STAMP Spotlight # 1: Connecting the Dots from Prospects to Potential Students
A behind the scenes look at the Make School Student Ambassador Program (STAMP)
Representing Make School as a student ambassador is a great experience that helps you build your leadership skills, communication, interpersonal skills, and professional experience — leading to great bullet point accomplishments to put on your resume. The Student Ambassador Program was developed to welcome prospective students and their families to campus and assist the Admissions department with outreach to applicants. Student Ambassadors often have other tasks and roles that extend beyond the scope of admission such as mentoring beginners in the coding community, tutoring, getting students acclimated with adult life and life in a new city, and facilitating coordinated talks and discussions that bridge the gap between beginners and experts in the industry.
What got you interested in computer science? What got you into Make School?
From a young age, I always knew I would be doing something with art and computers. I was always drawing and when I started using the computer, I created masterpieces. I also always loved icons and typography. That got me interested in graphic design. I pursued graphic design after high school, but as a freelancer, my clients always wanted me to design and code webpages for them. I thought it was interesting to learn, but I had no resources. I googled computer science and web development and it got me lots of schools and tutorials. Knowing the best way I learned was with others in a classroom setting, I found Make School to be a good fit. I was drawn to their project-based learning and having the opportunity to do a shift in my early career to web development. Since then, I have created tons of applications and have learn a great host of skills and languages.
What was your first experience as a Make School student like?
One of my earliest memories about being a Make School student was having a coding session with other students. The project we had to create was an app to search for and find gifs kind of like https://giphy.com. It sounds pretty cool and better than a simple standard to-do app. For me, it was fun, challenging, and it gave me the opportunity to see how my code can create a whole application, both backend and frontend.
My live code is at https://lets-get-giffy.herokuapp.com/ and github code at https://github.com/StephanieCherubin/LetsGetGiffy
What first got you interested in becoming a Student Ambassador?
I was nominated to become a student ambassador by Megan Dias, Head of Student Experience at Make School. She recommended it to me because she thought I was outgoing, enthusiastic, helpful, and friendly which are great qualities for this position.
I thought this position would be great because I love to share my own journey of becoming a student at Make School. Anytime I’m at a hackathon or a tech meetup, as an elevator pitch, I share my story about how I started at Make School, how Make School is different from other institutes of higher learning, and my career goals in the tech industry after school. I’m able to speak freely about what I like about attending a non traditional college and how the accelerated Bachelor’s degree program works well for me. When I speak to potential students on Slack, email, or in person, it can be likely that I am the first person they speak to, and I like that I can be a positive influence for them and give them reasons to consider Make School as an option.
What have you enjoyed most about being a Student Ambassador? Least?
I love that I get to do many things, wear many hats, or job diversity as it’s called. I’m expanding my skills immensely in this role. As a student ambassador, you can be the face of Make School, literally, by playing a part in the videos and pictures sent out to prospective admits, contacting admits directly via text, posting to social media, answering questions at Make School’s Open House, hosting community tutoring events, and leading dorm tours and campus tours. I also love the amazing swag!
What I enjoy the least is also wearing a lot of hats. Many of our STAMP outreach and other admissions-related tasks peak during Preview Weekend. Preview Weekend is one weekend where applicants can see what it’s like for a Make School student by sitting in on a class, speaking in person to other prospective students, current students, and instructors, attend dorm and city tours, and get all their questions answered. It takes place over one weekend in the spring and one weekend in the summer. There is a lot of work leading up to and during Preview Weekends while still being a student here. It’s worthwhile in the end, though, because I can directly connect the dots of prospective students becoming potential students. I also love seeing how positive the experience is for attendees.
What have you learned or what skills have you improved as a Student Ambassador?
I have learned how to best present myself to others and improved my public speaking abilities, through my experiences leading Tech Topical, a discussion about technology in a non-technical way. STAMP has given me the opportunity to practice my skills as the host of TechTopical and now I feel more confident when I am leading small groups. One of the best things about being a part of the Make School student ambassador program is that it allows me to put these skills on my resume and LinkedIn.
What excites you about the future of STAMP?
Apart from a lot of the jobs I do as a student ambassador, I lead TechTopical. Potential students tune in live using a video chat platform. Past technical topics include art & code, robotics, data science, artificial reality, virtual reality and more. My goal as the facilitator of TechTopical is to introduce topics in a way that allows people of all technical backgrounds to participate and share their thoughts on the subject — it’s not a one-way conversation from me to the viewer.
I’m really excited about where TechTopical will go since it was first targeted for potential students. This year, I’m working with Jordan Arnesen, STAMP Program Manager to grow TechTopical into a platform for having conversations with founders, CEOs, and CTOs of companies, chats with students about different technology they are using independently, speaking at hackathons, an alumni forum, and basically showcasing anything that a potential student, former student, or current student of Make School would like to know.
When you aren’t supporting the community as a STAMP Ambassador, how do you spend your time?
My time is mostly spent developing my software engineering skills. I am currently in the Front End Track at Make School learning languages and frameworks like Mongo, Express, React, Node Stack, Ruby on Rails, Python, Flask, and Django. I enjoy creating applications for myself and showcasing my skills on my portfolio and Linkedin.
I also enjoy exploring San Francisco, my new home away from home. I have been to Yosemite national park and the wineries of Napa and Sonoma. I have recently gotten into hiking which I wouldn’t have been able to do in my hometown of Miami.
Since my experiences are similar with my peers at Make School, I spent a lot of time with them doing homework, coding a side project, or just hanging out. I have met people here at Make School that I would hope to know for the rest of my life.
