NEW INTERNATIONAL GEOLOGICAL NATURAL HAZARDS MS PROGRAM IN COOPERATION WITH THE US PEACE CORPS

At Michigan Tech, we have initiated a new graduate education effort together with the U.S. Peace Corps (http://www.geohazards.mtu.edu/). It is unique in being the only Peace Corps Masters International Program in Geosciences. It incorporates a two-year volunteer assignment in selected Latin American Countries (Guatemala, El Salvador, Nicaragua and Ecuador) into a 3 year MS degree. With a thriving graduate program in volcanological research, we have placed many students into foreign venues to work on active volcanoes, but until the Peace Corps became involved, we have been unable to sustain resources for long-term foreign assignments. The new program enables us to do research that was inconceivable previously. It also benefits our program by emphasizing the Peace Corps’ social focus and commitment and allows us to develop critical needs of geoscientists, such as ability to write and orally communicate, work in diverse teams, build coalitions and consensus among government, private industry, and the public, look at complex problems from broad and diverse perspectives, devise long-range strategies and solutions to multidimensional problems, assemble, assimilate and analyze large data sets, budget and manage projects, work effectively in other countries and cultures, and use their academic skills to make a real difference in improving the lives and the safety of their communities. The goal is to improve the effectiveness of geological hazards mitigation in appropriate Peace Corps countries. The scope includes earthquakes, volcanic hazards, slope stabilities, landslides, debris flows, droughts and floods, and also indirect linkages such as the impact of these events on infra-structural elements like community development, environmental education, ecotourism, transportation, health, sanitation and water quality. Michigan Tech has established significant linkage for this work with government agencies in these host countries, particularly in the areas of volcanic hazards. This program would provide a vehicle for community-level linkages between technical government agencies and people at risk.