[civsa] Student Leadership within Tour Guide program

[Lauren Butler]

Hi all,

Great questions! I love sharing new ideas about programming.

At Central Washington University (student pop. of approx. 11,000 undergrad.), we have 18-23 Student Ambassadors/tour guides on our team. Minimum wage here is $11 and going up to $11.50 on Jan. 2018. Our Lead Student Ambassador makes a little more since his job entails much more responsibility. We two different printed polo shirts for events or daily wear. We do ask that students wear their CWU gear when giving tours if they are not wearing their polo. Name badges are provided by our campus.

Our Student Ambassadors can work up to 20 hours per week. Most work from 6-15 hours per week. They give daily tours (we have two per day and one on Saturday) and they work in the office at our reception desk. When they work in the office, they answer calls from prospective students about tours and events and work on projects. For example, our Stud. Amb. improved our self-guided tour/scavenger hunt brochure for students between 4th and 8th grade.

As for events (Open House, Orientations, etc.), all our Stud. Amb. are expected to be available for some portion of the event. They lead tours, act as parking attendants, and spread cheer and dance on the corners as the crowds roll in or near our main entrance.

Structurally, we have made many changes over the year. At this time (and it seems to work well), we have a Lead Student Ambassador, a Public Relations Student Ambassador, and the rest of the students are titled Student Ambassador. Our Lead SA works closely with me and our Assistant Director on hiring and training new staff, as well as scheduling all student staff. Lucky for us, he is extremely motivated and productive. As a result, we have really streamlined our hiring and training process, and have produced better trained student staff. Our PR Student Ambassador monitors and tracks all our social media sites. He responds to messages and hypes events. He also assists students on our staff so they can each do “a day in the life” on snapchat during the week. Again, we are lucky because he is also very gifted in this area and has improved our visibility and presence online. Our online stats have jumped way up.

Our students receive a quarterly schedule that shows which tours they will lead for the quarter and lists their regular office hours. We also host high school groups, so our students may be assigned to give tours to those groups or participate in student panels (Q&A sessions with high schoolers).

Our office space is “cozy” so if issues arrive with the student staff, I usually handle them. For more serious issues, our Assistant Director and I work with the students to problem solve.

We are in the process of growing our freshman class, so we may hire a few more students this spring to improve programming for recruitment events and so we can add additional tours at the end of the week during our busy seasons. We would probably max out at about 25.

Hope this helps!

Lauren Butler
Visitation Program Supervisor
O. 509-963-1675
Lauren.butler at cwu.edu

Central Washington University
Ellensburg, WA
-located in the heart of Washington and in the middle of everything


[LaurenButler_signature_block]

From: listserv [mailto:listserv-bounces at civsa.org] On Behalf Of Sheila Siler
Sent: Thursday, December 7, 2017 5:50 AM
To: listserv at civsa.org
Subject: [civsa] Student Leadership within Tour Guide program

I am wondering a couple of things about other programs.

1. Do you pay your tour guides and what do you provide for them (uniforms, etc.)

2. How is your leadership structure set up? We currently have two student (paid) tour guide coordinators who handle all of the scheduling, recruitment, and training of guides with myself overseeing it.

Would like to know how your schools handle this.

Thanks,

Sheila R. Siler
Campus Visit Coordinator
Guilford College

P / 336.316.2443
F / 336.316.2935

5800 West Friendly Ave.
Greensboro, NC 27410

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