Tech Personalizing Campus Tours For Prospective Students

Tennessee Tech is looking to personalize prospective student visits with its Trailblazers program.

Campus Visits and Events Coordinator Brandi Kriebel said individual families will get a chance to tour the campus with one student. Kriebel said she tells Trailblazers they are bridging the gap between new and transfer students.

“When you’re out there you talk like them, you look like them, you get the chance to really relate,” Kriebel said. “When they talk to professional staff, they maybe don’t relate as much because we look older. We don’t know what’s new and hip and cool but you do as a tour guide.”

Kriebel said that tour guides are being matched with students based on their major or interest. However, Kriebel said they want to expand matchmaking to connect on more personal interests.

She said that tours will begin in August and signups are available on the university’s website.

“Our Trailblazers walk out and they immediately have something in common with that prospective student,” Kriebel said. “They can really relate to them and try to build a friendship with them right off the bat. So we knew that if we wanted to set ourselves apart in the state with all the other universities, that doing this program was the way to do it.”

Kriebel said the program is an extension of President Phil Oldham’s belief that the university’s best advocates are the students on campus. She said the way to get signed up for one of these tours is by visiting tntech.edu/visit.