During an average day at Iona College, some 4,000 students can be found going to class, meeting up with friends or attending an extra-curricular activity. If you are walking through campus anytime between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m., chances are you might see a student wearing a maroon polo or windbreaker being followed by a pack of parents and teenagers.

The Iona College Gael Guides is a group of hired students who lead campus tours for people interested in attending Iona. The organization is made up of about 50 students—five of which serve on its executive board—as well as Raymond Garo, the associate director of undergraduate admissions and Gael Guide manager.

Each semester, the Gael Guides program hires new students to lead tours. Students as early as first semester of freshman year are able to become Gael Guides, according to Garo. Freshman Riana Khan is one of the students who is interested in joining the program this semester.

“I want to become a Gael Guide because I want to have the same influence on juniors and seniors looking into Iona that my Gael Guide had on me,” Khan said.

In order to be hired as a Gael Guide, students must follow an extensive process that lasts about six to eight weeks, according to Garo. They have to attend a weekly meeting for about six weeks, shadow three tours, help give tours during Open House or Accepted Students Day and provide a mock tour to one of the executive board members. After their mock tour, the prospective tour guides are interviewed by the executive board members, who then decide which students can officially become Gael Guides.

“The reason why [the process] is so extensive is because we want to make sure that the students we are hiring are students that are going to do a great job of promoting the school and showing families what Iona is all about,” Garo said.

Once they are hired Gael Guides have several main duties, according to Emma Maloney, a senior at Iona and the president of Gael Guides. Guides have to give tours during big events like Accepted Students Day, participate in the Spend-a-Day program—in which a prospective student shadows a current student’s schedule for a day—and give regularly scheduled tours throughout the week.

As for the future, Garo says that the Gael Guides program is focusing more on the organization’s mentoring program, in which a current Gael Guide mentors a student interested in becoming one. The organization is also adjusting its usual tour route to not only work around the construction of the new LaPenta School of Business, but to make it more wheelchair accessible. Maloney believes these changes are necessary for the future of the program.

“We can’t really stay stuck in the past,” Maloney said. “It’s like with anything—it’s not going to stay stagnant the entire time. You’ve got to make the updates if it is going to work.”