Cicerones/SAA continue to rank as a top student ambassador program
Author: Unknown Publication Date: Wednesday March 09, 2011
If you're looking for a tour of the University of Florida's campus, there's no better guide than a Cicerone.
And if you want to learn how to run one of the best student ambassador programs in the country, well, the Cicerones/SAA can help you there, too.
UF's official student ambassadors have become mentors to other student ambassador programs nationwide, as they demonstrated recently when they gave five presentations at the CASE/ASAP Region III Conference — a meeting especially for student ambassador and student alumni groups in the Southeast - in Raleigh, N.C. More than 300 students from other universities attended the Cicerones' presentations about the F Book, BEAT T-shirts, their executive board's leadership tactics, their recruitment campaigns and their general body meetings.
"I about felt like a celebrity at ASAP," said Nadia Fakhoury, a first-time attendee. She said she was impressed by "seeing how things we do here are modified by other schools and adopted."
UF sent 20 delegates to this year's conference, and all of them participated in presentations. But they also learned from their peers, bringing home their own ideas about their program can become even better. Ideas the Cicerones/SAA are now exploring after the conference include the possibility of a Halloween campus ghost tour, more interaction directly with alumni and an outreach program for middle and high school students.
And in case that wasn't enough, the Cicerones/SAA brought home something else: an award for the Most Outstanding Internal Program for its mentor/mentee process within the organization. The Cicerones/SAA will now compete for the award nationally this summer.
Last year, Cicerones won the national award for most outstanding organization. So why didn't they bring that kind of award home again? As last year's winners, they couldn't compete again in the same category, said Cicerones adviser Rachel Johnson.
Read about two other awards the Cicerones won at the CASE/ASAP conference
Learn more about the Cicerones/SAA