures to ensure the safety and health of its volunteers. In addition to language training, Aiken's group underwent CIA screenings, physical training, 20 different immunizations, and precautionary dental work.
Aiken says her Peace Corps years got her outside of herself, her region, and her country. "I joined to help people, because that's part of who I am, and because it was an adventure. The Peace Corps is a great way to expand your competencies and self confidence. In unfamiliar circumstances, where things don't always go the way you want, you learn to be very resourceful. There's a lot to be learned from getting down to the basics of life-learning from those whose sole task is to survive."
Now a counselor who runs a master's program in career development in the San Francisco-bay area, she wonders about the impact Peace Corps has on career direction. Her own experience reinforced her desire to teach. But for John Mugford '82, the Peace Corps opened a new career possibility. A chemistry major at CC, Mugford found that the job prospects in his field were poor at graduation time. He signed up with the Peace Corps and requested Fiji because, raised in Colorado, he "wanted to experience something completely different." He did.
Teaching chemistry, physics and math at a remedial school outside the capital city of Suva, he soon adjusted to the climate and cultural changes he found there. It took time, however, to hone his classroom skills. "For the first three months I was a terrible teacher!" he says. Fortunately, the Block Plan had taught me how to get up and running quickly so, by the end of the first year, I was pretty good."
So good, in fact, that upon returning to the states, Mugford seriously considered a teaching career. He opted instead to use his chemistry degree at Geneva Pharmaceuticals in Denver, where he has been promoted through the years to supervisor of the drug stabilities area in the quality control lab.
The teacher in him is still apparent, though. "I'm asked to do a lot of training around the company," Mugford says. "My CC and Peace Corps experiences rounded me out so I can do both."
William "Wilbur" James, '68, originally went with the Peace Corps in 1969 to spend two years teaching English in a missionary school in Kenya. But plans changed, and he ended up staying three years to build a secondary school among the Tharanka tribe in the desert hills of Kenya.
He began teaching English, history, and other subjects in a mud hut. Before he left, however, he had raised money and helped the tribe build houses and dormitories, start a farm to grow their own food, and implement an irrigation system.
"CC gave me the confidence to do what I did," James observes. "I learned that I could do things like stitch up a wound or fix an engine. With a liberal arts education, you find yourself doing things you're curious about rather than the things you ėshould do.' The Peace Corps was just the next step in that education."
While in Kenya, James met Joseph P. Kennedy II. The two worked together for several months among the Tharanka. Out of this friendship sprung Citizen's Energy, a non-profit company the two formed in Boston in 1979 to provide heating oil to low-income people. Now the CEO of Citizen's Power LLC, James sees a lot of resumes from young people who are headed into the corporate world. "I'm most interested in resumes with some kind of public service on them," he says. "I find that people with this background can be very creative in business. I don't see the Peace Corps as a divergence from the career path - it's a critical part of it."
"The best bit of foreign policy the United States ever had was the Peace Corps," says James. "It sent young people abroad to learn about themselves and other cultures. They had no one to take care of them there. They were there to take care of others."
Though their experiences were very different, the three alumni agree on one thing: the Peace Corps was the toughest job they've ever loved. "I loved it so much I didn't know how tough it was," remarks James, who returned home with chronic malaria.
As long as that kind of perspective lives in CC graduates, the Peace Corps will have an easy job recruiting volunteers.
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