Peaceworker Program: 3 Components

Graduate Study: Frameworks and Skills for Your Next Step

Peaceworkers have the flexibility to choose from a number of full-time graduate programs, allowing them to explore their own academic and professional interests and develop their own approaches to the challenges of social change and development. Applications to the arts and humanities, sciences, technical disciplines and professional schools are equally encouraged.

Community Service: Living Peace Corps Values at Home

Each Peaceworker will be placed in a part-time (20 hrs./wk.) community service position focused as closely as possible on an area of professional interest or an area of social concern to which they are drawn. Peaceworker community service placements are diverse, ranging from positions engaged in direct service delivery to others serving indirectly through program design, management, research or evaluation.

We partner with organizations small and large focused upon meeting diverse needs including: literacy and education, youth services, public health, homelessness and poverty, inter-cultural/international services, and community development. Peaceworkers work in these placements serves not only the Greater Baltimore community but also constitutes an opportunity for experiential learning, allowing Fellows to develop practical and professional skills and gain first hand knowledge of the complex social problems confronting the United States and its cities today.

Ethical Reflection: Bringing it All Together

The program includes a number of structured opportunities designed to enable Peaceworkers intellectually and personally to integrate the practical, theoretical and moral dimensions of their experience. Peaceworkers begin the program their first summer by enrolling together in a graduate seminar “Foundations in Ethics and Social Change” that introduces theories and methods of ethics, social change leadership, and urban studies.

Building upon this seminar in subsequent semesters Peaceworkers enroll in a series of four Practicum courses, each guided by a framing topic and core curriculum, but infused with the particular knowledge and experiences of the Peaceworker Fellows themselves. Weekly meetings are interactive and include opportunities for discussing texts and films, but also include site visits, experiential learning, and special guest presentations.

Program Benefits

The Shriver Peaceworker Fellowship award package includes a complete tuition scholarship for full-time study at UMBC (or the equivalent dollar amount for a non-UMBC graduate program), a living stipend of approximately $22,000/year, and health insurance. Please note that the fellowship does not cover fees which are assessed at a per-credit rate by the school, and will vary in cost from year to year.  The fellowship is valued at over $45,000/year.