School of Education

About the Multilingual Ambassador Program (MAP)

Our Multilingual Ambassador Program (MAP) began in fall 2021 as part of VCU Real Grant funding. The program serves rural, suburban and urban multilingual (English Language-ELL) students in middle and high schools with direct tutoring, on-campus events that include student panels and campus tours, and college and career access information in the form of VCU student driven video content. A key goal of the MAP program is to connect college students to K-12 middle and high school students to increase graduation rates and success for both audiences as they move into meaningful careers that maximize each individual’s talents and passions. 

This program combines best practices of college student retention (creating leadership and high-impact community engagement opportunities) and collaborating with school administrators and teachers to support the needs of our regional K-12 public school students and families. A central goal of this program is to drive increased engagement with colleges and careers that serve the needs of our Virginia communities by tapping into the skills and passions of those community members. 

As a quick 23-24 Academic Year MAP summary by the numbers: 

• 9 total number of VCU FWS Multilingual Ambassadors, Spanish and Arabic speakers;
• 7 different VCU majors that our VCU MAP ambassadors represent, ranging from elementary education to graphic design, clinical radiation sciences to exercise science;
• 151 direct in-school MAP student tutoring and mentoring hours at 4 participating schools that include rural, suburban and urban middle and high schools across 3 Region 1 School Divisions offered at no cost to the partners and build's professional development and community engagement opportunities for our VCU students;
• 5 Multilingual Days at VCU (MLDays@VCU) with 224 students and 14 school chaperones. During MLDays@VCU, VCU academic and student success partners and our VCU MAP ambassadors respond to the specific college and career questions of K-12 students. 

This 2024-2025 academic year we have added two new division partners, one fully virtual to pilot college and career specific mentoring and adding additional student-to-student mentoring connections across Virginia. We have 11 current VCU Federal Work Study (FWS) MAP ambassadors who are in 6 individual schools for 42 hours collectively each week. This informative flier combines various VCU and community resources for our partner districts.

In February 2025, Max Walpole, a VCU Commonwealth Times writer, featured the MAP program in an in-depth article entitled: Ambassador Program Empowers Students.

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