Under the Kenya sun, a country in East Africa, lives Alayna Dean. Dean, a 24-year-old UF alumna, is a Peace Corps community health outreach volunteer in Kenya. Dean spends her days connecting with the people in her new home, whether she’s teaching students in the classroom or spending time with the families in Kenya.
Dean draws from what she learned at UF to teach students and other members of the community. She provides health education talks, ensuring they are knowledgeable in topics like family planning and birth control.
UF student life motivated her to serve, she said. Dean graduated from UF in 2024 with a bachelor's degree in microbiology. During her junior and senior years, she served on the board for student organization Gainesville For All, which works to create solutions for race and poverty problems that North Central Florida faces, according to its website.
“I really have a passion for service, and I felt like that really solidified during my time at UF,” she said.
In a Peace Corps list published April 7, UF placed third for the highest number of Peace Corps volunteers across large colleges and universities nationwide. In the past fiscal year, 44 UF alumni served as Peace Corps volunteers. Last year, UF also ranked third, with 34 UF alumni serving as volunteers.
Dean’s STEM background, the skills she took from her rigorous classes at UF and her time management skills are things she said play into her everyday life in Kenya, and have helped her overcome challenges like learning a new language.
“I felt like I was as prepared as you can be for something like this,” she said.
UF offers “Peace Corp prep,” programs for students interested in working in the agency. The series includes a variety of classes focusing on leadership, language and culture. The prep program has six sectors: agriculture, community economic development, education, environment, health and youth in development.
The classes are meant to show recruiters students are serious about service, said Joshua Castro, a 37-year-old Peace Corps media content manager. in
Castro is also a UF alumnus who served in the Peace Corps. He then served as a recruiter before managing social media.
UF’s large Peace Corps presence is rare to come by, Castro said; not every college campus offers preparation classes or opportunities to meet recruiters.
“There really is a strong Peace Corps network in Gainesville," Castro said.
Alex Christy, a 22-year-old UF alumnus and a Peace Corps education volunteer in Kenya, met Dean when the two were on a call with a Peace Corps recruiter.
“It made it seem more real, right?” he said, “it’s possible to get there.”
Christy, who earned a bachelor’s degree in cybersecurity, said he uses skills he learned at UF while teaching in Kenya. When he was a teaching assistant in a cybersecurity class, he used the Socratic method to help explain hard topics to students. In Kenya, he said, he uses the same techniques.
One of Christy’s biggest challenges is feeling like an “outsider,” he said — another area he learned to deal with in college.
“I go in with a mindset of learning,” he said. “If I make a mistake, if I look stupid, it’ll be OK. I will survive. I’ll make it to the next day.”
At UF, Christy practiced leadership skills while being a club officer for UF’s Student Infosec Team, a cybersecurity club that teaches members about a wide variety of security topics. It prepared him for the leadership roles he has in Kenya, he said, like teaching students and teachers how to use equipment from newly constructed computer labs.
For Thalia Mejia, a 22-year-old UF alumna, the university’s prep classes prepared her for her service in Amealco De Bonfi as a Peace Corps environmental advocate.
Mejia had already decided to serve in the Peace Corps before attending UF, she said, but her college coursework played a large role in teaching her how to succeed.
“Learning more about the environment itself and how to connect with people and what is important in different parts of the world, that’s what my degree really helped me out with,” she said.
Contact Alabama Weninegar at aweninegar@alligator.org. Follow her on X at @AlabamaW40513.
Alabama Weninegar is a first-year journalism major and The Alligator's Spring 2026 University General Assignment Reporter. She also works a part-time job at Wyatt's Coffee downtown. In her free time, she enjoys watching her favorite shows on a rainy day or re-reading the Twilight series.
