When H. James Towey took over as president of Saint Vincent College in October, he told the crowd gathered for his inauguration he wanted to lead a student trip to Calcutta "if anyone will go."

Last month, a dozen students and new graduates went to India as volunteers in the mission houses of Mother Teresa, and they said they'll never be the same. The experience was life-changing.

Saint Vincent College group stands in front of the Queen Victoria Memorial in Calcutta, India. Back row (left to right): Nick Manning, Matt Dinning, Bridget Kennis, Emily Petrovich. Middle row: Becky Dargay, Laura McDermott, Professor Rebecca Dinning, President H. James Towey, Bret Powner, Mary Phillips. Front row: Ashlee Erny, Tara Karns, Mollie Luginski, Julie Gulling, Wayne Hooper. Click photo for larger image.

"I feel like I have to go back," said McKeesport resident Nick Manning, who will be a sophomore this fall.

The English major volunteered at a home for people with disabilities, one of nine different homes started by Mother Teresa and located throughout Calcutta. Some help orphans, mostly girls, whose desperate parents have abandoned them.

Other homes care for the very sick and the dying.

Two other Saint Vincent volunteers, Julie Gulling of Canton, Ohio, and Ashlee Erny of Latrobe, who both graduated last month, worked at an orphanage for six days starting May 21.

All said the sights, sounds and smells of the city were almost overwhelming at times and provided the memories they'll always have.

Ms. Gulling said Mr. Towey told them of the "beauty of Calcutta," and now she knows what he meant. Within the city streets -- crowded with people, traffic and cows and shrouded in the sometimes oppressive heat -- there is beauty, she said.

"The women's clothing is so colorful. And in the poorest slum, music is playing," Ms. Erny said.

It is the poor and their meager lives, though, that left the three students feeling differently about what they have and how they live.

Ms. Gulling said that for a few days after the trip she felt appalled by the extraneous objects she had collected over the years in her bedroom at home."I was so completely disgusted," she said. She had so many "things," while the people she had just visited and helped had little or nothing.

"I feel bad when I'm eating really big meals. [It's] so inappropriate to eat like that all of the time," Mr. Manning said.

The students, like the volunteers and nuns, ate spare meals. Mostly it was bread, eggs and rice with a bite of chocolate sometimes.

A banana and a piece of bread would suffice as breakfast, Ms. Gulling said.

Ms. Erny, who earned her degree in marketing, said she'd like to arrange trips like the one she and the others took for other students.

Anyone can help, whether in a group or individually. Some, like Mr. Towey's wife, Mary, can just show up at the mission door in Calcutta and volunteer. Mrs. Towey volunteered when she was a young college student, long before she met her husband, Mr. Towey explained.

There are 750 of Mother Teresa's homes in 120 countries worldwide, Mr. Towey said. They are staffed by nuns belonging to the Missionaries of Charity order, which was founded by Mother Teresa.

A group of the nuns sang at his wedding in 1991. Mother Teresa permitted the women to attend the church service held in Washington, D.C. but not the reception.

He first met Mother Teresa in the summer of 1985, when he traveled to India as a staffer with U.S. Sen. Mark Hatfield. On his own he decided to take an opportunity to visit the fabled nun and did just that.

His first meeting was brief, barely long enough for him to exchange a pleasantry.

But he couldn't shake the impressions he got from India and what Mother Teresa was doing there. He went back a number of times, volunteering on one trip in Kalighat, a home for the dying.

He and Mother Teresa became friends and Mr. Towey represented her and the Order on legal matters for 12 years, many times traveling with her as she opened missions.

Mr. Towey would like to continue the India volunteer program in some manner in the future.

This initial group of students was chosen from a field of 60 who expressed interest in the fall. They had interviews and wrote essays. They had to pay $1,400 to make the trip, which was also subsidized by several benefactors.

Mr. Towey chose the students who would go. "I wanted balance in gender and class representation, at different points of spirituality," he said.

"I didn't want to pick the 12 most pious people [to go]," he said. But according to his blog about the trip, he needn't have worried. "It was my eighth trip to Calcutta but the students made me experience it anew," he wrote.

"Their hearts were stirred to such heights of generosity that when it was time to leave and return to the States, they decided to leave all of their clothes, shoes and supplies behind for the nuns of Mother Teresa to distribute to the poor."