University in 1959. After leaving the Peace Corps in 1978, Payton returned to Howard University where she was appointed Dean of Counseling and Career Development and later Director of University Counseling Services. As Dean she helped develop an internship-training center. Payton retired from Howard in 1995. Peace Corps Staff member Payton started at the Peace Corps as a field assignment officer in 1964 helping prepare trainees to serve in West Africa. Payton traveled extensively for the Peace Corps performing psychological tests, interviews, clinical observations and peer reviews to help determine the conditions that would lead to the most satisfying experience for Peace Corps volunteers. In 1966 she was appointed Deputy Country Director for the Caribbean and in 1967 was appointed as Country Director for the Caribbean region supervising 130 volunteers involved in education projects on eight islands in the eastern Caribbean. At the time she was one of two women who were country directors. Director Payton was appointed Director of the Peace Corps by President Jimmy Carter in 1977. As Peace Corps Director Payton clashed with Sam Brown, Director of ACTION, which had been created in 1971 by President Richard Nixon to administer the Peace Corps, Volunteers in Service to America and other service programs. Brown wanted to "send volunteers for short periods to developing countries and then bring back the skills they had learned to fight poverty in the United States". According to Payton, Brown's policy went against the original goals of the Peace Corps and said that Brown was "trying to turn the corps into an arrogant, elitist political organization intended to meddle in the affairs of foreign governments." According to Senate testimony Payton's differences with Brown ended in an argument during a trip to Morocco, when Brown openly berated Dr. Payton before Action Corps officials and later went to her hotel room and pounded on her door for fifteen minutes, demanding to be let in to continue his harassment. Payton resigned in 1978 after thirteen months as Director citing, in part, policy differences between ACTION and the Peace Corps saying "as Director, I could not, because of the peculiar administrative structure under which the Peace Corps operates, do anything about this situation. As an ex-director, I am free to sound the alarm." After Payton's resignation, President Carter issued an executive order taking the Peace Corps out from under ACTION and making it a fully autonomous agency. Continued