Late this month, Jake Imber will step onto a South Africa-bound plane and into his father’s footsteps.

The 22-year-old Kansas University graduate will begin a two-year, three-month commitment to the Peace Corps on Sept. 27, 34 years after his father, Mickey, returned from his own Peace Corps stint.

Mickey, a teaching and leadership professor who has been at KU since 1980, spent two years in the West African nation of Togo.

“The Peace Corps wasn’t something that my father ever actively encouraged me to do,” Jake said. “He never put any pressure on me to go. But when I made the decision, he was very supportive.”

Jake will serve in a rural area of South Africa as a math-resource volunteer for four K-8 schools. Additionally, he will help with HIV/AIDS prevention education programs.

Both father and son expect Jake’s experience will differ markedly from his father’s.

In 1969, Mickey began his tour of duty in a remote Togolese village where he organized classes for the blind.

“Togo was undeveloped,” Mickey said. “There wasn’t electricity or running water — or social strife. South Africa today will be a very different experience than the one that I had.”

Jake said that while his father’s service had given him an appreciation for the Peace Corps, he did not give serious thought to enrolling until late in his college career.

Jake Imber, left, a Kansas University graduate, will join the Peace Corps like his father, Mickey Imber, right. Jake will serve in South Africa; his father worked 34 years ago in Togo.

After his junior year at KU, the chemical engineering major had a summer internship in Texas. The experience made him question whether chemical engineering was the way he wanted to spend his career. Instead, Jake decided he wanted to pursue medicine.

“For me, this is going to be a time to see how I do outside of Lawrence, to gauge how well I survive in underdeveloped borders,” Jake said.

The program’s structure should allow Jake to do just that. It’s doubtful he’ll return to the United States during his Peace Corps service, though his family intends to visit him in South Africa.

As Jake and his family prepare to send the second member of the Imber family into the Peace Corps, Mickey admits that he is at least a bit wary of seeing his son leave Lawrence.

Peace Corps

“Generally speaking, you prefer to have your children closer to home,” the elder Imber said. “But I really don’t have any reservations about it. He’s going to learn something about himself and about another group of people.”