News & Events-Alumni-The Fuqua School of Business-Duke University

Duke University has approved the launch of a Peace Corps Fellows program at the Fuqua School of Business. The school now becomes the newest member of a national consortium of graduate programs that recruit and support returned Peace Corps volunteers (RPCVs) who wish to pursue advanced degrees.

The Duke MBA Peace Corps Fellows program, which begins in the fall, will provide scholarships to selected Duke MBA-Daytime students who served as volunteers in the developing world. To qualify for a 25 percent tuition discount, fellows must agree to undertake significant community service projects in the Durham community during the academic year. In offering this program, the Fuqua School of Business will join Duke’s Sanford Institute of Public Policy, which currently hosts Peace Corps fellows studying public policy and international development policy.

In his letter to the Peace Corps authorizing this program, Dean Douglas Breeden stated, “I support any initiative that encourages returning Peace Corps volunteers to enter The Duke MBA program, as our past experience has shown them to be outstanding students with an outrageous ambition to make a difference. I feel that this collaboration will not only give the Peace Corps Fellows an exemplary business education but will also enrich ‘Team Fuqua’ and the Durham community at large. I am also confident that their presence at Duke will advance the third goal of the Peace Corps, ‘helping promote a better understanding of other peoples on the part of Americans.’”

The effort to establish this program was led by Anne Kallus of the class of 2007, a returned Peace Corps volunteer who served as a natural resource management volunteer in rural Mali from 2000 to 2002.

“We are excited about the Peace Corps Fellows Program and its ability to attract more great talent to Duke!” Anne explained. “Returned volunteers bring humility, patience, initiative and internationalism to places of work and learning. At Fuqua, returned volunteers excel in leadership, community involvement and entrepreneurship. For example, in this year alone, former volunteers were elected to lead the MBAA, won the Duke Start-up Challenge and served as volunteer consultants to various organizations in the Durham community.”

For more information about the Peace Corps Fellows Program please contact Matt Nash, associate director of the Center for the Advancement of Social Entrepreneurship (CASE) at mnash@duke.edu or call 919-660-7791. Currently-serving Peace Corps volunteers who apply to The Duke MBA may request a waiver of the application fee by contacting the office of admissions.

If you are a returned Peace Corps volunteer, please contact us so that we can better identify RPCVs among our alumni body.

In honor of this exciting announcement, we have profiled six returned Peace Corps volunteers who are currently part of The Duke MBA community [http://www.caseatduke.org/mba/rpcvprofiles/]. Please look for our introduction of Fuqua’s first Peace Corps Fellows in a fall issue of this newsletter.

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