by Chris Cumo

Dr. Joe Peters

Dr. Joe Peters has taken the road less traveled to his Fulbright scholarship. A course in Eastern religions as a freshman at Purdue in 1972 led him to nature rather than the classroom. He volunteered for the U.S. Forest Service the next year and fought fires in the American West and later, while in the Peace Corps, on Isabela Island, the largest in the Galapagos Archipelago.

His fascination with cultural and biological diversity has enticed him to spend nearly 10 of the last 22 years overseas, including the Peace Corps stint in Ecuador. Other jaunts have included Taiwan, China, Madagascar and Indonesia. With his interest in the Orient, Peters was horrified by the carnage of the Vietnam War and believed he could best serve his own altruistic inclinations as well as other people and nature by helping heal Vietnam's human and ecological damage. When in 1998 his wife Dai landed a job in Hanoi, Peters went with her, applying for and receiving a Fulbright for 1999-2000. Although Grand Valley State University, where Peters taught one year, lists him as an adjunct assistant professor of biology, he considers himself a natural resources manager. His teaching of this subject has led to friendships with students in the U.S. and other countries, and now Vietnam, where he and Dai just finished research with farmers in using sweet potatoes as a cover crop in the northern mountains.

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