Misty Sparrow, an associate director in the admissions office at Eastern Michigan University is an alum who has a strong connection to recruiting and welcoming new students. She started her work as a tour guide for the Admissions Welcome Center when she was a freshman student. Now, as an alum, she is the associate director for Admissions Visits and Events.
As part of her job, Sparrow said, she enjoys sharing how her experiences at Eastern shaped her, and how important the Welcome Center is to the university's mission.
Q: When did you begin working in the center and how did you advance to the position you hold currently?
A: I started working in the admissions office in January of 2011 and was hired as a student tour guide. My freshman year, I worked in the office. Ever since then, I’ve held quite a few different roles. When I was a student, I was a tour guide and then, a major events coordinator. We actually don't have the position anymore, but it's really funny because essentially, I was doing the same thing then that I'm doing now, like planning our events and helping with that process.
I graduated from Eastern in 2014 and that first year, I was hired to be an admissions recruiting intern. I was assigned to an admissions advisor and helped fill their calendar, getting them scheduled doing high school visits, and then the following year in 2015, I was hired as an admissions advisor. The rest is history. I was an advisor and used to recruit in Oakland County, Macomb County and Washtenaw County. Then in 2018, I was promoted to senior admissions advisor and a couple months later, because we had a lot of transition in our office that year, I took over as the interim assistant director of admissions visit programs. After COVID, we restructured even more, and I became the associate director of admissions of visits and events. That position officially started in 2022, and I've been doing that ever since.
Q: When you started in the office as a tour guide, was your plan to continue working there?
A: I never planned this. What’s funny is when I was applying for this job, I thought I was applying to be an orientation assistant! They would help students navigate the first couple weeks on campus. So, I came to my interview thinking I was doing that. I wasn't, but I got hired and it just ended up being a great fit. I had no idea what I wanted to do, I thought I wanted to be a math teacher for a little while. Math got hard, then I had a semester where I was like, I don't know, I'll try everything: social work, nursing, everything. It just so happened that everything aligned. I had some great supervisors when I was a student who wanted me to continue in this field and that's just what happens in this role. I love connecting with students, I love helping students have autonomy to make the decision that's best for them. Obviously, Eastern was a great decision for me, so it's really fun to be able to create a space for students to make the best decision for themselves, too.
Q: What is your day like in the Admissions Welcome Center?
A: It's crazy and it depends on the day, which I think is kind of fun. Although I don't think any two days are the same, I get the awesome pleasure of supervising our student staff, our tour guides and our welcome specialists. On any given day, we are giving campus tours, answering phones, helping out with emails, doing call projects and just doing anything that we can to help the enrollment at EMU. I also plan our larger recruiting events, so Explore Eastern, VIP Day, and some of those big admissions events. Depending on the week, it can be really crazy getting ready for those, or kind of cleaning up from those. Typically, starting my day with setting intentions and making sure we're off to a good start, making our space the most welcoming. From there, connecting with students and families and helping them connect the dots to hopefully choose EMU.
Q: How important do you think the Admissions Welcome Center is to EMU?
A: I may be biased, but I think we're one of the most important offices. Mostly because we are often the first point or first impression for any students who are thinking about Eastern, either they're attending or a family member is attending, we come across all of their applications. We answer any questions to get them to where they need to go. You'd likely be surprised how many times we still keep in touch with those students who have questions. I am constantly answering emails and calls from folks who are already going here. I think that has to do with the culture that we've created in this space, being a welcoming place and knowing that if you don't know where to go for help, a lot of times they'll start here.
In general, with deciding where to go to school and what that process looks like, I think going on campus tours is the best way to determine that, because you really get to see yourself on the campus and see if it's a good fit. Is it too big or too small? Is it what you like? Do you need a little bit more? I think that is such an important piece of the big puzzle for enrollment. So, I think we're pretty important in this space. It's teamwork and we work really well with all the other offices on campus. Often, we are first and then we connect the dots to other folks.
Q: Describe the staff at the center?
A: We've actually expanded our office and the folks we work with here. I'll go top down. In 2023, our new vice president of enrollment management started, Katie Condon. From there, we have a new director of admissions, Dr. LaJoyce Brown. So, between the two of them, they are really important and navigating the direction we're going to be going. Katie works on a higher level with all the division higher ups, and then LaJoyce is working on streamline thinking of admissions for undergraduate and graduate as well as international.
From there, I'm one of the associate directors and I share with Hailey Bormann. She is an associate director over admissions recruiting staff. So, similar to what I do, but she mostly works with our professional advisors. She helps navigate territories and going out on the road. We also have an associate director, Clarissa Russell, who works with our out-of-state students to kind of expand the population of students who are coming to Eastern as well. Underneath that, we have awesome admissions advisors.
We have first-year admissions advisors who work really closely with high schools, transfer admissions advisors who work closely with transfer students and awesome international admissions folks. They help coordinate everything from processing the applications, all the way through getting the students here from their different countries. Then, maybe the most important, we have some awesome student staff!
In the welcome center, we have our tour guides as well as our welcome specialists. If you’ve called Eastern, if you’ve taken a tour or if you've sent us an email, it's very likely one of those folks have seen the message. I think students are the best to be able to share their experience and are also way closer in age to the prospective students. So, like, I love utilizing their brains and being able to brainstorm together to make this a really successful process for all students.
Then we couldn't do any of this work without a processing team. So, they don't technically work in our welcome center, but we have an awesome team of processors who get every single document that we see, and they process every application, every transcript, every letter recommendation that comes in. They are the folks who keep this office running and without them, there would be no us. So, I think they are incredibly helpful in the work that we do. There's a lot of other folks involved. We've got our marketing folks, we've got our technology folks, which are also important and that's a general overview of the folks in our space.
Q: How did your time at EMU influence the way you approach your job today?
A: It's actually really fun being an alum of the institution, to be able to share my experiences. For me, Eastern was a place where I had so many opportunities. I felt like I was able to make connections. I met my best friends here. I met my husband here. So, I kind of put down roots in this space. When I'm talking to families and parents, it's easy to draw in my experience to make it relatable for students.
However, I'm old now, so it's also really fun to see how things are changing. We've done so many updates, renovations, and things look so different than when I was a student, which I think just goes to show Eastern is excited about the future as well. We know that things need to adjust and change, and we want to listen to the students because you guys are the ones that are going here. I think making those small connections about what I experienced at Eastern, and specifically, I was an out-of-state student, I came from Maryland. It's also fun being able to talk to students who are farther away and say like: "Hey, I made the same decision to travel and for me, it was a great option." Now, I always say, I want students to come to Eastern and that's my job, but I also want them to make the best decision for them. I can just share my experience, but I encourage them to have experiences at other institutions to see what the best fit is.
Q: If you could describe your experience at Eastern in a few words, what would you say?
A: First is growth. I think I have grown up so much in not only this office, but this university. I started off being incredibly shy. I hated talking to groups again, and now you just throw me up on stage. I may not be the most excited to be up there, but I can talk about Eastern for hours. So, I would say a lot of personal growth has come from my time at Eastern. I will also say connections, like I said, I met my best friends here, I have great coworkers, and I love who I work with. I love my student staff, and I think without this space, I would not be who I am today. I'm a big believer in community, and connection kind of shapes who you are as a person as well too.
Sparrow and the admissions team continue to plan events on EMU’s campus for prospective students to learn more about the university. She said she hopes that one day the Admissions Welcome Center will expand to its own building or see some more updates to the current office.
