Provided

Graduate student Marshall McCormick hangs out with children from a village in Ngone, Zambia.

Cornell ranks No. 4 on the top Peace Corps volunteer-producing colleges and universities among medium-sized colleges and universities nationwide on the 2012 Peace Corps' annual rankings of schools. Cornell has 58 undergraduate alumni serving overseas.

Since the agency was founded in 1961, 1,582 Cornell alumni have served in the Peace Corps. That makes Cornell the top Ivy League institution producing Peace Corps volunteers; nationally, Cornell is No. 17 on the list of all-time producers of Peace Corps volunteers, according to statistics released recently by the federal agency.

Cornell alumni are currently serving as volunteers in Albania, Armenia, Cameroon, Cape Verde, China, Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Georgia, Guatemala, Honduras, Indonesia, Kyrgyzstan, Lesotho, Malawi, Mali, Moldova, Morocco, Mozambique, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa, Suriname, Tanzania, Togo, Tonga and Zambia. They work in areas including agriculture, education, environment, health and HIV/AIDS, business development and youth development.

Cornell offers a Master of Professional Studies (M.P.S.) degree in 14 disciplines in agriculture and the life sciences in which the student spends two academic semesters on campus and then two years overseas on a Peace Corps assignment. Administered by International Programs in the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, the M.P.S. program offers the opportunity to carry out an applied project rather than the traditional research thesis for a master's degree.

For more information about the Peace Corps, email peacecorps@cornell.edu or visit the office in 177 Roberts Hall; to see office hours, check http://peacecorps.cornell.edu/.