Recruitment
“We are doing everything in our power to attract the best and brightest students to become part of the True Blue family.”
One of our most helpful barometers for the health of the fall 2023 incoming class is the “count of admits” on Dec. 1, 2022. This date marks the application deadline to be considered for our guaranteed freshman academic scholarships. Overall, applications for both transfer students and first-time freshmen were up 17.5%. Admitted student numbers were up 6.2% for new freshmen and up 30.4% for transfer students. This is an outstanding data point in light of the significant losses our Tennessee community colleges have suffered in the past several years.
The challenge becomes converting those applicants and admits to enrolled students. Universities all over the country are experiencing this challenge as students both apply to more institutions and have the additional options of entering a booming workforce or taking a gap year to work, travel, or learn on their own. This means we must continue to recruit the students we’ve admitted through orientation and even up to the day classes start.
Our annual True Blue Tour began in August with the Rutherford County event on our own campus, the first of 14 stops across Tennessee, Alabama, Kentucky, and Georgia.
In the fall, we hosted two extended tour opportunities—our True Blue Preview events—where we invited students and their families to take a closer look at campus and meet some
of our faculty and college advising staff. Through these events and hundreds of school visits, college fairs, and our campus tour program, we are doing everything in our power to attract the best and brightest students to become part of the True Blue family.
In an effort to stay competitive with other Tennessee institutions as we work to attract the highest-achieving new students, MTSU made substantial changes to our guaranteed freshman scholarships. I announced a new, top-tier scholarship: the designation of Centennial Scholar, which provides $32,000 over four years ($8,000 per year) to students scoring 34–36 on the ACT and a 3.5 high school GPA. A review of declining national and statewide average ACT scores, coupled with conversations with our partner guidance counselors in high schools statewide, also suggested that it was time to increase and expand our guaranteed scholarship at the beginning end of the array. To that end, we expanded the True Blue Scholarship to include applicants with ACT scores of 22–24 and increased the value of the award to $3,500 per year.
As a result of these changes—and the considerable effort of our undergraduate recruitment team—scholarship offers to eligible students are up more than 23% over the same period last year.
JANUARY
Legendary Loss
Dean Hayes, 84, MTSU’s track coach of 57 years, died January 7. Hayes guided the men's and women's programs to 29 Ohio Valley Conference titles, 19 Sun Belt championships, and 20 NCAA Top 25 finishes. Hayes received four Conference USA Coach of the Year accolades, 15 Sun Belt Coach of the Year awards, and 15 OVC Coach of the Year honors, which included 10 in a row from 1977 to 1986. He was inducted into the Blue Raider Hall of Fame in 1982.
Importantly, Hayes, who first stepped onto the campus in 1965, is credited with integrating MTSU athletics. His first recruit, Jerry Singleton, became the first African American varsity scholarship athlete at MTSU. Others followed as their quietly competitive coach recruited more and more Black athletes. When those athletes arrived on campus, so did their girlfriends, sisters, brothers, and friends. As such, Hayes is also rightly credited with integrating campus. He served as the first advisor for Kappa Alpha Psi, a Greek letter fraternity with predominantly African American membership, when it began a chapter at MTSU.
Hayes also deserves much of the credit for the increased presence of international students at MTSU. Under his guidance, international athletes began arriving from Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya, and other places in the 1970s.
Meeting Students Where They Are
In a three-week stretch beginning in late January, MTSU’s transfer admissions team met with prospective students at nine community colleges across Tennessee.
The annual MTSU Promise Tour reaches out to prospective transfer students—from Knoxville to Jackson and from Dyersburg to Chattanooga—in time for them to meet the annual Feb. 15 deadline for the guaranteed transfer scholarship—$3,000 per year for qualifiers.
MTSU Promise is one of the University’s commitments to making the transfer process as smooth as possible and, in some cases, signing specialagreements with the community colleges to ensure clear pathways. For instance, MTSU and Nashville State Community College have a “True Blue Pathway” agreement.
Future Pioneers
Students participated in the seventh annual HackMT January 28–30 in the Science Building.
HackMT, a “hackathon” and project expo hosted annually by MTSU’s Department of Computer Science, brings software developers and visual designers together with computer science and data science students from regional universities.
Teams try to invent new web platforms, mobile apps, and electronic gadgets during more than 36 intense hours. Their creations in 2022 included a way for people to find nonprofits nationally, a communications tool for college students similar to Slack or Discord, and a method to help match people with different-sized feet with correct shoe sizes through an app.
