Susan Cameron grew up in a small town on Long Island. However, a few years later she was giving health talks to mothers’ groups in the blistering heat in what was the second-poorest country in the Western Hemisphere.

Cameron was a Peace Corps volunteer in Nicaragua.

Thanks to Binghamton University alumni such as Cameron, the school has again ranked in the Peace Corps’ list of top 25 major volunteer-producing colleges and universities in the nation.

“These rankings are a reflection of Binghamton University’s commitment to global awareness and service learning,” BU President Lois DeFleur said. “Our students are regularly recognized for their humanitarian efforts and we are proud that this commitment to service extends for many of them after they graduate.”

Since the Peace Corps’ inception in 1961, over 230 BU alumni have joined its ranks, volunteering in countries around the globe, including Botswana, Cape Verde, Guatemala, Mongolia and Ukraine. Service projects have included health education and sanitation projects, science, environmental and English teaching assignments, business advising and development activities, and community development initiatives.

While in college, Cameron, class of 1994, studied anthropology, participated in student activism and studied abroad in Costa Rica. During her time with the Peace Corps she served as a health volunteer in a 1,000-person town with metal roofs and dirt roads. One of her projects involved eradicating diseases that generally killed children under five, such as diarrhea, respiratory infection, poor nutrition and incomplete vaccination.

“I always wanted to go ever since I was a kid,” Cameron said. “It seems like an adventure.”

She now works as a labor rights lawyer in New York City.

BU has more volunteers serving in the Peace Corps than any other SUNY campus. Career Development Center Director Nancy Paul said this is owed to an increase in internationalism on campus.

“A lot more students are a lot more aware,” Paul said.”The University works hard to help students picture themselves as part of a global world.”

Holly Sage, of the class of 1995, studied environmental sciences before she served as a water sanitation technician in Honduras.

“It definitely opened my eyes to how lucky we are in this country to have the things and conveniences we do have,” Sage said. “To have everything, to have infrastructure, to have health care, to have everything.”

The experience helped Sage become more confident in her professional and personal life, she said.

“Living and working in not only a foreign country, but a third-world country, really requires you to use all parts of your brain and yourself,” she said.

Serving in the Peace Corps also instills a sense of selflessness, according to Vinny Wickes, Peace Corps regional office manager.

“There’s something about Binghamton that resonates the call-to-service mentality,” Wickes said. “The commitment to thinking beyond the realm and walls-around-the-school kind of thing.”

To find out more about the Peace Corps, go to peacecorp.gov or call the New York recruiting office at (212) 352-5440.