Alvin Crawford’s work is an affair of the heart. The award-winning physician says he “fell in love with kids” when he chose pediatric orthopedics as his life’s work. Adults may have complicated motivations and desires; children, Crawford says, just want to be able to go out and play.
From her home in Cary, North Carolina, Kelly Utt-Grubb runs a one-of-a-kind business. The UT psychology graduate (Knoxville ’05) is a family naming resource. That “huh?” that came to your mind is to be expected. She believes she’s the only person in the world in her chosen line of work. Utt-Grubb helps people with their last names, exploring, for instance, whether to keep them, change them, hyphenate them, or merge them with other names. She says those and other options should be explored to find a comfortable fit.
The Queen Elizabeth 2’s final round-the-world cruise was a hot ticket, and an expensive one. But two alumni actually made money aboard the storied ocean liner and did it with a song in their hearts. Stew Bystrzycki (Knoxville ’04) and Brad Martin (Knoxville ’91) were mainstays of the Queen’s Room Dance Band—Bystrzycki as the bandleader and Martin as drummer. Both studied in the studio music and jazz concentration in the School of Music in the College of Arts and Sciences.
Summertime is prime time at theme parks—a vacation to one of these magical destinations might well be in your plans. These UT alumni who work with Disney, Dollywood, and Sea World Orlando would love to welcome you.
The majority of students can succeed at math and science. “They just need to be taught how,” says Dr. Saundra McGuire, a UT alumna and recent winner of the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring.
McGuire is director of the Center for Academic Success at Louisiana State University. She says the earlier students learn how to learn, the better.
Ann Draughon’s career has included many firsts, but she says the most important thing she has done is prepare women and minorities for careers in food microbiology.
When cats purr and dogs invite more, more, more tummy scratching, their human friends assume the animals are enjoying themselves. But we have no ultimate proof that animals feel pleasure. Research scientist Jonathan Balcombe (Knoxville ’91), who has spent years studying animal behavior, posits in his book Pleasurable Kingdom that humans aren’t the only animals capable of feeling pleasure.
Tearing through the halls of Gatlinburg’s Mountain View Hotel, 10-year-old Ford Little relished the freedom afforded him by the UT Alumni Association.
In the 8 days before Dave Roberts came to work for the UT alumni office in 1966, he resigned his job in Nashville, got married, enjoyed a [brief] honeymoon, and moved to Knoxville. As he recalls the frenetic onset of his 42-year career, he dismisses any prescience that UT would occupy nearly all his working life.
Educating students to succeed in the global workplace isn’t just a lofty slogan. Today it’s a necessity. Hundreds of UT Knoxville alumni work in China or travel there frequently. Tennessee Alumnus thanks the many alumni who sent information about their experiences. Unfortunately we couldn’t feature all of them. Here are a few that represent just what a small world our planet has become.
America’s palate is becoming more sophisticated, and Alan Wilson is big into the business of supplying the spices to satisfy the nation’s taste buds. Wilson (Knoxville ’80) is the new CEO and president of McCormick & Company Inc., the world’s largest spice producer, headquartered in Baltimore with operations in such diverse locales as India and France.
Some of the most generous people in the world are friends of the University of Tennessee. The university, always grateful for donor support, has initiated a trio of awards that formally recognize people who have made giving an art form. The first awards were presented at last fall’s meeting of the UT Development Council in Knoxville.
Richmond taps Ayers as president, Mears dies in Knoxville, Geier joins university—these and other stories in this edition of UTopics.
In 1956, on a lark and with a lust for adventure, five UT students departed Knoxville for Alaska, where they spent the summer working in a gold mine. The Territory of Alaska, still 3 years shy of statehood, was a sparsely populated frontier of less than 200,000 people. The heaviest traffic on the only highway between Fairbanks and Anchorage occurred in July, when an average of 42 vehicles a day traveled the road. Oil would not be discovered at Prudhoe Bay for a dozen years yet.
We would all have to agree that, were it not for our UT education, our lives would be different. As Debbie Ingram, president of the UT Alumni Association, travels to alumni events throughout the country, she solicits stories about how the lives of UT alumni have been transformed by education. Tennessee Alumnus introduces you to some of the UT graduates who’ve shared their experiences.
