March 9 – CMU Student Ambassadors and Campus Visit Days Help Students Decide on University Programs – For many students considering university, deciding to attend and choosing programs can be difficult. There are many factors to think about. Canadian Mennonite University (CMU) helps make this a little easier by having students talk to Student Ambassadors to get the opinion of current students. As well, to help in decision making, students can participate in a Campus Visit Day, next being held on March 16, to experience firsthand what university life is like.
Student Ambassadors (SAs) play a role in helping potential future students decide to come to CMU by sharing their own experiences in classrooms, dorms, and in the CMU community as a whole.
Currently, Kate Polle, David Klippenstein, Amy Beckwith, and Jenna Dyck are SAs at CMU.
According to Polle, a fourth-year International Development Studies major, SAs work out of CMU’s Admissions Department and help the admissions counsellors with work that needs to be done. One of the more important jobs SAs have is letting people know about Campus Visit Days. They also promote CMU and the Outtatown program at public events. This involves talking to prospective students about their personal experiences.
Lisa Kelly, CMU’s Assistant Director of Enrolment, who works closely with the SAs, comments, “They are the ones best suited to telling the story of CMU to our prospective students as they are the ones living it.”
For Beckwith, a Peace and Conflict Transformation Studies major, Communications minor who also participated in Outtatown South Africa, being an SA gives her the opportunity of “interacting with new people and promoting something that I honestly believe in and care about.”
Beckwith’s experience doing the Outtatown program changed her life, she said. She has also been able to be involved in numerous leadership positions including Student Council and a fellowship group. She loves the small class sizes and how much the CMU professors care about their students.
“I can honestly promote the institution,” she said.
Dyck, a third-year social sciences major with a concentration in counselling, wasn’t sure what to major in right out of high school. Talking to high school students who seem to be in similar positions enables her to share her own story of switching majors two or three times.
“I’m able to reassure them that they don’t have to decide everything right away.”
Dyck also took part in CMU’s Outtatown program.
All of the SAs find it meaningful to help prospective students make decisions that will ultimately change their lives.
Klippenstein, who is studying History and Communications, observes that university is an opportunity for a lot of growth. CMU is no exception, though the community, he feels, is very different from most other post-secondary institutes.
“I love when I find a good fit, someone whom I could see having life-changing, growing experiences at CMU,” he said.
Frequently, it is because of conversations with SAs that high-school graduates decide to enrol as students at CMU.
Says Beckwith: “I often run into students at CMU or on Outtatown that I remember speaking to when they were looking around. One guy came up to me who is now a CMU student and went on Outtatown. He said, ‘Amy, you were the reason I went on Outtatown!’”
CMU’s next Campus Visit Day is March 16
Students and parents interested in attending CMU’s next Campus Visit Day should contact mkrohn@cmu.ca or sign up on the website (go to: future students > campus visits >form). To reply in person, call Mitch Krohn at 204.487.3300. During Campus Visit Day, guests will have opportunity to attend a class, learn about financial aid and residence life, eat lunch in the dining hall, tour the campus, and have conversation with faculty. Campus Visit Day begins at 9:00 a.m. on north campus at 500 Shaftesbury Boulevard and ends at 3:00 p.m.