Be an Exchange Ambassador!
Join the UvA student exchange community and register here to become an ambassador!
Every year, hundreds of international exchange students are welcomed to study at the UvA, and just as many UvA students leave to study at foreign universities. To raise students’ awareness of this opportunity and promote the various exchange destinations, you are given a platform to share your study abroad experience and you are trained to find creative and innovative ways to support prospective students preparing for their own exchange experience.
We not only trust the honest perspective of exchange students, we also know that peer advisers play a key role in reassuring future exchange students about what it is like to go abroad.
The UvA Exchange Ambassador programme is a team based, extracurricular experience promoting equity in mobility, celebrating cultural diversity and inspiring students to engage with their community. Commencing international exchange students will be teamed with exchange returnees running a list of challenging but fun projects: advising prospective students, organising events for staff and students, managing the official social media channels, creating international magazines and setting up competitions.
You will meet your fellow ambassadors during weekly sessions on Monday evening (except during and the week before exam week), spending a total of 25 hours of work on your team projects.
As an ambassador, you will be trained to navigate and adapt to cultural differences, apply different strategies to capitalise the creativity and innovation that comes with multicultural teamwork and develop your intercultural competence; useful skills for everyone who foresees a future career where you will be working with a diverse group of people.
The programme will focus on enhancing your self-efficacy in interacting with students from different cultures with an emphasis on communication, equity-mindedness and inclusion. At the end of the programme, you will receive a certificate and a LinkedIn recommendation.
In 2015, the Exchange Ambassador Programme won the prestigious Orange Carpet Award for the sector Higher Education. The award was granted to highlight outstanding initiatives that promote the international character of Dutch higher education.
In 2017, one of the Ambassador teams signed up for the yearly Global Ingenuity Challenge, organised by the Universitas 21 network with the theme ‘Promoting Cultural Inclusiveness in Society. The ambassador team competing on behalf of the University of Amsterdam (UvA) was awarded a joint winner of the 2017 Challenge for its entry called ‘UNIFY’.
Places are limited and you can register your interest here.
For questions about the Ambassadors programme, please email global@uva.nl.