As universities increasingly implement artificial intelligence, two Pitt students are working to increase engagement with Anthropic\u2019s Claude across campus.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As part of Anthropic<\/a>\u2019s Claude for Education<\/a> initiative, the company established an ambassadorship program<\/a> to \u201cempower\u201d its student community. Anthropic chose its first cohort of ambassadors at a few universities in April 2025 and has since expanded the program<\/a> to many others in its second cohort.<\/p>\n Shreyash Ranjan, a junior computer science major, joined the program for the fall 2025 semester in its second cohort, becoming one of the two first Claude ambassadors at Pitt. He said the program is part of Anthropic\u2019s initiative to popularize Claude among students.<\/p>\n \u201c[Anthropic\u2019s] mission is pretty simple,\u201d Ranjan said. \u201cIt\u2019s just to promote the use of Claude and all the things it can do for you.\u201d<\/p>\n Eden Brunner, a senior computer science and mechanical engineering major, joined the team for the fall semester alongside Ranjan. Brunner said Anthropic hires two ambassadors<\/a> per campus \u2014 one Claude Builder Ambassador and one Claude Campus Ambassador. Builder Ambassadors are responsible for technical duties, such as hosting workshops and organizing hackathons<\/a> on campus, while Campus Ambassadors focus on non-technical outreach.\u00a0<\/p>\n Brunner said she is the Builder Ambassador at Pitt, but she and Ranjan split all responsibilities including hosting workshops and tabling. According to Brunner, some of the workshops this semester will include a chance for students to meet virtually with members of Anthropic\u2019s staff.<\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019ll be opening the floor from Anthropic to students, virtually, in all the different campuses,\u201d Brunner said. \u201cIt\u2019ll probably be like a Q&A where you ask questions in the chat \u2014 just because there would be so many people \u2014 but it\u2019s still really cool that you get an opportunity to talk to one of the leading AI companies right now.\u201d<\/p>\n Last semester, Brunner said she and Ranjan were able to elicit student interest by offering access to Claude Pro<\/a>, which allows for greater amounts of usage, grants access to newer features and includes Claude Code<\/a>. Now that Pitt students have access to Claude for Education through the University\u2019s partnership<\/a> with Anthropic, Brunner said they are focused on encouraging students to utilize it.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re just trying to explain to students who might not be very familiar how to utilize that opportunity because those plans usually cost $20 a month<\/a> for the lowest plan,\u201d Brunner said.<\/p>\n According to Ranjan, his and Brunner\u2019s duties include organizing a Claude Builder Club<\/a> for Pitt students to learn about Claude and participate in events. Ranjan said the club is similar to initiatives of other technology companies.<\/p>\n \u201cA lot of companies have done this. I feel like Google actually did this back when they were a lot younger<\/a>,\u201d Ranjan said. \u201cMaybe like 10 years ago, I remember seeing there [were] Google ambassadors<\/a> that started all these clubs.\u201d<\/p>\n Ranjan said he and Brunner have mainly promoted the club to computer science students because many are already familiar with and have used Claude to code. However, Ranjan said they have trouble enticing other students to join the club.<\/p>\n \u201cWe need to do a little bit of a better job promoting [Claude] outside of [computer science students],\u201d Ranjan said. \u201cIt is really hard because why would someone who\u2019s not technical want to do a hackathon?\u201d<\/p>\n Amir Valizadeh, a first-year computer science major, said he joined the Claude Builder Club when it first started last semester to get \u201cmore involved in Claude.\u201d Through the club, Valizadeh participates in workshops and hackathons.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cEarly on during the meetings, a lot of the purpose was about, \u2018Why is Claude so good, and what can you make out of Claude?\u2019\u201d Valizadeh said. \u201cTowards the second half, it was more hands-on utilization of Claude and testing it, experimenting with it.\u201d<\/p>\n According to Valizadeh, experience with AI ranges among members of the club. However, he said he feels there is greater focus on introducing Claude to those who are less familiar with AI than himself.<\/p>\n \u201cFor the most part, I\u2019d say [the focus is] toward the beginner level and people who don\u2019t really understand what Claude [is] or how powerful AI really is nowadays,\u201d Valizadeh said.\u00a0<\/p>\n Valizadeh said he plans to apply to become a Claude ambassador for the upcoming fall semester to fill what he believes to be a \u201cgap\u201d in the program that leaves Claude\u2019s capabilities underexplored.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I were to be an ambassador for Claude at Pitt, I\u2019d definitely put my attention and focus toward the more technical side and more of the engineering side because there is a huge rabbit hole within the Claude ecosystem and functionality,\u201d Valizadeh said. \u201cIf you don\u2019t spend a lot of time researching and delving deep into [it], you\u2019ll never get to it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As universities increasingly implement artificial intelligence, two Pitt students are working to increase engagement with Anthropic\u2019s Claude across…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":122064,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[278,57405,57406,73,75,74],"class_list":["post-122063","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-pittsburgh","tag-ai","tag-anthropic","tag-claude","tag-pittsburgh","tag-pittsburgh-headlines","tag-pittsburgh-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122063","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=122063"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/122063\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/122064"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=122063"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=122063"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=122063"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}