How to Build Your First Student Ambassador Program Before Fall Recruitment

The most common request enrollment teams get from prospective students isn’t about tuition or housing, but a much simpler request to speak to a current student.

At Case Western Reserve School of Engineering, that request used to go unanswered for days. “48 hours, 72 hours would elapse, and then it was cold, and the interest was gone”, says Christopher Littman, Executive Director of the Office of Professional Programs. Early attempts at a graduate ambassador program stalled for the same reason most first attempts do: no consistent group, process, or momentum.

Eighteen months later, that program runs 21-24 active ambassadors and gets pulled into leadership meetings as a reporting win. Here’s how he and Dr Brock Schroeder, Director of Recruitment & Enrollment, built it, and what they’d tell anyone starting from zero…

Start with the ask

Don’t build a program in search of a problem. Case Western’s starting point was a specific, recurring, unmet request from prospective students: the chance to speak with a current student. If you don’t already know what that request is at your institution, check your own inquiry emails and admissions call notes first. For Case Western’s mostly PhD applicant pool, the recurring questions turned out to be about funding, specific faculty research, and where graduate students actually live off campus. Yours may be different, but the pattern holds: the question you get asked most and answer worst is your starting brief, and it’s specific enough to build a program around, not a vague sense that students want “more connection.”

Find your first ambassadors inside a group that already exists

Dr Schroeder didn’t recruit cold, he started with an existing graduate student leadership group, which gave him a small, trusted starting pool with credibility already built in. From there, he grew deliberately rather than opening it up broadly. He asked current ambassadors directly whether they knew students in departments that weren’t yet represented, since Case Western’s engineering school spans eight departments that don’t naturally overlap. A referral that lands gets a monetary reward, paid out once the referred student has stayed active for a full semester. That condition matters as much as the reward, as it filters for ambassadors who’ll actually show up, not just sign up.

Vet and train before you scale

Not every student who volunteers should become an ambassador. Schroeder screens for two things specifically: how well someone communicates in a live chat setting, and whether they can represent the institution professionally to a stranger. Every new ambassador at Case Western gets a 30-minute session with Dr Schroeder, using a set of slides that cover what Unibuddy is, what the role expects, and how to handle difficult questions. This isn’t about filtering out weak candidates, but making sure every ambassador can handle a hard question before their first conversation goes live. Training doesn’t stop at onboarding, either. Case Western folds it into the same event where ambassadors are recognized each semester, asking them to reflect on the questions they got and how they could have answered better.

Rethink compensation before you build a payroll process around it

Case Western initially paid ambassadors hourly, tracking chat time on a spreadsheet. International student payroll rules made that more trouble than it was worth, so the budget moved to a twice-yearly paid-for social and awards ceremony based loosely on the Oscars, with categories for things like most conversations, most content created, and most in-person events worked. “You don’t need to pay the students to do this,” Christopher says, “They really just want to have fun and engage with other graduate students and experience community with one another.”

Keep it sustainable

Once the process is running, day-to-day management is light. Dr Schroeder checks in on live conversations through Unibuddy’s admin portal and follows up with any ambassador who’s gone quiet, spending around 20 to 30 minutes a day on the whole program. That same visibility pays off beyond monitoring, because ambassadors are already trained and practiced in the platform’s chat function, Dr Schroeder can pull them into real-time introductions at in-person events, pairing a prospective student with an ambassador on the spot rather than hoping a connection happens organically.

None of this required a bigger team or a bigger budget. It required a clear starting problem, a small trusted group, a defined process, and a willingness to drop what wasn’t working.

Watch the full conversation with Christopher Littman and Dr Brock Schroeder above, or get in touch to talk through what a first-year ambassador program could look like at your institution.