For the 20th consecutive year, the University of Wisconsin has produced the most Peace Corps volunteers in the nation, with 104 undergraduate and 22 graduate student-volunteers.

In the history of the Peace Corps, UW ranks second overall in number of volunteers with 2,714 — behind only the University of California-Berkeley.

Annie Riordan, a UW graduate student who returned from a Peace Corps mission in Mongolia in July, credited the achievement to UW's campus climate.

"[UW] fosters an environment where the people are more open-minded, more apt to take chances and join the Peace Corps," Riordan, who was the third member of her family to join the Peace Corps, said.

The Peace Corps is a 27-month commitment that includes three months of training and two years of service.

Underdeveloped countries request volunteers with certain skills depending on a country's needs. The recruitment officers then select applicants who are a good match with those particular requests.

During the three months of training, volunteers learn to relate their qualified knowledge to the local culture of the area they will be serving.

UW Peace Corps representative Gregory Pepping called this process, "localized training."

"You are an outsider of sorts," said Pepping, who was a Peace Corps volunteer in Uganda from 2002 to 2004 before he became the campus representative. "So the training will help you blend in."

The volunteers learn about specific cultural, technical, and health and safety fundamentals of the volunteer experience, as well as learning the local language.

Once volunteers arrive in their assigned nations, an element of culture shock often accompanies the experience.

For example, Riordan said she lived in a "Soviet Bloc apartment building that was like a big concrete box" in a country that had a temperature below zero nine months of the year.

Christa Lachenmayr, a second year UW graduate student who was a Peace Corps volunteer in the Central African nation of Gabon from 1998 to 2000, said that the most drastic culture shock was the lack of anonymity.

"You're kind of like a celebrity. They know where you have been, what you've been doing," Lachenmayr said, adding that she often saw villagers rummage through her trash "for fun."

"You are the most interesting thing to happen to the village in probably a decade," she said.

However, Lachenmayr said volunteers also learn many things about their own culture from their Peace Corps experiences.

"It makes me feel lucky to be born American," Lachenmayr said. "But you also are able to see aspects of your own culture that can be improved."

Lachenmayr particularly observed the generosity of the people of Gabon.

"I am constantly amazed at the overwhelming generosity of people who don't have much but would give you everything they have," she said.

And Pepping said that is all part of the Peace Corps experience.

"You live somewhere over two years and you really get to know how things work there, how they do things, and how they go about their daily lives," Pepping said. "It's just another view to try on, other than what you grew up with."

Despite culture shock and other challenges, Lachenmayr said the Peace Corps was always something she wanted to do.

"[It's] really the only way to have that kind of experience with the community in another country," she said.

According to Pepping, the cross-cultural experience is something incorporated in two of the Peace Corps' three goals.

"They learn about us … and Americans learn about them," Pepping said, adding the first goal is "the job [volunteers] do."

Gary Lore, Peace Corps public affairs specialist for Wisconsin and other Midwestern states, attributes Madison's successful participation to the long-standing Wisconsin Idea — a term coined by former UW President Charles Van Hise in 1904 to describe the "determination" of the university to "reach" families throughout the state of Wisconsin.

"The University of Wisconsin is a very special place," Lore said. "They should be rightfully proud … it doesn't come easy."