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National Peace Corps Association > News > Community News > Benin, Brazil, Eastern Caribbean, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, South Africa, Thailand, Washington DC, Zambia
Benin, Brazil, Eastern Caribbean, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama, South Africa, Thailand, Washington DC, Zambia
By JoAnna Haugen on Monday, September 10th, 2007
BENIN
Claire Beckett’s (02-04) photography exhibit, “In Training: Soldiers before War,” recently opened at the Photography Gallery in the Fine Arts Center Galleries at the University of Rhode Island in Kingston. Her photographs of Army and National Guard soldiers in training are set in a variety of environments. The goal of her photography is to provide a window for people to see the soldiers as human beings, not to project any particular political message. Beckett has also shown her work at the Photographic Resource Center at Boston University and Bernard Toale Gallery in Boston. She will show a new exhibit entitled “Simulating Iraq” at Bernard Toale Gallery in October. Recipient of the 2007 Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant to Artists, Beckett earned an MFA in 2006 from the Massachusetts College of Art where she is now an instructor. She also teaches at the University of Connecticut.
BRAZIL
Bob Decker has been hired as the executive director of the Policy Institute, a political group that advocates for “progressive public policy.” Decker served as the Lewis and Clark County commissioner from 1978 to 1986 and worked as an advocate for wilderness designation of Montana’s roadless public lands for 16 years. For 12 of those years he served as executive director of the Montana Wilderness Association. Most recently Decker has been a laborer for United Parcel Service, an environmental consultant and a producer of a news analysis program on community access television.
EASTERN CARIBBEAN
The U.S. Forest Service recently named Will Metz (88-90) as the new supervisor of the Cleveland National Forest. Metz’s career began as a firefighter in national forests in California prior to his Peace Corps service and continued with the Forest Service upon returning. He is currently deputy forest supervisor of Six Rivers National Forest.
HONDURAS
Peggy Goebel (73-75) spent nearly a month this summer providing nursing and medical care to people in Belize, Guatemala and Panama. A teacher of nursing at Dominican University and Santa Rosa Junior College, Goebel was a volunteer of Project HOPE, an organization that educates health professionals and volunteers, provides medicine and supplies, strengthens health facilities, trains community heath workers and battles communicable diseases. She spent the month aboard the U.S. Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort, going ashore to treat 3,000 to 5,000 people daily.
NICARAGUA , PANAMA
Barbara J. Ford (Panama 69-71, Nicaragua 71-72) was elected to the governing board of the International Federation of Library Associations and Institutions for a second two-year term. Ford is currently director and distinguished professor at the Mortenson Center for International Library Programs at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. IFLA is the leading international body representing the interests of library and information services and their users.
SOUTH AFRICA
Nikia Clarke (03-05) received a scholarship from the Jack Kent Cooke Foundation Graduate Program, one of the most generous academic scholarships offered in the United States. She is one of 34 students chosen to receive the award from a pool of 977 nominees. Clarke majored in humanities at Loyola Marymount University in California and will pursue master’s and doctoral degrees in the field of international development and relations at the University of Cambridge this fall.
THAILAND
Author Nancie McDermott (75-78) is back with a newly published cookbook. Known for her cookbooks focused on Southeast Asian cooking, McDermott’s new book, Southern Cakes, brought her back to her native North Carolina. The book contains 64 recipes ranging from celestial chocolate cake and Sybil Pressly’s buttermilk cake to hummingbird cake and orange slice cake.
WASHINGTON D.C.
Richard F. Celeste (79-81) has been appointed senior advisor to the board of directors of the U.S.-India Business Council, a business lobby seeking to strengthen U.S.-India commercial ties. He has been president of Colorado College since July 2002, served as the U.S. ambassador to India from 1997-2001, was governor of Ohio for two terms and served as director of the U.S. Peace Corps. Celeste was a Rhodes Scholar and Yale graduate who taught urban economics at John Carroll University and served as a visiting fellow in public policy at Case Western University as well.
ZAMBIA
Josh Swiller (94-96) recently published his first book, The Unheard: A Memoir of Deafness and Africa. The story is about Swiller’s service in the U.S. Peace Corps as a deaf volunteer. His memoir, published by Henry Holt & Company, weaves the corrupt and violent experiences he encountered with the warmth and openness that he also found in Zambia.
