Ramona Arechiga (OSU's first PCMI graduate student) stands with Zegaye Kibrit, of the Ethiopian Wolf Conservation Program, before providing the community volunteers with an overview of proper planting techniques.

Oregon State alumni made their mark on the other side of the world May 20 when they helped plant 1,100 native trees in a newly created park in Goba, Ethiopia. Ramona Arechiga, a Peace Corps Master’s International environment volunteer, and fellow Beaver alum, Jonathan Schmierer worked alongside 350 community members to plant the trees. The event was part of Oregon State University Alumni Association’s Community Service Day.

The Bale Mountains Community Tree planting was the first international event funded by OSU AA. With the help the Alumni Association, organizers were able to purchase tree seedlings, posters and banners. The posters and banners will be used for future community tree planting events.

Goba borders Bale Mountains National Park, which is the headwaters for two important regional basins, the Wabe Shebelle and the Juba. These two basins serve approximately 12 million users downstream reaching as far as Somalia. The tree planting is intended to restore green space along the Tagona River in an area previously dominated by eucalyptus.

The main goal of this event was to teach the Goba municipality how to implement more successful community tree planting events. There are usually plenty of volunteers, but tree survival is an issue. A community tree planting held a year ago suffered from less than 50% survivorship of seedlings. Arechiga introduced a new method of community tree plantings where community members were trained ahead of the event. These tree leaders then trained smaller groups of community volunteers on how to properly plant seedlings during the event. Many tree planting efforts throughout Ethiopia have suffered low survivorship numbers and this is one way to improve those numbers while still offering an important role to the community to actively restore and enhance their own community’s resources.

Jonathan Schmierer, OSU Alumni and fellow Peace Corps volunteer, with local children who helped both during the planting and site clean up, collecting the plastic poly-pots that the seedlings came in.

Additional benefits will be seen in the future as the newly added native trees shade the river and slow heavy rainwater flows, reducing erosion issues. These trees will also provide additional habitat, including bee-friendly flora. Additional donations were made by Oregon residents, OSU community members and in-kind donations were made by Shwood Sunglasses, Bale Beauty Nature Club, Goba Municipality, and more than 350 community members.

Derek Rush(left) and brother Alex Rush at an OSU Beavers fame last year.

As Alex Rush prepares to graduate from Oregon State University on Saturday, he knows that his brother Derek is stepping into his place, albeit taking a much different path.

Alex, a 23-year-old history major, has signed up for the Peace Corps and will be heading to the Republic of Benin in West Africa on June 14 to build organic gardens and rebuild deforested areas. Just one month later, his younger brother Derek will be in summer boot camp for the Marine Corp reserves before starting at OSU in the fall as a political science major.

The brothers grew up in Portland, where their father works as an attorney. Derek just graduated from Grant High School and Alex is set to walk during OSU’s 141st commencement ceremony this weekend.

While the Peace Corps and the Marines may seem to be worlds apart, the brothers both believe their mission is similar.

“Both of us believe in service, in the value of serving your country and the larger international community,” said Derek. “We don’t see much difference. We are both trying to make a difference.”

Derek has enlisted in the Marine Corp Reserves through a special program that allows him to train during the summer and take classes as a full-time college student during the rest of the year. He said his brother’s endorsement of the university as well as the ROTC program made the decision easy.

“I’m studying political science with a focus on international relations,” Derek said. “My brother studied history, which isn’t too different. He always had the History Channel on and being younger, I didn’t have a choice but to watch.”

Alex said the entire Rush family is politically and socially focused.

“If you truly believe in what you believe, then you’ll do something about it,” he said. “The Peace Corps is an attempt to put that into my life and ritualize it. My brother and I were taught to believe in a sense of responsibility.”

He said his history degree cannot help but inform the work he will be doing for the next three years in West Africa.

“The rituals and traditions that have happened in the past continue to inform the present,” Alex said.

And now, OSU is part of a ground-breaking program that will enable students to pursue a degree at the same time that they are serving in the Peace Corps.

Andrea Durham spent two years in an Ecuadorian village while completing her master’s degree, and now works as a Benton County extension agent.

OSU has become a Peace Corps Master’s International partner, and will participate in an innovative program that allows a graduate student to get a master’s degree while also doing a full 27-month service project in the Peace Corps.

The program, the first of its type set up at a college or university in Oregon, will allow students to earn one of three graduate degrees in the OSU College of Forestry. The initial program should provide a model for other colleges at the university to develop participating degrees in the future, university officials say.

“Forestry is one of the ‘scarce skills’ that the Peace Corps has identified as an area of need,” said David Zahler, a senior instructor in the College of Forestry, director of the new program and former Peace Corps worker. “We see this as an important starting point that will facilitate other OSU colleges getting involved, and something that will open new opportunities to OSU students.”

Last fall, Oregon State also became the first university in the United States to partner with INTO University Partnerships, an organization that has worked with institutions in the United Kingdom to increase their international student enrollment. The collaboration, which includes a “pathway” program into the university, aims to double the university’s international enrollment within five years.
Under the Master’s International concept, a student first becomes accepted by both an OSU graduate program and the Peace Corps, and does the first academic year of their studies at the university. They then leave for Peace Corps training and a 27-month service period in a foreign country, often in Latin America or Africa. Finally, the student returns for at least one more term at OSU to complete their master’s degree requirements.

Initially, participating students at OSU will be able to earn a master’s degree in forest science, forest resources, or forest products. Within those degrees are several possible areas of concentration, such as agroforestry, forest ecology, silviculture, international marketing, forest economics, social forestry, and others.

Possible topics that might be available for a thesis, developed by OSU College of Forestry faculty who have already expressed an interest in serving as major professor for Master’s International students, include such things as the effects of non-native species, evaluating watershed restoration efforts, small business development in the forest products sector, and rural assessments of community needs and potential.

The Peace Corps provides support for the Master’s International student while they are on their foreign assignment, but students remain enrolled at OSU, receive some credit for their work experiences, receive deferred loan payments, and will be able to stay in contact with university faculty.

“The type of students attracted to OSU is similar to those choosing Peace Corps service,” said Sabah Randhawa, provost and executive vice president. “OSU graduates already choose post-graduate assignments with the Peace Corps in large numbers. By creating this seamless process whereby students can integrate their coursework with Peace Corps service, we hope to attract even more students who are bright, energetic and mindful of the international implications of their work.”
Although new, the program has already had many inquiries from prospective participants, Zahler said.
The program will allow students to develop some very innovative research projects while gaining more international experience, he said.

“Master’s International is the kind of program in which both the major professors and students have to be open and flexible,” Zahler said. “It calls for the type of person who is very capable and self-driven – working in a developing country is not like walking into a well-funded university laboratory with your graduate thesis already planned out.”

Andrea Durham, now a Benton County Extension agent at OSU, served from 2001-03 in a Master’s International program in an Ecuadorian village, 6,000 feet high in the Andes Mountains, while she was getting her degree from Michigan Technological University.

“I was a natural resource volunteer who was supposed to be working on the recovery of native forests,” Durham said. “We did that, but the local village also wanted me to help with health and water issues, family planning, youth development, women’s groups.

So I was in the middle of all that, with very little resources or funding, while trying to learn a mixture of Spanish and Quechua, the native dialect descended from the ancient Incas. It was quite a challenge.”

OSU officials say they believe that participation in Master’s International, which will result in more students returning to OSU with significant international exposure, will also improve the diversity of the OSU educational experience and boost other initiatives to increase international student recruiting.

More information about the program can be found on the web at www.peacecorps.gov/masters

~ Dave Stauth