Amy Brown
Amy Brown’s path to higher education has been anything but traditional.
A transfer student from Cleveland State Community College, she received a bachelor’s degree in psychology from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga in May. Now, she is a student in UTC’s master’s program in psychological science.
As a child, Brown was pulled out of school after the eighth grade to travel with her mother—who never advanced beyond the eighth grade herself—and later earned her GED diploma as an adult.
“We lived in a conversion van and traveled all over the United States,” she said. “I loved school when I was a kid, but my mom didn’t take education seriously. I felt like my education was robbed from me.”
For years, Brown poured her energy into taking care of others, including her six children, five grandchildren and her students as a middle school history homeschool teacher. After going through a divorce, she allowed her focus to slightly shift.
“It was the first time that I pursued my own dreams of completing an education and filling the big gap between eighth grade and college courses,” she said. “Going through a divorce was difficult. For the first time, my eyes were opened to, ‘Wait a minute, what about me?’”
She enrolled at Cleveland State in 2021, just after her divorce was finalized.
“Pursuing my education has not been an easy route,” Brown said. “It’s been the most fulfilling route, but it’s not been easy. To jump in during the middle of COVID and learn computer skills, how to upload things and how to make PowerPoints was all very, very foreign to me.”
The experience was also new to her children.
“The whole learning curve for me also made an impact for them. I tried to shift a lot of my time commitments with school, double up on the weeks I didn’t have them and then dedicate more time to them,” she said. “It’s been difficult in a lot of ways, but I think it’s also been empowering for them. My hope and my prayer is that they will look at the obstacles I’ve had to overcome and the large gap I had to get through to get to where I am now.”
By the time she started at UTC, Brown had more confidence as a student but felt like she received less attention as a transfer student compared to traditional first-year students.
Despite her love for UTC, Brown doesn’t hold back when she talks about her first day on campus as a transfer student.
“There were no signs, no convocation, nothing,” she said. “I missed my very first class because I didn’t know where to park. I just felt really lost and confused.”
She recalled a conversation she had with a classmate who was also a transfer.
“We started comparing our stories and I just looked around the room at all the students. I was like, ‘We can’t be the only ones,’” Brown said. “She said, ‘No, absolutely not.’ I said, ‘We need to leave UTC better than we found it.’”
That conversation led to a year-long pilot program, and Brown became UTC’s first transfer student peer mentor.
In that role, she organized events to bring transfers together, as well as one-on-one mentoring meetings. She also made it a point to reach out to online-only transfers who often feel isolated.
She mentioned several situations where transfer students required specific assistance, such as a student from Pakistan and a single mother who was considering dropping out of school.
“My role has really been loving on and connecting with transfer students,” she said. “You have such a beautiful opportunity every single day to reach just one person and to make a difference.”
That’s why, she said, she is pursuing a career in teaching psychology.
“I really want to teach college students and I want to empower them,” she said. “I want to connect with them inside and outside the classroom. I just want to make a change in that generation.”
Now serving as a transfer student mentor in the Center for Student Success, Brown said she hopes to continue being a voice for the nearly 3,000 transfer students enrolled at UTC.
“Be patient with the process because everyone is working very hard to help,” she has told them. “You’re seen and recognized, and UTC is a beautiful place for transfer students. There are a lot of resources, and it’s just about building that relationship with other transfer students and finding a place on campus that they can connect and bridge some gaps.”
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