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During the Fall Semester, my Information Literacy class (ably assisted by Ellen Makaravage) adopted the Peace Corps as our overall theme. This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Peace Corps begun by President John F. Kennedy. The class covered the usual topics: using the catalog and databases, citations,evaluating the web, etc.

We also had the pleasure of being visited by five returned Peace Corps volunteers (Natalie Sevin ’04, Martin Richwine ’63, Sue Sevin, Dany Kim-Shaprio and Bill Moore) who told us their individual stories. The campus was lucky to have the first Peace Corps Director, Sargent Shriver’s son, Mark speak on his father’s legacy. This was a very rewarding class to be part of.

The class spent several class periods designing, producing and installing their Peace corps exhibit inside the ZSR Library. These exhibits can be viewed any time in room 401. Our students heard from five individuals who gave two years of their own life to service in the Peace Corps.

Most of them felt this service was just as important and on an equal footing with, military service. At least one individual also made him feel patriotic. All the Peace Corps volunteers were proud of their service and their country. The process of hearing these individuals was unusual for an information literacy class. We devoted a lot of class time to these presentations, but in the end, I think it was well worth taking this unique approach.