Peace Corps announced today that the University of Puget Sound ranked sixth among small schools on the agency’s list of top volunteer-producing colleges and universities in 2019. There are 13 Loggers currently volunteering in countries around the world.
Puget Sound has been named a top school nine of the last 10 years. The university is among nine Washington state schools on the 2019 list.
“We have seen, time and again, that the colleges and universities that produce the most Peace Corps volunteers focus on cultivating global citizens in addition to promoting scholarship,” said Peace Corps Director Jody Olsen. “I am proud that so many graduates of these esteemed institutions leverage their educations to make the world a better place. They bring critical skills to communities around the world and gain hands-on, life-changing experience along the way.”
Since the Peace Corps’ founding in 1961, more than 310 alumni from Puget Sound have served abroad as volunteers. Puget Sound offers a Peace Corps Prep program, housed in the Office of International Programs, to provide undergraduates with an opportunity to integrate coursework with hands-on experience and professional development to prepare them for international fieldwork and potential Peace Corps service.
In 2018, Washington state ranked eighth among states with the highest number of Peace Corps volunteers, and nearly 10,000 Washingtonians have served since 1961.
“The University of Puget Sound encourages open conversation about the world from its students, both in and out of the classroom,” said Wren Andrews ’16, an education volunteer currently serving in Myanmar. “Students are asked to think about the larger scale of things outside of campus life. Because of this, students of the university leave with a passion for meeting people from all walks of life and immersing themselves in cultures other than their own.”
The Peace Corps ranks its top volunteer-producing colleges and universities annually according to the student body's size. View the complete 2019 rankings of the top 25 schools in each category or see where alumni from each college and university are serving on the top colleges interactive map on the Peace Corps website.