Nearly 300 Alumni Have Served in the Peace Corps
At present, 15 Cal State Fullerton alumni are spending their days in foreign lands as volunteers in the Peace Corps. Part of a volunteer force that numbers nearly 8,000, they follow in the footsteps of nearly 300 fellow alumni who have served in 76 countries — from Albania to Zambia — around the world since the organization’s beginnings in 1961. “Cal State Fullerton has achieved a remarkable record in producing some of America’s finest global citizens, and the Peace Corps is one of those accomplishments,” said Gaddi Vasquez, former director of the Peace Corps and a CSUF supporter. Here are the stories of several alumni who have served or are currently serving in the Peace Corps.
Story by Pamela McLaren ’79
Sharyn Obsatz, at right in the back, spent lots of time working with youth during her two years in San Lorenzo as a Peace Corps volunteer.
Sharyn Obsatz spent part of her honeymoon in San Lorenzo, a city in Paraguay where she previously served as a Peace Corps volunteer.
Returning with her new husband “was very emotional,” said Obsatz ’06 (M.A. communications). “I wanted to share with him what it was like, what I had experienced.”
Serving in a poor neighborhood in Paraguay’s second-largest city, Obsatz was the first U.S. citizen that many there had ever met. They remembered her and were happy that she had returned, but she was sad because the situation for the barrio had not changed much from when she had been there.
Obsatz went to the South American community in 1997 to work with urban youth. She was 26 years old at the time, a working journalist who had covered “teens in trouble, in gangs, running away from home, getting arrested, getting pregnant, dropping out of school, always pulling themselves down.
“I wanted to stop being an observer and start getting involved,” she wrote in a 1999 news story about her two years in the Peace Corps.
“When you are in your 20s, you have an urge for excitement, a desire to explore,” she said. “The Peace Corps really is a good way to do that. You get to know a place like you never would as a tourist. It makes you appreciate what you have here.
“I learned a lot about myself and the world,” Obsatz remembers. “I was so sure of issues, saw things as black or white before I went to Paraguay. It helped me to see the world as more complex, more shades of gray.
“It made me believe in small changes,” said Obsatz about her experience. “It doesn’t have to be all good to love it.”
Exploring Options, Seeking Direction
Alumna Lorraine Gunderson, who is serving in Moldova in Eastern Europe, graduated in 2004 with a bachelor’s degree in psychology but found herself still questioning what she wanted to do with her life.
“Become a therapist, become a journalist, write a novel? The last three and a half years zoomed by so fast, and I was still no closer to knowing where I wanted to be or what I wanted to do,” she explained. At the same time, her roommate graduated and got an internship in Portugal. It prompted her to consider a possible internship as well.
“Traveling the world was always something I’d wanted to do,” Gunderson said. She considered other volunteer programs and then turned to the Peace Corps.
“I began researching online and felt the program was exactly what I needed. I filled out the application, had an interview and then, six months later, was living in Eastern Europe.”
Gunderson arrived last June in the capital of Chisinau and lived in a nearby village for 10 weeks while being trained and learning the language. In August, she passed the language test and moved to another village in the south where she serves as a health educator, teaching basic health to students in fifth- through 10th-grades.
She also works with the village’s medical center, leading health seminars for adults “so that the audience will be engaged, learn and actually use the information we’re giving them,” Gunderson explained. “I also teach them about how to evaluate the resources they have and utilize them in better and more efficient ways.
In addition, “I am working with a woman, who is the equivalent of the PTA president for the school I work in, on two community projects. The first will be to put in a toilet at the school and repair or replace the outhouse, so we don’t lose any children in the giant holes!” she said. “I also want to build a recreation center for the kids in the community.
There is literally nothing productive for these kids to do after school lets out. My partner and I are looking into whether we’ll be able to find funding to get that done.” Meanwhile, she has formed a student club, working with a group of eighth- and ninth-grade students.
“We’re working on a puppet show about the dangers of smoking to put on for the fourth grade right now. I love going to school on Wednesdays because I have the ninth grade class followed immediately by the club meeting and, to be honest, the ninth grade class is my favorite.
“There are three boys, Ion, Gheorge and Boris, who are so funny, they’re like the Three Stooges. Whenever Ion sees me he yells ‘Ms. Lori’ and then runs over and gives me air kisses,“ she explained. “Then Gheorge tells me about his love life — at least I think that’s what he’s talking about.
He talks so fast, I hardly understand him. Then there’s Boris, who’s just adorable and apparently stopped smoking after our month of anti-smoking classes.”
While Gunderson didn’t think she had any expectations going to Moldova, “it turned out that I really did,” she admitted. “Moldova is not what I expected.”
Gunderson said that her challenge has been psychological. “It’s about getting the people to believe they have the power to change their situation. It’s a lot harder than I expected it was going to be, but this place and these people have so much potential that once that nut is cracked, there’s no limit to what they can do.”
From Childhood Dream to Reality
For Brittany Kuhn ’06 (B.A. communications-journalism), becoming a Peace Corp volunteer was her mission.
“When I was 10, I decided I wanted to be a Peace Corps volunteer,” she said. “It was a dream that always appeared visible just beyond the horizon.”
Shortly after graduating from Cal State Fullerton, she served two years in Cape Verde, just west of Senegal off the west coast of Africa.
“It is an elusive mix of everything,” she said of Cape Verde. “A blend of Portugal, Brazil, America and Africa, the archipelago consists of 10 unique islands that offer everything from isolated windswept beaches, mountainous misty forests, giant salt flats and black volcanic lava flows.”
While there, Kuhn served as an English teacher to seventh- and eighth-graders in a rural community located on the slope of a volcano crater.
“There were daily struggles,” she said.
“Living without running water and elecricity
are challenges that do not compare to the
cultural adjustments necessary to thrive in
community development work. But I must
say, it was the best decision I ever made. The
Peace Corps is a wonderful experience. It
is, above all, about relationships. It is about
finding yourself living in a place completely
foreign to you, maybe a place you didn’t even
know existed, and watching in amazement
as it becomes home.” 
