C. Maxille Moultrie knows he’s being watched.

“I never show up here in anything less than a coat and tie,” says Moultrie, sitting in an office at Minneapolis Roosevelt High School.

Moultrie is a recruiter for Minnesota State University. He focuses on southern Minneapolis and African-American students, although he’ll recruit any student of any ethnicity to come to MSU.

“I’ll work with any student,” he said. “In fact, I recruit more white students than anything.”

He’s waiting for students to come see him, seniors he’s been working with for several months. That’s not unusual. What’s unusual is the setting.

Even though this is a Minneapolis high school, this is his office. And he knows the students here look up to him, they respect him.

This is the first year MSU has extended its recruiting reach all the way into a metropolitan-area school, and so far it’s getting results. Between November and April, Moultrie estimates he met with about 50 students. Of those, at least a dozen are committed to MSU.

Moultrie says that, initially, Roosevelt pursued a partnership with MSU. After touring MSU, a Roosevelt administrator recommended MSU come to Roosevelt. MSU obliged.

MSU also is ready to begin similar partnerships with North High School in Minneapolis as well as a school in St. Paul.

As the students file in, it’s obvious Moultrie has established a rapport with them. He knows them all on a first-name basis.

“I probably wouldn’t even be going to Mankato if (Moultrie) didn’t come down here,” senior Terrence Meanchop says. “And my family’s ready for me to get up outta here.”

Sifarah Williams, also a senior, says her family moved to Minneapolis from Chicago three years ago. Her family is wary of her going away to college.

“My grandma said I shouldn’t go that far from home,” Williams said. “We came here for a better life.”

And James Bynum says his family prefers he leave town for college.

“Everybody says I’m going to be the first one to go to college,” he says. He said that when his dad learned he was going to MSU in the fall, he “cried a tear ... He didn’t think I could get this far.”