{"id":28549,"date":"2020-03-05T11:40:30","date_gmt":"2020-03-05T17:40:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/?p=28549"},"modified":"2020-03-05T11:40:30","modified_gmt":"2020-03-05T17:40:30","slug":"austin-peay-state-universitys-caroline-clasby-promotes-apsu-across-the-globe","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/2020\/03\/05\/austin-peay-state-universitys-caroline-clasby-promotes-apsu-across-the-globe\/","title":{"rendered":"Austin Peay State University’s Caroline Clasby promotes APSU across the globe"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AustinClarksville, TN<\/strong> – Caroline Clasby\u2019s suitcases are loaded with brochures, t-shirts and little novelty items all stamped with the red Austin Peay State University (APSU) logo. One day she\u2019s hurrying through the airport in Lagos, Nigeria, and the next she\u2019s handing out Governors gear to potential students in Dubai.<\/p>\n

\"Caroline<\/a>

Caroline Clasby, director of Austin Peay State University International Student Services. (APSU)<\/p><\/div>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cI travel about twice a semester for two weeks at a time, and I try to hit most continents \u2013 not all, but most,\u201d she said. \u201cI try to hit the Middle East area, Asia, and we do hit Latin America and South America. Even though it\u2019s not a continent, we visit India quite a bit and we travel to Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n

When Clasby arrived on campus in 2017 as the University\u2019s first international recruiter, Austin Peay State University had only 60 international students \u2013 the lowest in the state. This year, that number has more than doubled with 138 students from across the globe now pursuing degrees at APSU.<\/p>\n

As director of Austin Peay State University\u2019s Office of International Student Services, Clasby and her staff are now aggressively visiting college fairs in foreign countries, while also following the U.S. Department of Homeland Security\u2019s guidelines to make sure Austin Peay State University\u2019s growing international population is coming to the U.S. safely and legally.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur international students are some of the brightest you\u2019ll ever meet, and they bring a whole new enriched intellectualism to the campus,\u201d she said. \u201cThey really help our domestic students, they enlighten them with new ways of learning, new viewpoints. They help globalize our campus, our nation and our world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Clasby studied French and European Union Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Arabic at the American Language Institute in Fez, Morocco. That background comes in handy when she\u2019s meeting with potential students who have never heard of APSU.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey really like the pictures because they think campus is very beautiful,\u201d she said. \u201cWhen I say that Nashville is nearby, they get very excited about that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ultimately, the students she meets at the schools and college fairs want to know about APSU\u2019s academic offerings, with most individuals looking for programs in computer science, mathematics, engineering and business. That\u2019s part of what attracted several new Governors from Nigeria.<\/p>\n

\u201cOur biggest population is from Nigeria,\u201d Clasby said. \u201cWe had an advantage because Dr. Samuel Jator (professor of mathematics) went to the University of Lagos, and he has a lot of connections there. We promoted Austin Peay State Unviersity to his colleagues who promoted it to his students. Now they\u2019re telling their friends. They\u2019re recruiting for us through word of mouth.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the fall of 2019, when other schools saw declines in international enrollment, APSU experienced a 17.5 percent increase in undergraduate international students and a 45 percent increase in graduate international students. Clasby plans to keep those numbers growing.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve been really blessed to go against that trend,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Clarksville, TN – Caroline Clasby\u2019s suitcases are loaded with brochures, t-shirts and little novelty items all stamped with the red Austin Peay State University (APSU) logo. One day she\u2019s hurrying through the airport in Lagos, Nigeria, and the next she\u2019s handing out Governors gear to potential students in Dubai.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5],"tags":[9940,23,34606,11375,262,33239,512,825,13693,24576,4693,10580,14918],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4xGYI-7qt","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28549"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28549"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28549\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28550,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28549\/revisions\/28550"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28549"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28549"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.discoverclarksville.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28549"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}