SF State currently ranks 16th in the nation for producing Peace Corps volunteers since 1961, and the agency awarded the university for its contributions on Wednesday.

Peace Corps deputy director Jody Olsen presented SF State President Robert Corrigan with a certificate acknowledging the school’s decades of service. Corrigan, who described SF State as “an institution of social justice and equity,” accepted the award in the Rosa Parks Room of the Cesar Chavez Student Center on Oct. 22.

“This [recognition] is something we’re very, very proud of,” Corrigan said. “It links together the many threads of the university.”

In her opening speech, Olsen said that she has “heard about SF State for a long time.”

“It is a real honor for me to be here, and even more of an honor that the university is taking a role in leadership,” Olsen said to a crowd of approximately 40 people. “There are universities all over the country who are competing for the numbers that [SF State] produces.”

Since the Peace Corps was established by President John F. Kennedy, more than 190,000 volunteers—1,232 of whom have been SF State graduates—have served in 139 host countries.

Joining the Peace Corps is a 27-month commitment that allows volunteers to participate in one of five programs: Education and Youth and Community Development, Health and HIV/AIDS, Environment, Business Development and Information Technology, and Agriculture. Currently 26 SF State alumni serve as Peace Corps volunteers in 16 posts.

“We certainly want to acknowledge that SF State is in the top tier of universities for its Peace Corps legacy,” said Nathan Sargent, Peace Corps public affairs specialist and returning volunteer.

The event, sponsored by the Office of International Programs, was also an opportunity to promote the value of intercultural relations and the importance of presenting a diverse face of Americans to the world.

“Diversifying is something we’re always striving to improve because part of [the Peace Corps] mission is to increase awareness overseas of what Americans are really like,” Sargent said.

According to Sargent, a third of volunteers from SF State identify as being from a “diverse background,” compared to the overall average of 17 percent among all Peace Corps volunteers.

Currently, Peace Corps volunteer and SF State alumnus Bryan Payne is on his third semester of working in Jordan at the Center of Hope for Special Needs. The center serves both special needs children and adults in the southern half of Jordan. Payne works with a group of six young men with “developmental delays,” on a variety of academic, life and vocational skills.

Outside of the center, Payne trains students from a nearby university to play rugby in an effort to increase organization and participation of sporting activities.

“Whether it’s in the classroom or on the field, it is my hope that the people I work with are happier and more self confident, and have a few more tricks up their sleeves than they did before they met me,” Payne wrote in a recent e-mail.

Payne, who graduated in 2007 with a bachelor’s degree in French, credited SF State for helping him gain the experience that qualified him to go to Jordan as a volunteer in the special education sector. While a student, he lent his efforts to the Disability Programs and Resource Center where he worked with students and staff members with special needs.

Many returning Peace Corps volunteers were also present at Wednesday’s event, including OIP associate director My Yarabinec, who served in Morocco in 1970 for two years.

Yarabenic explained in a recent Peace Corps press release that being a volunteer is “a convergence of two elements that are part of our culture [on the SF State] campus—activism and our commitment to bettering the world.”

The volunteer process can be long and arduous, but for many like Payne, the experience is described as “life-changing,” and its long-term worth is inestimable.

“Living and working with people from different, under-served and often misrepresented communities is the greatest opportunity to build the kind of relationships that lead to the understanding, empathy and brotherhood that we so desperately need to break down the walls of international, interethnic and interfaith mistrust,” Payne said.