Vio Midgett graduated from UTC in May, earning degrees in both history and international studies. Photo courtesy of Vio Midgett.
Vio Midgett graduated from UTC in May, earning degrees in both history and international studies. Photo courtesy of Vio Midgett.Vio Midgett’s research was driven by two childhood memories.
The first came from the Japanese nursery rhymes her grandmother—who grew up on a United States Navy base in Japan—sang to her when she was a child.
“That’s kind of where I first fell in love with Japanese culture,” Midgett said.
The other memory derives from her second-grade history textbook.
“It taught me about World War II,” she said. “There was one paragraph on the atomic bomb with a picture of it. It was like, ‘Yeah, this is the atomic bomb that was used in World War II. It was a necessary evil. We had no other option.’
“As an 8-year-old, I looked at that and was like, ‘I wonder how the people that we bombed would think about that.’”
In May 2025, Midgett graduated from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga with degrees in history and international studies.
Shortly after she crossed the McKenzie Arena stage, the Brock Scholar in the UTC Honors College was selected as a Portz Scholar—an honor awarded by the National Collegiate Honors Council to only four of the strongest undergraduate researchers nationwide.
It was the second straight year a UTC honors student landed the prestigious award. May 2024 graduate Emily Patton, a Brock Scholar who earned bachelor’s degrees in environmental science and humanities: international studies, was the first University student selected as a Portz Scholar.
Midgett received the award at the NCHC’s annual competition for outstanding undergraduate honors papers, recently held in San Diego.
Her project, titled “Public memory of World War II in Japan,” grew out of a gap she noticed between the histories she had been taught in the United States and the ways those same events were remembered in Japan.
“I really wanted to know how it was being taught to students over in Japan,” she said. “How are they remembering the same events that I was learning about—especially the devastation Japan caused in Korea and China and the international conflicts that are still going on today because of actions in World War II?”
During the summer of 2024, Midgett spent four months in Japan to put that question to the test. She conducted 13 interviews total with Japanese college students while also studying to improve her proficiency in the language.
Her research analyzed how public memory is shaped through sources such as textbooks, museums and memorials, popular culture, and personal experience. Midgett organized her findings around three recurring narratives she observed: justification, victimization and pacifism.
“Knowing what these narratives are and what their focuses are is important to breaking down how they’re influencing public memory in the future,” she said.
Vio Midgett poses in front of Mount Fiji in Japan.
When she learned she had been selected as a Portz Scholar, the moment felt almost unreal.
“I don’t know the right words for it,” she said. “When I first learned I got it, I was just kind of shocked. It didn’t really feel real. I was compared against a lot of different honors colleges, and only four people nationally get this award.”
The significance didn’t fully sink in until she arrived in San Diego.
“Once I finally got over there, I was like, ‘No, this is kind of a big deal,’” she said. “There were people from all over the country suddenly interested in my work because I won this scholarship. It felt surreal, but also really rewarding.”
Midgett is now working for a nonprofit in Gatlinburg, Tennessee, that provides free art classes and supplies to underfunded schools in Appalachia. She plans to return to Japan in 2026 to attend a long-term language school and eventually pursue graduate studies to continue her research.
“I would love to make this thesis larger once I get my proficiency up in Japan in a more comparative study, a deeper analysis of it with a larger group of contestants,” she said. “I also really want to deep dive into American public memory and how it has been shaped as well.
“If I could get someone to pay me to do that, I’d spend years writing that book,” she added with a laugh.
Noah Wyatt received third place in a research poster competition at the NCHC conference in San Diego. Photo courtesy of Noah Wyatt.
UTC junior and Brock Scholar Noah Wyatt was also an award winner at the NCHC conference, taking third place in the research poster competition. More than 200 posters were presented.
Wyatt’s project, titled “Understanding the Edge Effect at the Nab Experiment Using Geant4 Simulations,” comes from his work on a particle physics experiment at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where he has been conducting research since the beginning of his sophomore year.
“This project studies neutron decay and the weak nuclear force,” explained Wyatt, who is majoring in physics. “This is a collaboration with over 100 scientists, and I contribute to the simulation team.”
Wyatt runs large-scale simulations of the experiment to identify potential sources of error or uncertainty. His poster focused on how magnetic fields influenced the experiment’s results.
“We found several pieces of the experiment that caused lots of data to be lost,” he said.
Going into the competition, he wasn’t sure what to expect.
“I don’t know if I was expecting to place; of course, you always hope you do,” he said. “After the judges came around to me, I felt very good about my presentation. The guy with the poster next to me, who was also presenting physics research, said I did a good job. I did feel good about my chances, but with so many people, a lot is out of your control.”
When it comes to his research, Wyatt has big plans. His goals include pursuing a doctoral degree, becoming a professor and “to understand the universe at the most fundamental level.”
Earning third place at a national competition, he said, was a step in the right direction in achieving those goals.
“It was exciting when I found out I placed,” Wyatt said. “I’ve presented posters several times, and I’ve been getting better each time. I am passionate about science communication, and placing in this competition showed me I can be good at it and encouraged me to continue pursuing it.”
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