Help Others

Peace Corps Fellows/USA is a graduate fellowship program that offers financial assistance to returned Volunteers who wish to earn professional certification, master's or doctoral degrees in a variety of subject areas. Returned Volunteers also complete paid internships in underserved U.S. communities where they gain valuable on-the-job training while helping meet local needs that would otherwise go unmet. Additionally, as interns, returned Volunteers are able to fulfill the Peace Corps' third goal by sharing their knowledge of other countries and cultures with colleagues and community members. Since the inception of the program, more than three thousand returned Volunteers have participated, and hundreds of thousands of people have benefited from the important work of Peace Corps Fellows.

Serving Returned Volunteers Since 1985

Peace Corps Fellows have been serving local communities for nearly two decades. Fellows/USA is the brainchild of Dr. Beryl Levinger a returned Volunteer in Colombia from 1967 to 1969 and former researcher with the Institute of International Studies at Teachers College, Columbia University. She realized that returned Volunteers had the specialized skills that were being sought by the Board of Education of New York in the early 1980s. They needed resourceful teachers who had practical, innovative ideas about education; skilled communicators with a sensitivity to cultural differences to place in challenging, inner-city positions. In cooperation with the Peace Corps, Levinger proposed a program in which returned Volunteers would fulfill this need. In 1985, the college launched a pilot program to prepare them as teachers in New York City public schools.

Eventually, Fellows/USA expanded the program and helped develop similar initiatives at other universities throughout the country. The program was originally supported by grants from the Xerox Corporation, the Hebrew Technical Institute, and the DeWitt Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund, and later supplemented by funding from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

Apply Your Skills in a Domestic Setting

As a returned Volunteer, you are an asset to any institution, company, or organization because of your cultural sensitivity, language proficiency, creativity, and professional knowledge. Because of your proven experience in adapting to different environments and circumstances, you are uniquely qualified to work with a wide spectrum of cultural and ethnic groups. For example, you may be a perfect candidate for working on Native American reservations, where teachers face cultural challenges or in inner-city school districts, where there are often language barriers and limited resources. Community and economic development or business volunteers who served in areas like Eastern Europe - dealing with challenges such as lack of business plans, organizational structures or funding - can use their talents to overcome similar obstacles in American companies in urban or rural communities.

The Fellows/USA program can help you take what you have learned overseas and use it to build a better future rather than storing it away as a memory of a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Enhancing the skills you acquired will only make you more marketable. As one Fellow put it, "the program helped me pursue my graduate studies, gave me confidence in my skills, and put me on the path to my professional career." Whether you are still overseas, recently returned, or long-since returned and thinking about a career change, examine the benefits of Fellows/USA.

Choose from a Variety of Programs

Each of the more than 40 Fellows/USA programs nationwide is developed and administered by partner university faculty members, many of whom are returned Volunteers themselves. That is why no two programs are alike in the degrees offered, benefits, application requirements, or competitiveness for entry into the program.

Fellows/USA programs encompass many fields such as American studies; anthropology; business; communication; economics; English; environmental studies; geography; history; language; law; nonprofit management; nursing; philosophy; political science; public administration; public health; the sciences; sociology; social work; recreation, park, and tourism management; urban planning; and more. Available teaching fields are also diverse. They range from math and science to bilingual and special education in grades kindergarten through 12. Sometimes, partner universities are flexible in allowing returned Volunteers to tailor a degree to suit their own interests. Additional programs are being developed in new geographic and subject areas to provide even more opportunities for you to continue your education and service to the world as a Peace Corps Fellow.