Family First

photo by Megan Bean

FALL 2018 | DIVIDENDS

Family First

By Tom Lammert

When talking with Kelsey Waters, it is easy to feel that your conversation is the only one that matters. She looks you in the eye and gives you a wide, easy smile. She is engaging and approachable, professional and personable. It is no wonder that, with her natural demeanor and a relentless devotion to Mississippi State and its students, Waters is a successful recruiter for the College of Business.

The Assistant Director of Recruiting and Events for the College, Waters has always been outgoing, and she suspects her family deserves the credit for cultivating her personality. They are a “tight knit crew,” she says of her parents and older brother. The foursome was often on the road during her youth, traveling to her softball games or her brother’s baseball games.

When the time came for college, Waters enrolled at Delta State University and majored in English. Her ability to engage others found outlets in sorority membership and involvement with university recruitment. The mix of social activities with the solitude required by her interest in literature helped Waters thrive during her college years. On graduating, she was not ready to leave; she had lined up a job with the University’s recruitment office.

After a year and a half, Waters decided it was time to pursue other opportunities. She texted T.J. Walker, a friend who worked at Mississippi State, about available jobs. He told her that the following day, four recruiting positions would be posted for locations outside Mississippi. Waters submitted her application and soon received an offer for employment on the East Coast, based in Greenville, SC. She recounts the very first time she stepped into a high school in South Carolina and met with a welcome surprise.

“When I checked in as ‘Kelsey, from Mississippi State,’ this mother rounded on me with big, longing eyes and asked, ‘Did you say Mississippi State?’” Waters recalls. “That’s how I met Shay Hughey. She and her husband had graduated from MSU and had served as Road Runners and Orientation Leaders. Shay was working the lunch counter that day for the parents’ association and introduced me to their son Tripp and daughter Lauren.”

It would be years before Lauren graduated from high school, but she was always excited to see Waters at college fairs and other recruiting events.

“Lauren would run to my table, grab the pom-poms and sing the fight song to anyone who would listen!” Waters shares. “Once she arrived on campus, she joined a sorority, ran for student government, worked New Maroon Camp, served as an Orientation Leader and took every opportunity to give back to the University. Once, I was in the Union and looked up to see Lauren rushing at me. She wrapped me in the tightest hug and made me feel like the most important person in the room. That’s what is so special about her…she is warm, funny, a force to be reckoned with. Her spirit encourages everyone she meets.”

Family college loyalties were more often a challenge than an advantage for Waters. Recruiting in the Carolinas meant competing with generational ties to schools in those states, but Waters was up to the task. She listened to students’ goals and needs and looked for ways Mississippi State could help meet them.

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“Hudson Thames was one of those students who had planned his whole life to attend an institution in South Carolina,” she says. “During a college fair at Wando High School, I met Hudson and his dad and talked about the vet school and about how his dad’s military service would help pay out of state tuition. Mississippi State became a real possibility for him.”

She kept in touch – calling, texting and writing to Hudson about his opportunities in Starkville. One day, his mother called to say that her son had decided on Mississippi State.

“She told me that she was excited Hudson had chosen MSU because we wanted him more than anyone else,” Waters says. “Having this mother in Charleston, SC, feel the passion MSU has for its students left me beaming. Mrs. Wendy knew we were going to take care of Hudson and provide him with the resources to grow and follow his dream of becoming a veterinarian.”

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It was during her time in South Carolina that Waters met her husband, Calvin, a firefighter. The two spent their free time cruising up and down the East Coast. Waters enjoyed her professional travels, but the spontaneous road trips with Calvin remain her fondest memories of life there.

After a few years, the College of Business offered Waters a position on campus. It would mean temporary separation from Calvin until he could find a job in Starkville, but Waters felt led to accept the position that would bring them nearer to family. Her parents live in Columbus, MS, and her brother’s family – including her niece, Elliott, whom Waters adores – lives in Corinth, MS.

She knew she was returning to her relatives, but Waters did not anticipate another benefit: Her co-workers in the Dean’s office would become a second family.

As COB Assistant Director of Recruiting and Events, Waters devotes time to sharing all that Mississippi State and the College have to offer, helping students discover that MSU is the right place to be. Often these conversations take place in a room that was designed to make students and their families feel at home as they learn about the COB.

Completed in January 2018 and located on the second floor of McCool Hall, the Renasant Bank Campus Visit Room serves as a space for Waters to welcome students and their families. No other academic department on campus has a room dedicated to hosting prospective students, and this room’s aesthetic certainly impresses and reassures future business students. It feels more like a den

Waters says prospective students and their families feel at home in the COB’s Renasant Bank Campus Visit Room.

photo by Megan Bean

DIVIDENDS | FALL 2018

FALL 2018 | DIVIDENDS

or a home office than it does a conference room. On the white walls hang large photos depicting bird’s-eye views of Starkville’s Main Street. If a visitor wants coffee, a Keurig machine is at hand in a corner of the room. Padded chairs offer comfortable seating for more than two dozen visitors. Shelves brimming with business literature frame the flat-screen television that Shelby Baldwin, Waters’ intern, uses with visiting groups to describe the clubs, organizations, internships and other programs associated with the College. Waters praises Baldwin’s PowerPoint presentation, which she is also able to use in a more intimate format.

Waters wants her discussions with students and their families to remain personal. She learns about her recruits by asking about their hometowns, interests and plans for their academic careers. She wants prospective students to feel welcome and at ease. Paired with Waters’ affable nature, the Renasant Bank Campus Visit Room is a space that feels like home.

Whether hosting meetings there or talking with a prospective student on the Drill Field, Waters evangelizes about the faculty, staff and students at Mississippi State who cultivate a genial atmosphere. Incoming students and their parents are intelligent and perceptive, and Waters is aware that they will sniff out disingenuousness if her claim about MSU’s atmosphere is not sincere.

From time to time parents ask, “This hospitality – is it just the red-carpet treatment, or is this actually what it’s like?”

She assures them the welcoming aura is genuine. Waters is thankful that her experience with her co-workers validates her claim that the Bulldog family is, in fact, a family.

There is perhaps no greater example of this than Waters herself. Her affection for students and their families shines through, both in the way she speaks of them and in her actions. She tells the story of Katy King, who was a high school senior in Charlotte, NC, when they met in 2014.

“As the child of an MSU alumna, Katy politely attended my visit to her high school,” Waters recalls. “She didn’t have many questions, and she honestly sat very quietly in our time together. Afterward, I met her mom and two aunts for lunch at Newk’s. That lunch jumpstarted an incredibly important relationship for me.”

Waters continued to meet with Katy and her family to discuss Katy’s potential journey to MSU and just how great it could be for her. Fast forward to graduation, and Katy headed straight to Starkville.

“In one short year, that quiet young woman had joined a sorority and academic clubs and was running for positions on campus!” Waters says. “Following Katy were her sisters Sarah and Julie. All three chose accounting, and they have grown into amazing, independent, caring people who have impacted my life in ways they could never know. I’ve also developed a deep friendship with their mother Rachel. This family has brought me love, laughter and immeasurable joy. The amount of pride I have in seeing what these sisters accomplish is something I never would have expected in this career.”

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She continues, “I thought being a recruiter meant that I would help students get to college. I didn’t realize it also meant getting to watch students turn into the incredible people they would become.”

Waters herself is now an MSU alumna, having earned a master’s degree in workforce education leadership. When she talks with recruits about the strength of an MSU education, paired with the university’s family atmosphere, there is no more authentic selling point than her own experience.