Join the Peace Corps; get a master’s degree. For a very select handful of the students enrolled in CALS International Programs (IPCALS), that’s just the ticket.
For the past five years, the College has offered a master of professional studies (M.P.S.) degree program that combines two intensive semesters of individualized, interdisciplinary classroom study with two years of related Peace Corps field experience. Program participants then complete a thesis, in consultation with their graduate committee, that describes a problem-solving project. Students are encouraged to enroll for one more semester after their return to campus, both to share their experiences with others and for help in deciding what to make of those experiences professionally. While the course offerings overlap with many in the M.S. degree program, the M.P.S. offers students the opportunity to carry out an applied project rather than doing traditional thesis research.
Christian Sanders, M.P.S. ’05, the first graduate of the program, and Taylor McLean, who is finishing up her Peace Corps stint in Ghana, offer their reflections on the program below. For more information about the program, visit http://ip.cals.cornell.edu/academics/mpspc.cfm.
Christian Sanders, M.P.S. ’05
Christian Sanders, M.P.S. '05
I served with the Peace Corps in the southeastern part of Guatemala, in a pueblo of about 5,000 people near the Honduran border. Like most towns in Central America, it was a rather concentrated urban area surrounded by smaller villages in the surrounding mountains. There were more than 35,000 indigenous Maya living in these mountain villages. With these people I would learn to speak Spanish, talk about the coming harvest, struggle to implement projects, discover the true meaning of patience, and understand just how deep the impact runs when you wake every day with the intent to serve others.
Returning home in July of 2004, I was faced with the seemingly daunting task of completing a project paper that would bridge the work I had pursued in Guatemala with the concepts I had studied while a student more than two years earlier. In the end I decided to focus on methods for improving the efficacy of international aid delivery in developing countries, using my pueblo as a case study. It was probably one of the best things I could have done for myself. Being forced to critically analyze that portion of my life was exactly what anyone should do after such a thought-provoking and perspective-changing experience.
Since September I’ve been living in Sydney, Australia. After about three weeks of searching, I managed to find about as perfect a beginning job as I could have hoped for. I’ve been working for a small engineering consultancy in a diverse array of projects that all pertain in some way to potable water treatment. I feel about as far away from Guatemala as I possibly could: skyscrapers, urban train rides to work, endless varieties of ethnic foods.
Despite this change in scenery and hemispheres, I’m still involved in Guatemala, though somewhat vicariously. I still have friends working there; I continue to help out a few kids with school money; and I maintain contact with a woman making beautiful hand-woven bags that I help her sell in the States (and maybe Australia). Just the other day, I got word that she had been approached by two different groups interested in selling her work. I was ecstatic. You’d have to have sat in her palm-thatched hut, passed time with her parents and children, and known the amount of insecurity she had in her life after having been left by her husband because of their girl-only brood to really know why the news left such a big smile on my face.
Taylor McLean
Taylor McLean
After three months of Peace Corps training I was placed in Tano-Odumase, a small farming village in the Ashanti region of Ghana. For the first few months of my assignment with the Fisheries Department in Ghana’s Ministry of Food and Agriculture, I was completely lost. I felt like a tropical fish, taken out of my aquarium and dropped unceremoniously into a large lake full of big, intimidating catfish.
But Ghanaian hospitality is world-renowned, and rightly so. Since the moment I set foot on Ghanaian soil I have felt warmly welcomed, respected, and even pampered. Still, to the fish farmers’ associations I work with, I was a “small girl.” I didn’t want to be indulged. I wanted to be respected as a colleague, as a resource, and as a graduate student. Yet the question loomed over me: How does a young woman who cannot speak the local language or wash her own clothes, and who doesn’t even eat fish, possibly contribute to the development of Ghana’s freshwater fisheries?
The answers came to me slowly, with a lot of lessons about life and culture mixed in. I have found amazing people to work with — farmers, ministry staff, and university professors and students, all driven by a true belief in their work and love for their country. I have learned that although we often tend to look to outside sources, Ghana holds all the answers within its borders.
We have organized aquaculture trainings with agricultural extension agents in numerous districts and participated in farmer field days, watching happily as farmers proudly show the work they have done, and seeing the excitement grow in the eyes of new farmers as they realize what they, too, can accomplish. Fish is an important and cheap source of protein in this country, yet the domestic demand has been largely unmet. Helping farmers and organizations realize the role they can play and directing them towards the resources they need: this is my contribution.
Now I wash my own clothes and can almost get all the stains out. I go on extension visits to farms so far out in the bush, I would have never been able to find them six months ago. The farmers greet me as an equal, and we walk around the ponds discussing problems and ideas in Twi. On the way back, I am overwhelmed with bunches of bananas, fresh papaya, mangos, and guava…gifts of thanks. And when the light of the day starts to wane, and the red African sun is sinking in the sky, we return to the farmhouse and sit, as friends, sharing a bowl of delicious fufuo and fish stew.