Recruiting for the Academic Team

By Debbie Diddle

Time for me to focus on another of the “Alumni Three Rs” (remember “Reconnect, Reinvest, and Recruit”)? This issue I want to highlight recruiting, not for any athletic team, but for our academic teams at each campus.

Two of President John Petersen’s strategic plan objectives are “student access” and “student success.” Alumni staff and various alumni and student leaders have been busy promoting UT as a great value and a top-notch educational opportunity. They have been informing prospective students and their parents of available scholarships, honors programs, international travel and study opportunities, and enrichment activities on and off campus. Alumni leaders in Chattanooga, Memphis, Nashville, Kingsport, and Knoxville have hosted parties (known as Volunteer Alumni Network, or VAN, parties) for prospective students and parents, often in their homes.

What can you as alumni do to help recruit and retain the best students at each of our campuses? Here are some ideas.

• Contact the UTNAA office or one of the campus offices and offer to host a student recruiting party. Feedback from students and parents indicates that these informal meetings, often in the comfort of an alumnus’s home, are influential in adding a special personal contact to what is sometimes perceived as a large, impersonal university. Current UT students are invited to these parties too, so high-school students can ask how it really is at UT.

Work with admissions on any of our campuses to be trained to represent UT at college fairs at high schools in your area.
Consider funding a scholarship. For a minimum investment of $25,000 (which may be given over several years), you can establish a scholarship in honor or memory of someone and even specify what type of student you want to receive it. Alumni chapters could fund and sponsor such scholarships and stipulate that they go to a student within their chapter area. Likewise, a business or two to four friends could fund, name, and sponsor a scholarship.
Consider scholarships for upperclassmen. There are many one- or two-year scholarships available for entering students, but third-, fourth-, and fifth-year students often come up short of funds when those scholarships expire.
Encourage your alumni chapter to mentor current UT students from your area at any of our campuses, especially scholarship recipients. Not only do we want to provide better access through scholarships, we want to help ensure student success and graduation.
And last, think creatively for ways to recruit good students. The future of our state’s workforce and its economy depends on educating more of our students to successfully compete in today’s global economic environment.

Related categories: Alumni Association, Recruiting