Junior Year Program Enlarged for '66

The Peace Corps is expanding its training program for college juniors. Jules Pagano, Peace Corps training operations director, has announced that 1,000 juniors will begin the Advance Training Program this summer.

The Program enables future Volunteers to integrate Peace Corps training and their senior year of college, with benefits on both sides. "It gives us 15 months to prepare the Volunteer for his assignment instead of the normal three," Pagano said.

The ATP was begun in the summer of 1964, when 200 college juniors entered training for assignments that began in September 1965. They trained the first summer at United States universities, continued their preparation independently during their senior year of school and completed training in special field programs the summer of 1965.

The Peace Corps has a loan fund for ATP enrollees to help cover the loss of income otherwise gained from summer employment. Trainees may borrow up to $600 at low interest rates to pay expenses during their final year in school.

ATP was developed as a solution to the increasing difficulty of preparing Volunteers for certain assignments. Some Peace Corps Volunteers must learn two languages to handle their work effectively, such as teachers bound for French-speaking Africa where various African languages are spoken as well as the official French.

Some ATP enrollees trained for West Africa at Dartmouth College in the summer of 1964. The next summer they trained in Quebec Province, Canada, where they lived with French-speaking families and practice-taught French-speaking students.

Juniors qualified to enter ATP next summer will train for assignments in 16 countries.