After extraordinary experiences as Peace Corps volunteers in West Africa following college, three Harvey Mudd College professors encourage their students to embrace lessons of the world by getting out there and seeing it firsthand.

“Spending time in another part of the world is one of the keys to understanding it,” says Peter Saeta, associate professor of physics, who left for his Peace Corps assignment in Togo only five hours after graduating from Stanford. “To really appreciate what life is like and what people think, you have to be there for awhile.”

The experience also results in a great deal of self-knowledge, adds Saeta, who met his future wife—also a Peace Corps volunteer at the time—while in Togo. “You can’t look at things you used to do or the beliefs you had in quite the same way.”

For Paul Steinberg, assistant professor of political science and environmental policy, and Susan Martonosi, assistant professor of mathematics, the Peace Corps experience impacted their careers.

Assigned to Zwedru, a city in Liberia, Steinberg taught biology, algebra, literature and evolution, and witnessed firsthand the devastating effects of civil war and political instability.

“My decision to focus on environmental policy in developing countries was largely influenced by my experience in the Peace Corps,” says Steinberg, who was motivated to volunteer by a sense of adventure and love of language and travel. “It lent a sense of reality to things I would otherwise have studied from a purely academic standpoint.” 

For Martonosi, who volunteered in Guinea, the experience uncovered a strong desire to contribute to society.

“I learned that it’s important for me to wake up each morning and feel I’m doing something that matters,” she says. “Being in the Peace Corps guided the kind of the research I started in grad school and have continued here (on terrorism and aviation security). I wanted my work to have value to society, which fits into the HMC mission.”

About the same age as her Guinean students, Martonosi shared interests with many of them. “We spent our afternoons during the hottest part of the day listening to music, playing games and drinking sweet green tea,” she says. “I learned not just how their culture differs from ours, but how similar it is.”

Following in the footsteps of Saeta, Steinberg and Martonosi, several ’06 graduates volunteered for the Peace Corps last year, including Gregor Passolt, who is in Tanzania, and Simon Stump, who was assigned to Namibia.

“I have the rest of my life to go to graduate school or get a job,” says Passolt, a math major from Houston. “I joined the Peace Corps because I wanted an adventure.”