The University of Maryland Visitor Center, located in Turner Hall on campus, is the first stop for UMD visitors to receive campus maps, parking permits/information, and to sign up for campus tours. According to their website, the Visitor Center welcomes over 40,000 guests every year, and provides them with necessary and useful information to make their visit to the University of Maryland enjoyable. The employees at the Visitor Center make it their job to guide visitors and give them information about the campus, whether it is answering questions or leading them in the right direction to find a certain building on campus. Besides being personably available, the Visitor Center uses mass media to help promote the university and to assist visitors when they arrive. Here, one worker, Mallory McDonald, explains further:
As McDonald states, the Visitor Center uses a website, magazine, and video to provide guests and prospective students information about the school. The website allows you to sign up for private tours and campus visits. Groups of ten or more people can sign up for a tour through the Visitor Center, and the appointment should be made at least two weeks in advance. On the website, you can also find campus maps and parking information, as well as suggestions for where to stay off campus if you are visiting from out of town. Directions to the school from Baltimore, Annapolis, and Washington D.C. are available on the website for conveniently locating UMD.The Visitor Center also hands out magazines to prospective students that give information on the university, and offers a video for guests to watch before their tour, in order to learn some background information on the University of Maryland.
Could the Visitor Center Use Even More Media?
When asked this question, another employee at the Visitor Center said yes:
While the university itself has Facebook and Twitter pages, it may be helpful for the Visitor Center to have its own social network sites. That way more information about visiting and touring the school can be sent out to the public. Going through UMD's main website may be too complicated for people to access the information that can be found on the Visitor Center webpage. Social networking sites for the Visitor Center could provide easier access to the website for the public. Another improvement that could be made to the Visitor Center's media usage is a wider distribution to the informational magazines that they hand out. More magazines could be printed and given to high schools so that college-bound students who are searching for the perfect school can have easier access to information on visiting the University of Maryland.
Not all tours of the school are set up through the Visitor Center. Many prospective students sign up for tours that are given by Images, a student organization at UMD that gives free tours to students and their families. When I was applying to colleges, this is how I visited UMD. A lot of the tours that can be seen around campus during the fall and spring are those given by Images, not by the Visitor Center. While some prospective students do schedule visits to the school through the Visitor Center, it seems that more sign up with Images.
It may seem a little confusing that most tours of the University of Maryland are not given by the Visitor Center, but there are so many tours to be given each year that the Visitor Center could not possibly handle them all by themselves. Students and parents can sign up for tours through Images on UMD's website here. Both Images and the Visitor Center are great ways to tour and learn more about UMD, whether you are a prospective student, alumni, or a group on a field trip from school.
