Fearless Leaders

JMU Student Ambassadors recruit prospective students

Day in the life

Caitlin Friel / staff photographer Sophomore Christina Miller (right) participates in Student Ambassador training, which will prepare her to lead one of the tours JMU students are used to seeing around campus.

The art of walking backwards while pointing out great aspects of JMU all while answering questions is clearly a skill only a Student Ambassador possesses. The Ambassadors are a motivated group of individuals who are hand selected to represent JMU. Most of us know them as the outspoken tour guides we see around campus recruiting high school students to become a Duke.

Sophomore Christina Miller was chosen to be a Student Ambassador at the beginning of this semester. "I was most attracted to the club when I attended Operation Santa Clause last year as a freshman," she said. "OSC collected toys and money in exchange for a great performance by many of the musically talented groups across the JMU campus, including the entertaining group Exit 247 B-Flat Project." She admired that all the money was given to a local organization that gave to children who were not going to receive anything, which gave them a much more memorable holiday season, she said.

To become an Ambassador, students must to go through an interview process. This year, Ambassadors implemented a new interview process.

"They introduced group interviews, which allowed for a lot more people to be able to be seen and express themselves through words, as opposed to last year, where it went straight from the application to the interview process," Miller said. She said it is very exciting to be a new person, known as a "newbie," rather than awkward as she had first anticipated.

"It is a very welcoming group that is always willing to go the extra mile to make someone feel more comfortable with their surroundings," Miller said.

Time seems to be a precious commodity on campus. For Student Ambassadors, time is equally valued, but Ambassadors can spend as much time as they want being involved, Miller said. "As a ‘newbie,’ there is a lot more going on this first semester because you are getting to know a ton of new and incredible people. But, after the first semester, you can put as much time into it as you want. It is completely at your discretion. Some of this time is spent in meetings, which consist of talking about new and upcoming events.

"We play games every so often to break up the monotonous speaking, which is always a lot of fun," Miller said.

Life as a Student Ambassador involves rubbing elbows with people on a very frequent basis.

"[I like] being able to interact with some really great people and also being able to have an impact on JMU prospective students as well as JMU students now, and JMU alumni," Miller said.