Enrollment Strategy | Cross-Functional Leadership | Recruitment Marketing | Systems Alignment
College of Arts and Sciences | University of Tennessee, Knoxville

The College of Arts and Sciences is large and academically diverse, offering dozens of majors that do not always map neatly to a single career path. At recruitment events, prospective students — and especially parents — often struggled to navigate options or understand how programs aligned with career interests.

Our advising and recruitment leader identified recurring themes prospective students were expressing: they were thinking in terms of interests and outcomes, not departmental structures.

Strategic Approach

Rather than create isolated program handouts, we developed a structured “Major Buckets” framework — grouping majors into thematic categories aligned with student interest areas and career pathways.

This required:

• Aligning academic programs within shared outcome themes
• Collaborating closely with recruitment leadership to validate messaging
• Partnering with digital teams to ensure website alignment
• Guiding creative direction for visually compelling event materials
• Establishing a formal Scope of Work with defined milestones, asset collection timelines, proof cycles, and print deadlines

This was not simply a design project. It was a cross-functional alignment initiative intended to reduce friction in the recruitment journey.

Deliverables

• Six strategically organized recruitment handouts (8.5×11, folded format)
• Thematic messaging framework with career pathways and major summaries
• Clear calls to action directing traffic to college web resources
• Alignment plan for integration into academic overview web content
• Formalized project governance through structured SOW and approval process

Impact

• Helped prospective students identify academic pathways based on interests rather than department names
• Improved clarity at recruitment events for both students and parents
• Strengthened alignment between advising, recruitment, digital, and creative teams
• Established a repeatable model for future enrollment-facing materials
• Advanced the college goal of closing the gap between admitted and confirmed students

This project transformed a set of handouts into a structured recruitment navigation system.

View our categorized pathways here: https://artsci.utk.edu/academics/