New College-Specific Tours
An idea in the making since the pandemic has come to fruition for the Office of Admissions and MSU Tours. MSU’s first college-specific tours took place in March, featuring the College of Communication, Arts and Sciences, the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources, the College of Natural Science, and the College of Social Science.
Development of the new tours involved partnering with colleges on campus, weeks of strategic route planning, drawing, practicing and finalization, all designed around the goal of giving prospective MSU students a more comprehensive view of life at Michigan State.
“In collaboration with four academic colleges and the Office of Admissions, MSU Tours is excited to provide engaging visits for prospective Spartans highlighting their chosen academic specialty and the MSU student experience,” Outreach Graduate Assistant Abbey Eggleton says.
The Beginning
Interim Executive Director of Undergraduate Admissions Alexander Landen had the idea to offer college-specific tours. It has been a common request from prospective students, and he cites campus collaboration as the key to making this program a reality.
“Creating a visit program at an institution as large as MSU takes so much collaboration,” Landen says. “Once you have the entire team on board, coordination becomes critical. Being at the center of that coordination in Admissions, we tried to focus on the big picture so our partners can focus on their areas of expertise.”
The Office of Admissions and MSU Tours (managed by Residence Education and Housing Services) are consistent partners, and this initiative offered even more collaborative opportunities. The pair cooperated with the aforementioned colleges to provide students with a more comprehensive view of MSU specific to the college that piqued their interest.
“Our goal was to showcase the amazing work our colleges do for a highly engaged group of prospective students,” Landen says. “We all see the value in building a stronger connection between prospective students and their college of interest.”
MSU Tours sent the partnering colleges a survey with detailed questions about how they wanted the story of their college told. This included physical locations and highlighted talking points each college wanted to include.
With the information from each college gathered, student supervisors Colby Robbe and Maddison Dick worked on formulating the route for each college’s tour.
Preparation and into Action
While developing routes for new buildings, student tour guides needed to be trained on the new routes and talking points befitting the new tours. A D2L software module to be completed by the student tour guides includes a deployment sheet for each tour with specific, step-by-step information, walkthrough videos of the college-specific buildings and a deployment sheet quiz, according to Eggleton.
After completing the module, students attended an in-person walkthrough to test the routes and talking points.
As for the routes themselves, two were created for each of the four colleges starting out at the ends opposite each other. For regular tours, the talking points, buildings and landmarks shown on tour remain fairly consistent. For these college-specific tours, however, newly featured buildings not typically walked through on tours were included at the request of the colleges, creating challenges in route planning.
“Designing routes is like a puzzle,” Robbe says. “Putting in place how all the pieces fit and the stops we know we want to hit along the way is important.”
Showing a variety of buildings that haven’t been featured before, MSU Tours Manager Amanda Ross points out that new areas such as dining halls in Case and Shaw will be shared with prospective students for the first time on tours.
“These tours have been a great way to show more of what Residence Education and Housing Services offers for prospective students, which we’re hoping is going to help them as they’re making their final decision,” Ross says.
Following a presentation from the Office of Admissions, tour guests will receive a presentation from their college of interest, in which they’ll learn what it’s like to be a student in that college. Finally, they will have 45 minutes with professors and staff members to ask any additional questions.
“Families want an experience that is tailored to their interests,” Landen says. “This is our first attempt to create that experience. We’ll reiterate it until we have something that works for the students and us.”
Early Successes
The first of these tours has taken place with early positive feedback. Chloe Pottenger gave the first two tours of the College of Natural Science and the College of Communications Arts and Science, respectively. She says the assigned training modules did a good job of preparing guides for the tours.
“Overall, I do like the tour routes,” Pottenger. “They went smoothly and there was very little confusion about the routes that were made.”
Pottenger says parents and students relayed their positive experience after the conclusion of the tour. Admitted students and their support systems can sign up for the college-specific tours at admissions.msu.edu/visit and clicking on admitted student visits where they’ll login with their MSU credentials.
“The hope is that by the end of it, they feel like they’ve had a really solid connection with the college and they have a better idea of what their life would be like here at Michigan State,” Ross says.
This monumental program is a great accomplishment for REHS and the Office of Admissions. With months of work from Landen, Ross, student supervisors and the entire MSU Tours team, the college-specific tours are off and running.
“Through the development of this program, I’ve enjoyed seeing the tour guides’ excitement to connect with students in related majors,” Eggleton says. “The attention to detail that our MSU Tours student supervisors exercised in creating routes and college-specific talking points was incredible and ensured our tour guides feel comfortable providing outstanding Spartan experiences.”
Author: Zachary Phelps