MTSU True Blue tour stops in Jackson

It was all Raider Blue at the Jackson Country Club on Thursday night when Middle Tennessee State University set up shop for its True Blue Admissions Tour.

Held each year in September and October, the tour makes stops in six cities across Tennessee - Johnson City, Knoxville, Chattanooga, Nashville, Memphis and Jackson.

Going on its 13th year, the tour was created to give MTSU President Sidney A. McPhee and the deans of the university’s eight academic colleges a chance to personally answer questions from prospective students, transfer students and their parents.

Debra Sells, MTSU’s vice president for student affairs & vice provost for enrollment and academic services, said that the tour’s goal is to bring MTSU into the backyards of prospective students.

“We try to bring the very best of our campus to present,” she said. “So tonight we had the deans of every one of our academic colleges to talk about their respective fields. The tour gives us a chance to connect with students who are still wide open and shopping for a school to attend, and this gives them a chance to come and talk to us. We find that many of them decide to follow up with a visit to our campus.”

Punctuating the True Blue Tour at the country club was the presence of a new, $2 million dollar HD mobile production truck. The truck is used to teach live-event TV production techniques to students through classes and hands-on experience while broadcasting live events, such as MTSU Blue Raider football games for ESPN3 or concerts by the Nashville Symphony Orchestra.

Located in the geographic center of Tennessee, MTSU competes each year with the University of Tennessee Knoxville for the claim to highest enrollment in the state.

“We go back and forth,” Sells said. “We’ve been ahead of them, and they just stole it back this year by a total of 20 or so students, so it’s still very close.”