“The whole purpose of education is to turn mirrors into windows.” – Sydney J. Harris

One of the most difficult decisions a high schooler will have to make is what to do after graduation. With the barrage of information on all the different colleges and programs and opportunities available, sorting through the noise to map their futures is stressful. On the flip side, for universities, recruiting is an ever-growing escapade trying to reach as many prospective students as possible in hopes that the right ones manage to find you. However, once a connection is made, simply providing information is not always sufficient. As the old writing adage goes, “Show, don’t tell.”

The School of Theatre & Dance at Texas Tech has a solution: What if prospective students could experience what it was like to spend a day as part of the program?

This is the approach that Head of Dance and Associate Director of Students Kyla Olson took. She had noticed an issue with recruiting for the dance program: “Not a lot of people realize that we have dance at Texas Tech… We had people come and audition, and they’d say, ‘Oh yeah, we called admissions, and they didn’t even know we had a dance program’.”

Olson formulated a plan to do outreach with local high schools, with an initial virtual college day in 2021. The success of this led to the first in-person event, with interested dancers spending a day in technique classes and interacting with dance faculty and students. The decision was then made to expand to include the theatre program, to emphasize the connections inherent in performance and to reflect the standard that we are all part of the same school in the university.

The School of Theatre & Dance holds one College Day each semester, the most recent on February 17, 2025. College Day allows prospective students to shadow the life of a college student for a day, and to experience firsthand the students, faculty and programs. In the past, students were divided between the two programs, theatre and dance, but this year the decision was made to “let the reins go.”

Students could mix and match as desired, jumping between the theatre and dance buildings and touring the campus in between. A variety of classes were available to audit, including performance, design, technique, and many others. Even the independent lunch was part of the immersive experience, with attendees expected to find both a time and place for food that fit into their schedule, just as a regular student would be doing every day.

The positive impact on enrollment is noticeable. “We haven’t been doing it long enough to get real data,” Olson says, “but I have seen a connection.”

Being able to see TTU’s state-of-the-art spaces and meet the faculty and students has led to a “definite uptick” in applications. “Our students are the best recruiters we have,” she emphasizes; “they are the ones who can truly attest to the experience of being in the programs.”

There has also been an overwhelmingly positive response from College Day attendees, with Olson having received “a lot of follow up and positive feedback” from both parents and prospective students.

Wheels are already turning on plans for future College Days to expand. Specifically, the School wants to create a recruitment mailing list and find more opportunities to allow attendees to engage with both theatre and dance simultaneously. As Olson explains, we want students to “get a clear sense that we are the School of Theatre and Dance, that we are one school, even though we’re in separate buildings.”

She describes “the dream” as being able to have many faculty and student crossovers between the Maedgen and the CMS throughout the day, with a defined unifying moment to tie the experience together.

“We’ll get there one day,” she adds with a laugh. “We have way more in common than we think. We’re all storytelling in different art forms, and I want prospective students to see that.”