When she walks across the stage at commencement next week, Hailey Bower will graduate from Purdue University Fort Wayne as one of the most visible Mastodons over the past four years. She has encouraged hundreds to follow in her footsteps on campus, literally and figuratively.  

Sometime in March, the hospitality and tourism management major conducted her 400th tour as a guide for the Office of Admissions. It’s assumed Bower holds the record, and no one is sure how many of the prospective students she’s guided have ended up on campus, but she runs into them all the time.

“She’ll go above and beyond to make each individual student feel welcome and appreciated,” said Ryan Meriwether, assistant director of admissions events. “She makes sure that every student feels like they are represented no matter how many are on a tour.”

After Bower’s initial college choice closed during the spring of her senior year of high school, she took a summer tour of PFW, guided by James Velez, the current Student Life director who worked in admissions at the time.

“I was surprised at how big campus was, and I love all the green spaces,” Bower said. “It’s also pretty quiet. It was very spacious with a lot of room to do things.”

As a freshman, Bower hung out in admissions to visit her mom Jenny, the administrative assistant, and got to know all the workers, both student and professional. Bower decided to join the staff as a sophomore.

“I was really reserved beforehand and had a hard time talking to people,” Bower recalled. “I didn’t feel like I was particularly good at anything. I was just average at everything, so I feel like becoming a tour guide helped me not just to develop my public speaking skills, but also my general speaking skills. I feel a lot more confident in myself.”

It took about two months for her to memorize the training and feel comfortable giving a tour, including making presentations while walking backward. A full tour takes about 7,000 steps over 90 minutes, and during her career, Bower has averaged at least five, and as many as seven, tours per week. During the first year of the pandemic, it was ordinary to only tour with a single family each time. Recently, she’s led groups of 20 individuals for major campus visit days.

That’s an awful lot of walking backward.

“I used to look at the sides of the sidewalk in my peripheral vision, but I know it so well now I don’t even have to look,” Bower said. “I joke and ask if there’s something behind me that they please let me know, but say that if I fall, they can all laugh at me.”

She’s never fallen, though she has slipped a few times on ice, which is usually when she switches and walks forward. Bower is known for walking backward up and over the Crescent Avenue Pedestrian Bridge onto the Waterfield Campus and student housing; the only time she didn’t was during an extremely hot day when her water bottle was low. Even then, she gave two full tours.

The full route requires a lot of calories, so she’ll eat four meals on multiple-tour days.

“Part of it is it keeps me active,” she said. “You’d have to force yourself to go to the gym or the athletic center, but I know I have to go to work, and it’s good incentive to be more active and walk a lot more.”

There have been other benefits. Her improved communication skills will help Bower’s professional life as she’s becoming an event planner.

“The more she gave tours, the more confident she became, and you could really hear her voice,” said Sable Eldridge, assistant director of the TRIO Upward Bound Program. “I have heard her on several occasions in the hallways, and I always smile because I am so proud that she continued to return to the program and share her experience with our prospective students.”

Lots of people on campus don’t recognize Bower’s face as much as her voice.

Bower knows she’s going to miss the university, the people, and the job.

“I’m really close with a lot of people who work here,” Bower said. “A lot of them I’m very good friends with. This is a pretty comfortable office to be in, and everyone is pretty caring. They don’t have to be nearly as welcoming as they are, but they choose to be.”