Within the walls of Davidson Hall is the Assistant Director of Admissions, and her name is Lauren Turenne. However, Turenne doesn’t always go by her official title.

“I like to refer to myself as the queen of admissions” Turenne said.

Turenne works very closely with Central’s student athletes, making sure they meet Clearinghouse for the NCAA, an Eligibility Center that works with high school students to help prepare them for life as a student-athlete.

She also goes out to schools in Connecticut and some in Boston to recruit new students for Central. 

Turenne has quite a history here at Central Connecticut. She’s been working in Admissions since 2011, but she joined the school back in 2008 as a Resident Director in James Hall followed by Sheridan Hall. Turenne wears her love for Central on her sleeve. 

“The thing I love about Central is that we offer a lot of exciting things, but in a very manageable campus,” Turenne said. “So I feel like you can go across campus and see people you know, but you always see people you don’t know. When Dr. Toro addresses everyone as family it’s very true, I think that we are a family here.”

However, there is more to Turenne than her current job. She originally dreamed of being on Broadway. 

“I was a theater major at Western Connecticut University and I started acting when I was six years old,” Turenne said. “I started voice lessons when I was about six and I stopped taking voice lessons when I was pregnant with my daughter, so I stopped taking voice lessons in 2014. The last thing I did on stage was a ‘Cabaret’ in March, but previous to that I had done a stage thing of  ‘Once On This Island.’”

Long before that, Turenne did admit things took a different turn.

“My original plan was to be on Broadway,” Turenne said. “Right after I graduated, I went to New York with one of my friends that had already lived there. I went to do a showcase, so agents came and all that stuff. I had to walk a couple blocks to the subway and it was really hot in there and it took an hour to get from Queens to Midtown where we were doing the showcase. You have to roll a cart to do laundry and get groceries I decided that New York is not really for Lauren Patricia Turenne. And that’s okay.”

Turenne decided it was time to try something new and found a job as a Resident Assistant at Post University. After spending two years there, Turenne was not as happy as she hoped to be, and ended up moving to Central. 

However, one good thing did come out of working at Post University; Turenne met her future husband. 

“I met my husband Paul. We were both RD’s together and we hated each other at first, but we ended up falling in love,” Turenne said. “We got engaged in the winter of 2008 and we got married in the March of 2009, so it was a very quick engagement. We just wanted to be married.”

After several years of marriage, Turenne and her husband then had a baby.

“We had my daughter Sofia in January of 2015 during the big blizzard, and that was very difficult because the roads were closed and everything,” Turenne said. “And you know, being a mom when your husband has to go back to work and you’re on maternity leave and it’s dark at 4 p.m. and you’re such a people person. It was a little difficult to transition into that because all I wanted to do was to be around people, and I had a screaming baby.”

Turenne also participated in a bike race in September. It was called ‘Closer to Free Ride.’ Turenne first heard about this event after her friend Jackie was diagnosed with thyroid cancer and began to participate in the ride after she was in remission. This ride benefits Smillow’s Cancer Research Center. 

“Last year while doing ‘Once On This Island’ I started getting my fitness on,” Turenne said. “I started dancing through the show, but then I really decided that I wanted to continue with my journey to fitness, so I started going to bootcamp and personal training. I looked at Jackie and I said ‘You know what, I’m gonna do this bike ride next year with you.’ I didn’t even know what it would consist of, stupidly, I just was kind of like ’This is what I’m gonna do.’”

What the bike race taught Turenne is that she can fund-raise well. Her original donation goal was $1,000, but she ended up raising over $3,400 for Smillow’s Cancer Center.

“I’m already signed up for next year’s ‘Closer to Free Ride’ and I’ll be doing 25 miles next year. This year I only did 10 [miles] because, let me not go crazy, who knows if I can do this, Turenne said.”

Turenne had one final thing she wanted to leave Central students with.

“In Admissions we’re still here for you,” Turenne said. “Even though we’ve admitted you, we’re still a resource. You can always stop by and the tour guides are really awesome.”