Student ambassadors guide prospective students

by Jennifer Coots staff writer

Ever wonder who those people are you see leading groups of wide-eyed youngsters through the halls of Cabrini? They are Cabrini's student ambassadors, the individuals who represent Cabrini by giving tours to prospective students.

In addition to being a great boost for student enrollment, being an ambassador is fun, according to junior Gabby Beltran. "I like to help visitors make up their minds about attending college," said Beltran. "I try and give them some insight about the college and I enjoy meeting new people." Senior Gail Miller agrees about how enjoyable the job is. "We work with the same people all the time. It's almost like a little family. We even have Christmas parties."

Although the ambassadors have a lot of fun while working, the job is actually hard to acquire. Student ambassadors are the first impression prospective students have of the college, so it crucial that the student displays good leadership skills.

The student must have a GPA of 2.75 before they can be considered for the position. In order to become an ambassador, a member of the full-time faculty member or staff must recommend a student to Vicki Maumus, coordinator and supervisor of the student ambassadors. She then sends out appli- cations to all of the nominees, reviews their applications and hand picks those she feels will fulfill the requirements for the position. The process is concluded with an interview.

"Last year I received 80 applications and had to hand pick 30 of them," Maumus said. ''After the interview, only 20 were hired. The interview for ambassador is formal, and is taken as seriously as a job that someone would apply to outside of college, in the real world. The interview prepares them for the work force."

The duties of the ambassador vary. The job description includes giving campus tours to prospective students, answering phones, scheduling appointments, present- ing presentations to large groups of students and assisting admissions counselors with special projects, like announcements and speaking to local high schools. They also call students who have been accepted to congratulate them. Since the students are trying to reel in as many new students as possible, the ambassadors must be able to answer each question about Cabrini accurately. The ambassadors must know the statistics and facts about the school, such as the student to teacher ratio, the number of full-time and part-time undergraduate students as well as the number of part-time graduate students there are. They are also required to know how many professors there are, how many have degrees and how many are currently in the process of achieving one.

There hasn't been many problems with visitors in the past concerning the tours. It wasn't until recently that problems occurred, due to the recent changes of regulation concerning student housing. Some ambassadors actually had to deal with angry students stopping tours.

"Although we were telling potential students that housing was not guaranteed," Miller said, "students still interrupted tours, telling visitors not to attend Cabrini. We have a job to do and people must respect our position. We're only doing our job."