In September of 2023, Lubbock Christian University (LCU) began offering a new way to visit campus—one that combines a comprehensive overview of campus with the personal touchstones that make LCU unique.
LCU has hosted Chap Preview Days for years, inviting prospective students to campus on several Mondays each year for a full campus tour, departmental fair, classroom visits, and even daily chapel. These events bring hundreds of high schoolers to LCU each year, but LCU’s admissions team knew there were other avenues to showcase all that LCU has to offer.
“We're always looking for different opportunities to invite people to campus,” shared Dr. Jody Reding, Vice President of Enrollment Management. “We typically have held our Chap Preview Days on Monday, but a lot of people in our region travel to Lubbock for the weekend, whether they're shopping or attending events going to the Buddy Holly Hall. We wanted to create a space specifically for them to offer a chance to stop by our campus and experience a little bit of what LCU has to offer.”
“Big Blue Visit Days are focused on helping visitors see the relational side of our campus,” shared Anna Allred, Assistant Director of Transfer Admissions. “We had a great time of fellowship before the tour even started at our last Big Blue Visit Day. We had a faculty meet-and-greet where students could meet many of our faculty members.”
“We had all of our academic Deans at that meet-and-greet,” Dr. Reding added, “and that's not common—there are not a lot of institutions that you could visit where all the deans of your various colleges would come to meet families and visit with them about the different programs.”
After meeting the faculty, guests were given campus tours by current LCU students. Aside from opportunities to see what their future home might look like, including Gullo Hall, LCU’s newest residence hall, these tours and lunch in the cafe also afford potential students a chance to hear directly from LCU students about their experiences on campus.
“We walk with people,” explained Dr. Reding, “We're going to walk with people from the first moment that we hear from them all the way through the process, whether that's the application process and transcripts to financial aid, because it can be daunting. It's certainly exciting, that next step in life, but it's also daunting to families. It’s a major transition in households when that student moves on and moves out and goes to school, and we are very intentional in how we help students through the process.”
LCU has three more Big Blue Visit Days on the calendar during the 2023-24 year: November 3, 2023, February 16, 2024, and April 12, 2024, and several more Chap Preview Days coming up as well—the next is on November 20.
Other opportunities for future Chaps include nomination for LCU’s premier full-tuition leadership scholarship, the Cornerstone Scholarship, and the E Pluribus Unum trip, a pre-semester class with 3 hours of college credit in which incoming freshmen travel with LCU faculty and peers to Philadelphia, Gettysburg, and Washington D.C., walking through history in the very cities that birthed this nation.
Interested in learning more about Lubbock Christian University? Get in touch with one of our admissions advisors or learn more about the different ways to visit campus, including our Destination LCU reimbursement program.