ASU has landed a spot on the Peace Corps’ annual list of Top Colleges and Universities, ranked at No. 24, with 43 ASU alumni currently serving in more than 32 different countries.

Most students volunteer to teach English, which is the most requested field, and help teach about HIV/AIDS and health through workshops, said Kate Kuykendall, a spokeswoman for the Peace Corps.

Graduate students who enter the Peace Corps dedicate 27 months to educate and assist strangers who need a helping hand.

Torrey Cunningham, a 2002 ASU anthropology graduate, has dedicated five years of his life to working with the Peace Corps. He started in 2004 as a volunteer in the Republic of Kiribati, an island in the Pacific Ocean. After his tour, he became an ASU recruiter in 2006 for the Peace Corps and is now working in Washington, D.C., as a Peace Corps placement eligibility specialist.

In the Republic of Kiribati, Cunningham was a community development agent working as an assistant to a nurse andteaching English and math to middle school students.

Then as a Peace Corps recruiter, Cunningham took on different roles, like advertising for the Peace Corps at career fairs and information sessions and working with applicants, said Cunningham.

“A lot of volunteers coming out of the Peace Corps look to be a recruiter,” Cunningham said. “You come back from the Peace Corps and you think you did something meaningful, [so] you want to talk about it.”

Nadia Fazel, a pre-dental senior, volunteered for the Peace Corps from 2006 to 2008 in Cape Verde off the west coast of Africa.

After graduating with an English degree from Lake Forest College in Chicago in 2005, Fazel moved back to Phoenix and was looking for volunteer opportunities.

The Peace Corps had all the right pieces she was looking for, she said.

At Cape Verde, Fazel volunteered as a teacher with 32 others.

Fazel taught English to 8th- and 10th-graders at a secondary school for her first year and then taught English literature to 18- to 30-year-olds who were becoming English teachers during her second year.

“When a student finally understands what they’re doing and thanks you for teaching them, it makes it worthwhile,” she said.

Teaching English wasn’t the only way Fazel left her mark in Cape Verde, she said. She and others integrated an English library into her teacher’s college, which translated from Portuguese is called the Superior Learning Institute.

Thousands of textbooks and other literature were donated from the United States and sent to add to the library, Fazel said.

Jeffrey Palmer, a fall 2009 philosophy graduate, is the newest Sun Devil to join the Peace Corps and will leave for the Middle East and North Africa region in September. Palmer said he has wanted to join the Peace Corps since high school.

“I was going to volunteer right then and there but then I found out you needed a college degree,” Palmer said. “I was born with so much opportunity. It was all so easy, and I realized that other people aren’t born with those opportunities.”

Palmer sent in his application last May and is now counting down the days until he leaves. He will go to either Jordan or Morocco, but doesn’t find out until May.

He will be a part of the TEFL program, teaching English as a foreign language, for high school students.

Palmer is training at the New School for the Arts in Tempe until September, learning Arabic and the cultural norms of the Middle East.

“I absolutely want to continue my education, but I’m young and I have no obligations. There’s nothing that’s holding me down,” he said.

Kuykendall said along with college degrees, the Corps is looking for people with experience in education, health and agriculture.

“Education is one of our biggest areas of need,” Kuykendall said.

ASU’s involvement in the Peace Corps has grown over the past couple of years and it is only getting bigger.

“The Peace Corps has a big presence on ASU — more than any other campus that I’ve been to. It’s great that students are getting involved,” Fazel said.

Reach the reporter at mpareval@asu.edu