Grand Challenges Scholar Program members attended the conference’s first international event in Italy.
Study abroad trips provide once-in-a-lifetime opportunities for University of Tennessee at Chattanooga students, and in some cases, that may mean singing Miley Cyrus’ “Party in the U.S.A.” to a group of elderly and their caretakers—Italian nuns.
Earlier this semester, members of the Grand Challenges Scholar Program (GCSP) traveled to Rome, Italy, for a week of conferences focused on making the world more sustainable, secure, healthy and joyful.
The GCSP was founded by the National Academy of Engineering in 2007 and was established on campus in 2024. The UTC program is open to all disciplines. This year’s theme was “Community, Technology and Grand Challenges: Together for Global Impact,” and the event was held at Sapienza University of Rome.
Dr. Cecelia Wigal, associate dean for academic affairs of the College of Engineering and Computer Science, serves as UTC’s GCSP program director.
GCSP is “not just for those in the College of Engineering and Computer Science,” Wigal said. “The program recognizes that in order for students to solve the problems that are in our future, which are generally grand and affect all of society, they need to be able to have five competencies.”
Those competencies include the ability to conduct research, an emphasis on multiculturalism, a multidisciplinary approach, a socially responsible design that serves people’s needs, and a viable business model.
Senior Katie Collins, a chemical engineering major and member of the Innovations and Honors program in the UTC Honors College, presented her thesis on the purification of proteins in medication alongside William Bumcum, a computer science major with a data science concentration and a minor in mathematics.
“This is our big conference of the year where everyone in the program gets together, and we present our work, present our findings and discuss how we are trying to better the engineering community,” Collins said. “We pick a competency that we want to research, we tie it into whatever we’re doing and just try to create a better, more sustainable engineering future.”
Bumcum noted the importance of different perspectives from conference attendees.
“You’re in a conference with people from all over the world,” he said. “The way they approach problems is different. It’s nice to go to an engineering conference where the solution is different for their community, and to learn that you can bring it back here and implement it in your own community. And just being in Rome, going to the Vatican, there’s a sense of reverence you have because everything you see has been here for thousands of years.”
Part of that history was an assisted-living community run by local nuns across the street from the university. The elders performed “Cinderella” for the students, which mechanical engineering student Brooklyn Lucas said was her favorite experience.
Along with presenting their research, students were able to visit historical sites.
“There was a language barrier, obviously, but we were all super familiar with the story,” Lucas said. “Then one of the nuns says, ‘Well, since they did something for you guys, maybe you should perform for them. Yeah, maybe you should sing a song.’ We’re all nervous and everything, and Katie goes, ‘Why not Party in the U.S.A.?’ Just as a joke, I thought, but it was for real.
“It was hilarious. Afterward, we had this really sweet moment where one of the nuns was trying to connect us with the elders there and just reminded us that, at the end of the day, we can always come back and serve our elders. They are people who are probably thought of last on the totem pole and we need to make an effort to make sure that they’re served.”
Wigal, who was in the middle of the spontaneous choral group, explained that this helped the group feel more connected to the culture. Over the next few days, some of the nuns even made their way onto university grounds to support the students presenting.
One of those students was Ann Mcabee, a double major in mechatronics engineering technology and physics and a double minor in electrical engineering and business administration, who presented research on the value of robotic dogs in unsafe conditions for humans.
The robotic dogs “can go over a lot of different terrains,” Mcabee explained. “They can go into places where maybe there was an earthquake and they need to detect if a human can go in to save someone. Or even find where people are located so humans don’t have to expose themselves for a long time to the dangerous particles or chemicals in the air.”
Freshman mechanical engineering major Josh Bun didn’t present at the conference, but he said his classmates’ presentations inspired him.
“I was able to look at all the posters and was still a part of the conference,” Bun said. “It was just cool to see how everyone has grown Will and Katie’s posters. I looked at it, and I’m like, ‘How am I going to do that?’ It was impressive and amazing.”
Audrie Pletcher, a civil engineering major, has been in the GCSP program since her first year and explained that the support from fellow students was her biggest takeaway from the trip.
“There is a great sense of community,” Pletcher said. “We sat down on the last night and went around and asked, ‘What was your favorite thing that we did?’ I said, ‘I really enjoyed having moments like this where we’re all sitting up together as a community and just talking and having a good time and being able to interact with people that have never been around otherwise.’”
Junior Gracie Crooks, a double major in math and physics, credited Wigal and the program for helping her find her place on campus, leading her to the Department of Mathematics.
“This program has shaped a lot of my experience at UTC,” Crooks said. “It led me to, at least in the math department, a lot of people who do math. It’s given me a lot of perspective on how to use the math I learn and apply it. Math is ubiquitous, and in almost every discipline, you can relate math back to it.”
Learn more
