At 4:15 a.m. on a summer morning in Guatemala, Alexis Guild stumbles out of bed and makes her way to the coffee maker for a fresh pot of java. Quickly dressing, she gathers her things and heads to the Capitol Building, where at 5 a.m. a bus waits to take her on a two-hour ride through the mountainous Guatemalan countryside.

When she arrives at her destination — a Guatemalan primary school — a class of young students waits for her to teach them their daily health education lesson. Today, Guild emphasizes the importance of hand washing and teeth brushing and demonstrates the correct methods for each.

After teaching the students from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m., Guild takes a bus back to town with her colleagues, where she talks with locals and buys groceries in small stores nearby. She finally retires to her adobe house and bathes in a small stone basin, using water she saved before the dry spell that left her town waterless for days.

This was a typical day for Guild, a former Peace Corps volunteer and current University graduate student, during her service in Guatemala. After graduating with a bachelor’s degree in comparative literature from Wellesley College in 2003, she worked for a reproductive health organization in Maryland before helping with political campaigns for U.S. and state senators in the 2004 and 2006 elections.

But throughout the duration of her post-grad work, she longed for something more. After spending time abroad in college and hearing stories from friends who had recently returned from mission trips in other countries, Guild knew she wanted to venture outside the country and be a part of something life changing. So she decided to apply to the Peace Corps.

Guild was accepted and was sent to Guatemala in April 2007. Her mission was to help implement healthy lifestyles and teach health education to students in primary schools in the area. She also engaged in infrastructure projects to increase the availability of running water so locals could engage in hygienic behavior, and worked on secondary programs that involved HIV/AIDS education and teaching English as a second language.

Guild’s experiences in Guatemala would not have been possible, however, without the help of the University of Michigan students of the 1960’s. Inspired by John F. Kennedy’s speech on the Michigan Union steps on October 14, 1960, two students in particular played integral roles in the formation of the Peace Corps.

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Al and Judy Guskin, a young married couple in graduate school, were among the hundreds of students on the steps of the Michigan Union at 2 a.m. listening to Senator Kennedy’s speech. At that time, they had no idea that they would soon play a pivotal role in propelling the Peace Corps movement into action.

“We were excited that Kennedy was saying that we had some responsibility for peace and for things that were important in the world and that we had some ability to make a difference, but we weren’t sure what to do about it yet,” Judy Guskin said.

A few days later, Chester Bowles, foreign policy adviser to Senator Kennedy, came to speak in the Michigan Union Ballroom about his son and daughter-in-law’s experience helping locals in Africa. The Guskins attended, and afterward went to dinner and passionately discussed the impact that student participation abroad could have in developing countries. On a whim, they wrote a note on a napkin to then editor in chief of The Michigan Daily, Tom Hayden, emphasizing the importance of student participation abroad.

The Guskins dropped the note off at the newsroom, and the Daily published it on October 19th, 1960. The note asked students to send letters to the Daily or the Guskins articulating support for an international aid program that they would in turn send to Kennedy and Bowles.

“If it is at all possible, we would like students to start asking others in their classes, dorms, sororities, fraternities, houses, etc.