The first cohort of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Student Ambassadors aims to make the Walsh School of Foreign Service (SFS) a more equitable space through advocacy and student recruitment. 

The cohort, which was created in the fall semester and is creating new initiatives this semester, works in collaboration with SFS Vice Dean for DEI Scott Taylor to recruit prospective students from diverse backgrounds, specifically focusing on applicants of color and low-income applicants. The ambassadors also serve as mentors for first-year students from underrepresented backgrounds currently enrolled in the SFS. 

Adrian Ali-Caccamo (SFS ’24), sophomore representative on the SFS Academic Council and a student ambassador from St. Paul, Minn. said applying to Georgetown University is often inaccessible to minority students.  

“When I came to Georgetown, nobody at my high school really knew about Georgetown, nobody at my high school had come to Georgetown,” Ali-Caccamo said in an interview with The Hoya.  “I think that it’s part of a deeper, systemic problem about who has the ability and access to come to an institution like Georgetown.”

Aryaman Sharma (SFS ’24) applied to be a student ambassador last semester to allow students to voice their concerns and feel included in the SFS community. 

“As an Asian American, I do think that it’s kind of my role, I have the power to do these things. When an opportunity like this comes up, I feel obligated to represent my community and my experiences in the past because I know many of them are not just unique to me,” Sharma said. 

Clare Mullholand (SFS ‘24), a student ambassador, said Georgetown restricts the diversity of its undergraduate students through dated admissions practices, such as not accepting the Common Application, an undergraduate college application that more than 900 colleges and universities accept. 

“I’m hoping that Georgetown sits back and realizes that whatever superiority complex we have because we’re Georgetown isn’t worth it anymore,” Mullholand said in an interview with The Hoya. “Every other prestigious institution on the east coast is using the Common App, and it has not affected their reputation.”

Currently, the student ambassadors engage with underrepresented students by calling admitted applicants and delivering information sessions about Georgetown admissions to schools with large minority communities that Georgetown does not usually visit.

Dean Taylor said that the outreach work of the student ambassadors is crucial for increasing all types of diversity in the SFS.

“We want to improve the school, we want to prepare students, whatever their backgrounds, to go forth into the world and exist in a diverse world and diverse spaces and be leaders and be successful, and be able to lead in those spaces and interact with people different from themselves,” Taylor said. 

One of the main goals of the student ambassadors is to ensure that every student who wants to apply to the SFS receives guidance, Sharma said. 

“We have this initiative in trying to make the SFS more accessible to various parts of the U.S.,” Sharma said. “In underrepresented areas, where some schools don’t really receive information about Georgetown, we’ve reached out to them to host Zoom webinars, so we can make it more accessible, and so they can learn more about what Georgetown has to offer them.” 

This year, Mulholland said that student ambassadors partnered with the Georgetown Admissions Ambassadors Program (GAAP) to create immersive programming for newly accepted minority students. 

“We are assembling a marketing team and an operations team to do events for admitted students, really making the ambassador role about planning, executing and engaging with the people that come to those events,” Mulholland said.

In addition to advocating for changes to the admissions process at Georgetown, the DEI ambassador program is also working to develop a curriculum that includes a broader variety of perspectives. Student ambassadors will lead tours around campus that focus on Georgetown’s history with slavery including the descendants of the GU272, the 314 enslaved people sold by the Maryland Province of the Society of Jesus in 1838 to financially sustain the school. 

Increasing diversity at the SFS will not only benefit minority students, but the institution as a whole, Ali-Caccamo said. 

“Who are the students who could really do well here and have never had the opportunity, have never heard about the Georgetown name, have never had somebody reach out to them and give them the necessary information? How do we envelop those students and give them the opportunity to be here, too?” Ali-Caccamo said. “I think we will all learn better and be better citizens of the world if our experience and our exposure more broadly reflects the world as it is.”