Asbury is hosting around 60 families on campus for the first winter preview since 2018. Guests arrived last night for meetings and orientation before they get to “choose their journeys” today.
“We want to make a very customized visit for students and parents, and they get to choose what they want to do on campus,” the coordinator for campus visits and events Camille Sigrist said. “The goal is for them to experience a day in the life at Asbury so they can choose from attending classes and going to chapel.”
Each year, Asbury hosts previews like this for prospective students and their families, but this year, the department has split up the typically larger Fall Preview and the mid-sized Spring Preview into three events.
Sigrist said this was a way to distribute the families throughout the school year and hopefully give people more options to choose from.
While the previews may usher larger crowds onto campus, the admissions department does much more work behind the scenes daily to bring prospective students to Asbury.
“We’re always implementing new ideas, trying to bring new stuff for our students to get involved in,” Sigrist said.
One of the new technologies that Asbury has launched is an app for potential Asbury students called Zeemee.
“Zeemee is Discord meets Instagram,” Sigrist said. “We wanted to meet students where they’re at, and we know that many generational Gen Z students are on social media. It’s a great way for our current students to connect with prospective students and a safe environment for both parties.”
The app was launched early last February, and members of the Beloved class could connect before even starting the school year.
However, the work of admissions extends even beyond events and apps.
Tommy Johnson, a recent Asbury graduate, decided to stay on post-graduation as the undergraduate admissions counselor for southeastern states after working in admissions as an ambassador for two years.
“I kind of realized during my time at Asbury that I wanted whatever my job was, I wanted to help people reach their goals,” Johnson said.
As an admissions counselor, Johnson and his team travel to various high schools and college fairs, as well as just communicating with prospective students.
“It’s really like taking those students we’ve met and helping them through the process, helping them visit the campus, meeting with them, telling them everything we know about Asbury and then getting them to apply,” Johnson said.
Sigrist’s path to Asbury was very different. After graduating from Florida State University in 2020, she and her husband moved to Lexington for him to attend graduate school at UK. Always knowing she wanted to work in higher education, Sigrist worked to find a university where she could apply for her public relations degree.
“I was applying to a bunch of different jobs in Lexington, also outside of Lexington and saw the Asbury had several open and this is the one that worked out,” Sigrist said. After initially working as the visit specialist, “this past summer I was promoted to the visit coordinator role, which I’m in now and absolutely love. It’s so wonderful.”
As the coordinator for campus visits and events, Sigrist is in charge of the visit team, the student ambassador team and the visit specialist who works on our personalized day-to-day visits.
“What I do specifically on my day-to-day is I plan all of our admissions-specific events throughout the year, so all of our preview days,” Sigrist said.
Those events include the scholarship competition, more area-specific events like the equine visit event, the media comm. theater visit event and more.
This year, admissions are dealing with a post-outpouring Asbury, which has affected admissions and their applications in some small ways.
Sigrist and Johnson said that the 2023 class was less affected in numbers by the Outpouring because, by February, many students already had an idea where they would attend school.
“For 2023 Fall students, I personally think the outpouring had a very solidifying effect in the minds of the students who are here who were already admitted to Asbury or applied,” Sigrist said.
However, the impact could be seen with the class of 2024.
“Now we’re seeing the effect of the exposure is very good during that time, and we are actually getting a lot more applications in general, whereas in the previous year, we’re mostly getting solidified decisions,” Sigrist said.
One thing admissions has noticed is that prospective students who attended the Outpouring have already been exposed to Asbury, so if they visit again, they get a second impression.
“In terms of personalized visits, there are a lot of students who are visiting Asbury for the second or third time, but in our system, you know, it’s the first time for us,” Sigrist said.
Winter Preview marks the last admissions event of the semester. In the spring, the department will start back up with the annual scholarship competition on Jan. 18 and 19.