Graduation is approaching for Sarah Kenders (senior-advertising and public relations), but she is not interested in looking for a job related to her major just yet.

Instead, she will teach in Baltimore through Teach For America.

"It really seemed to fit," she said.

TFA is a national corps of recent college graduates from all majors who commit to teach for two years in urban and rural public schools in economically depressed areas.

The organization was created to address what its founders consider inequalities in education. TFA provides teachers who will give children in low-income areas better educational opportunities.

Several Penn State students graduate and become corps members in TFA each year, including Kenders.

Her time in TFA begins in June when she will spend five weeks in TFA's summer institute in Bronx, N.Y. The summer institute educates corps members about theories behind education and teaching techniques. The summer training institute is an intense program that covers the material education majors learn in four years in a few weeks.

Corps members also experience a two-week induction period at their assigned teaching sites where they learn about the communities in which they will teach and locate housing there.

Jennifer Early (senior-advertising and public relations), who will graduate in May, was accepted to the TFA corps in Los Angeles, but she has applied for a change of placement to the East Coast.

"I've wanted to do this since freshman year, but I wouldn't be as effective of a teacher if I wasn't happy in my placement," she said.

Kristen Wright, a 1999 graduate of Penn State, was a TFA corps member from 1999 to 2001. She decided to join TFA while she was visiting a friend who taught for the program in New Orleans. Wright's interaction with corps members in New Orleans is one of the reasons she joined the program, she said.

"I really wanted to push my limits and go out of my comfort zone as I believed this would be the true test of my abilities," she said.

Wright taught kindergarten through third grade special education at West St. John Elementary School in Edgard, La. She had a desire to teach special education because of her involvement with a similar program when she was in high school.

After her stint as a corps member, Wright began working for TFA's recruitment team in Los Angeles, where she serves as a liaison between the TFA program and the universities it serves on the West Coast.

Whether or not TFA corps members find permanent careers in the organization, Early said the program is life changing.

"TFA is an opportunity to create change on the most basic level in children," she said.