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.
Pandemonium broke out at Hoi Tu Thien orphanage, and a sea of frenzied, giggling children took control. In the thick of it was Dan White, a 2004 UT Knoxville philosophy graduate living in Can Tho, Vietnam. He grinned as he surveyed the familiar scene before him on that humid April evening.
It must be true that opposites attract. Garry and Betsy Phillips didn’t agree on much of anything before they married. But today the couple agrees on one thing for sure—the United States must succeed in stabilizing a democratic government in Iraq. The stability of the whole Middle East hangs in the balance.
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.
From my 24th-floor office in northeast Beijing, each day I survey the startling expansion and transformation of the city. Every morning brings either a new high-rise or a vacant lot where an old high-rise once stood, a situation accelerated by the $40 billion Beijing is spending in preparation for the upcoming Olympics. But the changes China is experiencing are far more profound than a few new skyscrapers, and the consequences of those changes reach around the globe.
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.
When Jennifer Morrison-Fuller explored business practices “across the pond” in Ireland and Scotland, she came away with a new appreciation for competition in the global market. The trip was the culmination of months of academic preparation for Morrison-Fuller and other Chattanooga area professionals enrolled in UT Chattanooga’s Executive Master of Business Administration (EMBA) program.
UT is a leader in the development of alternative fuels, the university is enjoying its best year in recent history in terms of state funding, and Dr. Bill Bass has solved the mystery of “The Big Bopper”—these and other stories in this edition of UTopics.
Ask conservation ecologist Dr. Luke Dollar to describe the moment when he felt farthest removed from the University of Tennessee campus, and he’ll likely cite Madagascar, where he’s logged nearly 6 years researching mammalian predators. Chief among them is the enigmatic fossa (pronounced “FOO-suh”), a 20-pound carnivore that blends a mountain lion’s agility and cunning with the sheer bellicosity of a mongoose.
Foosas help control the predators that devour the human food supply on Madagascar. So when Luke Dollar discovered villagers had killed a foosa, he launched a poster campaign to “Save the fossa, save the harvest.” The campaign has been a success, says Dollar, and its effectiveness has inclined him to expand his educational efforts to the youngest members of Malagasy society, most of whom receive fewer than five years of formal education.
Recently my wife Kathy and I, both loyal Tennessee Volunteers since 1966, traveled to China for a vacation and Far East sightseeing. One of the unique features of the two-week excursion involved a scenic cruise down the Yangtze River, which flows from its headwaters in the Kunlun Mountains through the central part of China to the Yellow Sea.
Yosemite. Check. Yellowstone. Check. Rocky Mountain National Park. Eugene O’Neill’s home. Pinnacles National Monument. Check, check, and check. Hunter and Sylvia Wright have set a goal to visit every U.S. national park and monument, and they’ve already made a good dent in the list.
Many people say they want to travel when they retire. Globe-trotter Ginny Thigpen says, “Do it today.” This retired college professor from Gallatin, Tennessee, has visited six of the seven continents and has Antarctica on her schedule for ’08 or ’09.
Jack McConnell doesn’t have anything against golf; he’s played a few rounds in his day. But it takes too much time, the “retired” physician and healthcare activist says—time he could spend helping a sick neighbor or planning a clinic to provide free healthcare in Kenya.
Northern Uganda, where children have long been traumatized by a brutal war, there is a group of rescued girls who call themselves “University of Tennessee girls.” For Professor Rosalind Hackett and a group of students, such stories prove that their efforts to raise awareness—and money—are making an impact.
