A 22-year-old Evanston resident will leave for Panama later this month to begin a 27-month experience in the Peace Corps.
Catherine Rolfe, a former Medill cherub, will leave Feb. 19 to spend three months in Panama City, where she will live with a host family and train with about 50 other Peace Corps volunteers to learn technical and language skills. Rolfe will then be assigned to a specific community to help train local English-language teachers, among other projects.
“I’m excited to really get going on a project and hopefully be able to contribute to some kind of lasting impact that really helps people,” Rolfe said.
Rolfe grew up in Evanston and Winnetka and graduated from New Trier Township High School in 2008. Although she didn’t attend NU, Rolfe and her family still have ties to the University. Rolfe stayed in Jones Residential College when she attended the Medill-Northwestern Journalism Institute one summer in high school. She is the daughter of Kellogg Prof. Andy Rolfe and Elizabeth Briner (Communication ’85), a second grade Chicago school teacher.
“Ever since she was a little girl and went to summer camp in Wisconsin and Minnesota, she loved travel and meeting new people and having new experiences,” Briner said. “I know how much she wants to do it, and I could not be happier for her.”
In December, Catherine Rolfe finished her political science degree at Barnard College in Manhattan, N.Y.
At Barnard, she was the vice president of philanthropy for her sorority and participated in two summer service trips to Ecuador and Ghana. These programs propelled her to want to work in the Peace Corps, she said.
Nationally, the Peace Corps receives up to 15,000 applications every year, said Jessica Mayle, public affairs coordinator at the Peace Corps midwest recruitment office in Chicago. Rolfe will join 352 other Illinois residents who currently serve in the Peace Corps, according to a release.
Catherine Rolfe said she looks forward to becoming fluent in Spanish while in Panama, she said. After co-captaining New Trier’s badminton team during her high school senior year and playing on Columbia University’s club team for a year during college, Rolfe said she may try to start a badminton league in Panama. Although she is interested in pursuing a career in journalism, she said her plans may change drastically after her time in Panama.
“I expect that this experience is going to change me a lot, hopefully for the better,” she said. “I don’t know when else I will have the opportunity to take two years and go live in Panama. I’ve been very lucky, and I think that I am obligated to give something back and help other people.”
