Ishmael Beah, UT Yearbooks, Olympic Medalists, and other news.
Red flashing lights get our attention. Very bright red flashing lights, even more so. It doesn’t take a genius to figure that if your brake lights flash brighter than normal when you’re forced to stomp the brakes, the guy in the car behind you is likely to notice them more quickly. But it does take a genius—or at least people with a generous dollop of entrepreneurial know-how—to develop and market such a next-generation brake light—or to make a go of any innovative product or service. Entrepreneurs are a special breed, but they aren’t necessarily born with all the skills to succeed at the innovation game. Entrepreneurial talent can be nurtured, and inventions can be brought to market with a combination of knowledge and hard work.
Many parents have to coax, prod, and plead with their children to brush their teeth. But there was none of that last spring when Jeannie Petty gave toothbrushes to more than 500 Mayan children and demonstrated the correct way to brush to the crowd of eager learners. Fulfilling a dream she’d had since she was 8 years old, the 2006 UTHSC College of Allied Health Sciences dental hygiene graduate spent a week in Belize on a medical–dental mission serving the Mayan population. Petty remembers watching her dad, a dentist, depart on annual mission trips to Belize when she was a child.
This is a tale of two cities—Washington, D.C., and Nashville, Tennessee—and the two associate vice-presidents who represent the University of Tennessee in this season of darkness and light. Anthony Haynes is the director of state relations and heads UT’s Nashville office. Kurt Schlieter is director of federal relations and heads UT’s Washington office. In these times of tight budgets and uncertain politics, both at home and across the nation, Haynes and Schlieter are the university’s liaisons with the state and federal governments.
You can count on finding a riot of color among the blooms and foliage at the UT Gardens in Knoxville. This year, though, you’ll see more silver among the beds of annuals, perennials, herbs, and trees that abound throughout the 5 acres along Neyland Drive. The UT Gardens is celebrating its 25th, or silver, anniversary. In honor of the occasion, curator James Newburn (Knoxville ’95, ’08), gardens interim director Dr. Sue Hamilton (Knoxville ’80, ’95), and students are growing such silver plants as artemisia, dusty miller, and silver sage on the agriculture campus. They are also joining with the Friends of the Gardens to dedicate a new Friendship Plaza, a sweeping entryway designed to welcome the 50,000-plus visitors the gardens host each year.
It was as simple as telling someone to put the bag of fingers where the patient didn’t have to look at them. That, and having someone like Nicole Perez to know what was causing the patient, a 7-year-old boy, to be inconsolable. Perez (Knoxville ’04, ’06) is pursuing a Ph.D. in clinical psychology at UT Knoxville and taking part in a program that’s putting the campus on the leading edge of clinical psychology training.
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.
Pearl is the “Cow of the Month” at the Hatcher Family Dairy. Her hobbies are sunbathing and chewing cud. The 2-year-old Holstein is pregnant for the first time and spends her time relaxing on the farm. Since 1831, five generations of the Hatcher family have lived on and worked its almost-500-acre farm in College Grove, Tennessee. When Dr. Jennifer Hatcher graduated from the UT College of Veterinary Medicine in 2005, she became the third generation of UT graduates to join the family business that includes a dairy, a milk store, and Rock-N-Country Animal Clinic, a mixed animal practice her father, Dr. Charlie Hatcher, started when he graduated from veterinary college in 1984.
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.
U.S. Army Lt. Jeremiah Manning has a perfectly good excuse to put off finishing his master’s degree in civil engineering. He is stationed at Joint Base Balad in Iraq and won’t be coming home until February.
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 2008 Lady Vols brought home an unprecedented eighth NCAA women’s basketball crown. Tennessee Alumnus tips its hat to all the championship teams in Pat Summitt’s storied reign
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.
My bleary eyes gazed through a plate-glass mirage as the runway of Las Vegas’s airport drew a literal line in the sand. Sometimes the line between life-changing dreams and nightmares runs thin as the queen of hearts.
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.
