Tennessee State University Spring Preview Day 2018 to Attract Record Participation

NASHVILLE, Tenn. (TSU News Service) - A record number of participants are expected to attend Spring Preview Day 2018 at Tennessee State University on April 14, organizers say.

The Office of Enrollment Management and Student Success says more than 1,200 high school seniors and juniors from across the nation will attend the one-day event in the Floyd-Payne Campus Center. That’s up from the previous record 800 who attended last year’s Spring Preview Day.

Hundreds of high school seniors and juniors and their parents tour academic departments and other sites during Spring Preview Day 2017. (Photo by Emmanuel Freeman, TSU Media Relations)

The visiting students and their parents and relatives – from about 15 states including, California, Texas, Michigan, Illinois and Wisconsin - will have the opportunity to see the campus during springtime, as well as acquaint them with the university’s offerings and admission processes.

Activities for the visitors, according to organizers, will also include meetings with academic departments, TSU student organizations, campus tours, entertainment by the world-renowned Aristocrat of Bands, and the Big Blue Tiger Spring Blue & White Football Game in Hale Stadium.

“Spring Preview Day is going to be an exciting day of information and inspiration here at TSU,” says Terrence Izzard, associate vice president for Enrollment Management and Student Success.

“As a university, it is important to us that millennial scholars get to see firsthand what we offer here at TSU. We are concerned about their preparation to be global scholars and so we feel like bringing them to campus, opening the doors to our classrooms, to our student life, our academic programs will give them firsthand information about the experience.”

Spring Preview, a major recruitment effort by the university, started several years ago as a “junior preview day,” to give juniors a jumpstart on recruitment, but it has “slowly turned into a day for seniors as well to complete their admission requirement,” says Everett Jolly, TSU’s director of recruitment.

Spring preview is one of several campaigns aimed to recruit the best and brightest, say TSU officials. Last year, those campaigns led to the recruitment of the largest incoming freshman class in school history (1,500 first-year students), a 17 percent increase over the previous year’s freshman enrollment. The “Class of 2021” came in as one of the most academically qualified classes in the school’s history, with an average 3.07 GPA.

Spring Preview Day 2018 comes on the heels of “Experience TSU,” yet another innovative recruitment campaign that just ended in four major markets – Atlanta, Birmingham, Memphis and Nashville - that aims to meet students where they are.

TSU President Glenda Glover led the campaign to meet potential students face-to-face to ensure their commitment to attend TSU.

These recruitment efforts follow sweeping changes Glover announced in 2016 that raised admission standards, as the university moved to increase retention and graduation rates. Minimum requirements for incoming freshmen went up from a 2.25 GPA to 2.5, while the ACT score remained at 19.

Izzard says “Experience TSU” was a way of “personally congratulating these students for applying and being accepted” to TSU.

“We wanted to personally welcome them to the TSU family and let them know of all the wonderful opportunities to grow and learn while here at Tennessee State University,” says Izzard.

Spring Preview Day will kick off at 9 a.m. in Kean Hall. For more information, go to https://bit.ly/2GWLXJ0.