The Student Ambassador program in the Office of Admission is upgrading for its second semester by doubling the number of volunteers to greet prospective students on preview days.

Mac Mascorro, junior business management and marketing major from Abilene, founded the Student Ambassador program last fall.

“After a semester of running Student Ambassadors, there’s a lot that I’ve learned and there’s ways it’s going to be changing,” he said.

Leslie Hayes, associate director of campus visits, said the program went well last semester.

“I think it went great,” she said. “The students were great representatives for ACU.”

Mascorro said the program was the brainchild of the directors of Admissions and Campus Visits.

“They basically wanted a way to present a more unified, personal face to students visiting, primarily on large visit days,” he said. “We had a visit day with 400 students, not to include the 600 family members that came along with them. We had 1,000 people on campus, and we had eight to 10 tour guides working at a time – there’s no way to connect with everybody.”

The program currently has 32 active members that have spent a total of 220 hours in the program, Mascorro said.

After its initial success, some changes are being introduced for the spring semester.

“We’re looking to double the size of the program in the next month,” Mascorro said. “We’d love to get up to about 65 or 70 students by Sing Song, so we can have a lot of people there representing us that weekend.”

“This year we’re trying to add some freshman students as ambassadors,” Hayes added. “They’ll have one semester behind them, and have a fresh perspective and be able to add some different input.”

Mascorro said the program could also include a shadowing program, where prospective students would follow a current student through a class, chapel and lunch.

While the program has many recruits set to join this semester, Student Ambassador is still open to accepting applicants.

“It’s not just anyone that wants to join the program,” Mascorro said. “It’s people we know have high character and will represent the school well.”

Interested students should email Mascorro at mam11b@acu.edu.

“It’s a really fun way to volunteer,” Mascorro said. “Everyone that’s been a part of it has loved it.”