UTC had outstanding representation in this year’s Harold Love Outstanding Community Service Awards, given by the Tennessee Higher Education Commission to faculty, staff and students across Tennessee’s colleges and universities. Five faculty/staff members are chosen each year and two members of our faculty—David Ross, professor in Psychology, and Tammy Garland, professor in Criminal Justice—were selected, the most of any school. In addition, JuJuan Lewis, president of the UTC Student Government Association, earned an award in the student category. Congratulations to all three. Their community service is a testament to UTC’s dedication to playing an important role in Chattanooga.
UTC and Dalton State College have signed an important agreement that allows students at the Georgia school to transfer to UTC and finish their bachelor’s degree in engineering or computer science. We already have the same agreement with Cleveland State Community College. These cooperative alliances create an educated workforce that benefits our entire region.
For the third year in a row, UTC is one of 53 schools in the world to earn Gold Campus status, the highest recognition in the Exercise is Medicine initiative from the American College of Sports Medicine. The designation recognizes that UTC not only has ongoing programs to promote physical activity, we also have a system in place to help students who are not meeting the initiative’s guidelines for weekly exercise. Thanks to Karissa Peyer and everyone in the Department of Health and Human Performance whose work has maintained our Gold Campus ranking.
The annual ReSEARCH Dialogues, the largest academic conference on campus, takes place Tuesday and Wednesday, April 9-10, in the University Center. I encourage you to stop by to see the amazing projects that more than 600 UTC faculty, graduate students, undergraduate students and staff have undertaken in the past year. They cross the length and breadth of the campus, from engineering to political science to communications. The students who conducted the research will be there to explain the hows and whys of their projects, and their explanations are fascinating and impressive.
Congratulations to the UTC Cyber Competition Team, MocSec, which ranked No. 7 out of 31 teams after the recent Southeast Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition. They are the only Tennessee team moving to the regionals this year, which take place April 3-4 in Atlanta. In the competition, students must defend their computer networks from hackers and deal with other issues common to the daily life of a security professional. The national championships will be held in San Antonio, Texas, from April 23-25. Go MocSecs!
And congratulations to our women’s softball team, which is 23-11 overall. Five of our players — Aly Walker, Emma Sturdivant, Halie Williamson, Amanda Beltran and Emily Coltharp — are in the Southern Conference’s Top 15 for batting average. Aly is No. 4 in the conference with a .363 average. Amanda also has seven homers, placing her at No. 4 in the conference. Maria Ramirez is the only freshman pitcher in the country with 10-plus wins and no losses for 2019. On April 19-20, the team will play a three-game series against Western Carolina at Frost Stadium.
A team from the Gary W. Rollins College of Business is headed to the Americas Regional championships in the CFA Investment Research Challenge for the third year in a row. In the contest, UTC’s four-man team is given a company to analyze then write a professional report on their findings. The winner of the competition, set for April 23-24 in New York, moves on to the Global Final on April 25. Last year’s team finished in the Top 5 at the Americas Regional and was the only all-undergraduate team. Good luck to them!