Marketing and Recruiting Coordinator for University Housing Kelsi Nagle and University Support Services Administrate Assistant April Beul train student ambassadors on smart communication when talking to prospective students.
The University of Idaho Office of Admissions is training more than 75 students to serve as student ambassadors. The ambassadors will help promote the university to prospective Vandals through different colleges.
UI Admissions Assistant Director Marie Duncan said the university is able to reach more prospective students with these student ambassadors. She said a few years ago there were only 10 recruiters.
“We are able to have a much farther reach through the students and give the high school students a better perspective of what college will be like through those students eyes and their stories,” Duncan said.
This program started three years ago because UI had different ambassadors for each college and each college did their own trainings. The problem was that some of the information the recruiters gave was not right.
“The information from their college, as far as like faculties to staff ratio, was different from the overall campus. We wanted student ambassadors from certain colleges to be able to speak not only about that college but the entire university itself,” Duncan said.
The training covers smart communication, financial aid and general information about UI and Moscow.
Ambassadors were required to go through a three week training process. When the program first began, the training process took up to two months to complete.
“I learned that our student ambassadors are usually the busiest people on campus,” Duncan said. “This training originally expanded throughout probably two months, and now we condense it to three weeks so their time isn’t taken up so much.”
In addition to benefiting the university, the program also benefits the students in many different ways, Duncan said. The students are professionally trained to be recruiters so they learn and understand more facts about UI. After completing the training, each student ambassador will receive a certificate.
More UI colleges have joined the program, increasing the number of student ambassadors. Duncan said there were about 50 student ambassadors last year, and there are more than 75 this year.
There are seven colleges in the program, including the College of Agriculture and Life Sciences, College of Natural Resources, College of Business and Economics, College of Art and Architecture and the College of Letters, Arts, and Social Sciences. The two most recent additions to the program are the College of Science and the International Programs Office.
Seung Chae Ryu, a student ambassador representing International Programs, said he wanted to share his experience of being a Vandal with prospective international students, especially students from Korea.
“Because the University of Idaho is not as popular, I want to introduce this university to Korea,” Ryu said. “I want to show that the University of Idaho is a good university, but only a few people know about it.”
Although the College of Engineering has not joined this program, Ryu can speak about his experience with the International Programs Office and engineering programs. Ryu said he is enjoying the ambassador training so far.
“I learn some techniques to persuade people who are interested in the University of Idaho, or even people who just want to know more about the university,” Ryu said.
Ryu said another benefit of being a student ambassador is meeting new people.
Nurainy Darono can be reached at [email protected]