First stop: Davies, to brag about the coffee you can get in The Cabin and the money you can save by renting your textbooks. Then it’s out the door to Schneider, past the new education building, and over to Hibbard. Then it’s past the footbridge, and up the hill to see the dorms and hear about McPhee before descending the backstairs to return to Schofield.

That’s the route junior Jake Hagglund likes to take his tour groups on when he guides them around to show off campus.

Hagglund is just one of about sixty student ambassadors at UW-Eau Claire that wear the blue-and-gold-striped rugby shirts as they lead a gaggle of prospective students around upper and lower campus.

Senior Carly Cody said she always knew she wanted to be among those students.

“When I first saw tour guides going around campus I thought that would be so fun, I would love to be one of those people,” Cody said. “Especially because I love Eau Claire so much I think I just get really excited when talking about it. I wanted to be one of those people who showcased our campus and shared what experiences I had when I came to this university.”

To Assistant Director of the Admissions Office Heather Kretz, student ambassadors like Cody and Hagglund are “absolutely vital.”

“An admissions counselor can say ‘we’re a beautiful campus and there’s snow on the ground’ but if a tour guide says ‘there’s no snow on the ground’ they’ll believe the tour guide any day,” Kretz said. “That’s what really gives credibility to this campus: the student voice that comes through the tour guides. The most important part is giving the voice to who our campus is: our students.”

The student ambassadors are volunteers who represent a cross section of our student body. Kretz said the admissions office aims to find students from different major as well as racial and ethnic backgrounds when selecting ambassadors, but the most crucial quality is passion.

“The most important thing is are they passionate about campus and can they convey that?” Kretz said.

This quality of sharing one’s passion of the Eau Claire campus is something that junior comprehensive general geology major Samantha Taylor stresses in her tours.

“Making them love the university as much as you do is the best part. Once my (college) career here started I started really enjoying the university and I wanted to tell others why,” Taylor said.

Hagglund shows off his Blugold spirit to tour groups by including the fact that he’s a cheerleader is his introduction saying “I do backflips and throw girls twenty feet in the air, what could be better?”

To keep his credibility Hagglund wraps up his tours with a backflip during the warmer months when the ground isn’t icy.

In order to keep the trek around campus interesting for themselves as well as prospective student and nervous mothers, tour guides have jokes and facts they rattle off.

“Believe it or not, we actually have a joke list that ambassadors add to when they think of new jokes for tours,” Kretz said.

She said one of the classics is when groups are standing on the footbridge the tour guides point out that we’re one of the top 10 coldest places in the nation according to David Letterman.

“Which we did research and (it) is actually true,” Kretz said.

Taylor and Hagglund both always answer the question of ‘how do you handle snow removal on the back stairs?’ with the tall tale that freshmen are responsible for rising early and shoveling the stairs on their assigned week.

Hagglund said he usually gets laughs from the group when they reach the top of the hill and he says, “and that’s why we have the best legs in Wisconsin.”

Cody said her go-to fact about the hill is telling groups that UW-Madison did a study showing that in the UW System, Eau Claire students are least likely to gain the infamous freshman 15.

While spring arrives in Eau Claire, so do more and more tour groups filled with potential future Blugolds, which for Cody is the best part of the gig.

“My favorite part is when I have students and families who are just so excited to be there and by the end of the tour they’ll come up and say to me ‘Eau Claire is my number one at this point,’” Cody said. “And that’s just the best feeling in the world.”