Laurel Rhyne remembers the very first time she heard about generative artificial intelligence. It was December 18, 2022. She was listening to a National Public Radio story in her car while crossing the Market Street Bridge. “The focus was all on plagiarism and what it was going to do for higher ed,” explained Rhyne, an associate lecturer in the UTC College of Nursing. “What I saw was so much more. “Our whole world is going to change.”
Top 20 of ’25: A year’s worth of cheers
A lot of great things happened at UTC during the 2025 calendar year. We celebrated student and faculty research, welcomed new faces (including Chancellor Lori Bruce), broke ground on new buildings and commemorated big wins. With so much happening across campus, the UTC newsroom published 427 stories over the course of the year. Here are our top 20 personal favorites in chronological order of website publication.
Simulated patient, real emotions: AI bringing realism to UTC nursing simulation
Earlier this summer, students in the Doctor of Nursing Practice adult gerontology acute care program piloted an end-of-life training scenario unlike anything they had previously encountered in the University’s Metro Annex Safe Hospital. The twist? Students weren’t just caring for a simulated patient in the mock clinical setting. They also had to navigate a phone conversation with the patient’s daughter, which was played not by a faculty member or actor, but by artificial intelligence.
From field to future: UTC students learn real-world lessons from NFL player’s cardiac emergency
The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga is using real-life experiences to prepare its students for their future careers. A near NFL tragedy that unfolded during a national TV broadcast has been turned into a learning experience to educate and inspire the next generation of UTC health care workers, dietitians, athletic trainers, physical therapists, occupational therapists…
Call me HAL: UTC nursing students learning from state-of-the-art patient simulator
HAL® S5301, billed as the world’s most advanced interdisciplinary patient simulator, is a new addition to the UTC School of Nursing. HAL has artificial intelligence capabilities and can speak, mimic many different emergent situations such as strokes and heart attacks, and be utilized to practice numerous invasive procedures. “We can make him have a stroke. It can have full facial droop. You can change the eyeballs. It can sweat, it can cry.”