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Syracuse University’s Department of English is launching a new recruitment program for prospective students.

Jessica Miranda, a senior double majoring in English and Textual Studies and advertising, is one of five students participating in the English Ambassador pilot program — where she promotes the English major, minor and classes to prospective students.

“Students relate and listen to other students and are less potentially comfortable engaging with the professors when they are earlier in their careers,” said Katherine Kidd, assistant teaching professor of English.

The new program allows prospective students to engage with current students. Coran Klaver, English department chair and associate professor, said she envisions the program as similar to the Dean’s Team at the College of Arts and Sciences and Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. That group of students attends events for prospective and accepted students, Klaver said.

Kidd said that she hopes the program will help increase the number of students majoring and minoring in English and Textual Studies and also the number of students taking English classes at SU in general.

“We have been wanting to be more visible as a department on campus,” Kidd said. “A lot of that has to do with recruitment and retention.”

In February, the English department held the “Students Reflect on the Powers of Literary and Textual Study in Times of Crisis” event, showcasing current students’ work. While the department was considering an ambassador program before this event, the interest in the event reinforced the need for interested students to hear from other students and not just faculty, Kidd said.

“We have a lot of really enthusiastic, energized, passionate students, who are excited to be English majors and who want to sort of show the strengths of the English major,” Kidd said. “We decided that the students would be a really valuable asset in sort of building a presence on campus, beyond what we have.”

Klaver and Kidd reached out to professors within the department to recommend students who might be interested in participating as an ambassador for the program. Klaver said she hopes that the program will expand to about eight ambassadors next year, she said.

“We’re kind of figuring it out,” Klaver said. “We’re also hoping that the first few classes of ambassadors will kind of create the program, like we’ll allow them to help us.”

Klaver said she wants the ambassadors to represent a wide range of interests within the department, including creative writing, film and screen studies, global and ethnic literature and social justice.

The program will allow students interested in English to learn more about the department and classes from other students, as well as see students interact with faculty, Kidd said. Some students may be more comfortable speaking with other students, she said.

The program is still in the beginning stages and most of the work done so far has been to brainstorm ideas for the future. There have been a few meetings to begin mapping out ideas, she said. This makes it difficult to start big projects, she said.

“It’s probably not what you’d expect,” Miranda said. “From my experience, every class that I’ve taken, I’ve had an experience with a film or book that I thought I wouldn’t like and ended up loving. So you can’t really box yourself into understanding what an English class is.”

Published on March 24, 2021 at 9:13 pm

Contact Kailey: kmnorusi@syr.edu