Group finds place for students in boardrooms

The boardrooms of local businesses may have some fresh, young faces this spring, and possibly as many college sweatshirts as suits.

Through the Ambassadors Program recently launched by Campus Philly and the Greater Philadelphia Students Association, area college students will have the opportunity to work for a semester on the boards or committees of certain nonprofit groups, city departments and professional associations.

The program is just one of the ways in which Campus Philly and its recent offshoot hope to strengthen ties between Philadelphia college students and the region.

"Through the process, we hope students will develop networks and contacts that could lead to employment in the summer or after graduation," said College and Wharton freshman Ravi Naresh.

Naresh, whose Management 100 team is organizing the program as its class project, added that student ambassadors will acquire important leadership skills.

Campus Philly Executive Director Jon Herrmann said that the program will allow the area's roughly quarter of a million college students to have a louder voice in city affairs.

"By getting students involved in regional policy planning, we are allowing them to affect policies and programs that will help students' lives," he said.

The ambassadors will meet monthly with the GPSA to report on what their host organizations are doing for the collegiate community.

Among the 10 participating organizations are ActionPA, a Pennsylvania-based environmental activism group, and the Philadelphia City Planning Commission.

Most organizations have volunteered to take one ambassador, although the Delaware Valley Regional Planning Commission agreed to take a total of 21 students for three separate committees.

"We're planning the future of the region," said Kendall Miller who organizes public involvement in the commission. "We don't want to hand students a legacy that they don't have a hand in."

Naresh, who is a GPSA member, said that the organizations contacted were very responsive to the goals of the program.

He added that student responsibilities and hourly involvement will vary depending on which organization they join.

Wynn Meyer, who helps plan the Greater Philadelphia Coalition Against Hunger's annual "Walk Against Hunger," said that the organization jumped at the opportunity to work with students.

"The walk is a large undertaking for a small organization like us," she said. "Students could give our steering committee input on how college students see the walk and could reach out to the campus communities through recruitment and communication."

Herrmann said that one of the long-term goals of the Ambassadors Program is to combat so-called "brain-drain" in Philadelphia.

According to Herrmann, only 29 percent of Philadelphia college students not originally from the area stay in the city after graduation, as opposed to 86 percent of students who are from the region.

"It's not so much that there is a mass exodus of students from Philadelphia, but that there is a great need for college graduates here," he said.

Herrmann said that the Ambassadors Program, by "building bridges between campuses and the larger community and the professional world, will plug students into leadership roles so that when they graduate, they'll know who to call."

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