College Scholars Program

Student Scholar Spotlight – Sophia Milen

Student Scholar Spotlight – Sophia Milen

Student Scholar Spotlight – Sophia Milen

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Student Scholar Spotlight – Sophia Milen

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Student Scholar Spotlight – Sophia Milen

Featured student work during their time as a college scholar in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Sophia Milen

My program of study is “Social Media and Political Science.” When I was graduating high school, one of the questionnaires that my school asked me to fill out was titled “Your Future.” The final question asked me: What is your dream job? I remember sitting in my English class staring at this question. After some time, I wrote down “Social Media Specialist in the White House Office.”

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, the intersection of social media and politics has fascinated me. I was destined for a Model UN conference in high school, only for it to be delayed for a week due to a sickness, then for it to be postponed until further notice due to an epidemic, and finally canceled, due to a pandemic. Guess how I found out that it was canceled? Through an Instagram post, published by the host organization.

Then, for the following eight months, I was pushed to learn online, communicate online, and watch politics online. In becoming intimate with the political landscape on social media, I saw that these two were inextricably connected and were begging to be understood. Thus, with the ever-increasing number of people online combined with the rising percentage of politically active citizens, I knew I had to studythis combination of subjects.

Student Scholar Spotlight – DeShala McDuffie

Student Scholar Spotlight – DeShala McDuffie

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Student Scholar Spotlight – DeShala McDuffie

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Student Scholar Spotlight – DeShala McDuffie

Featured student work during their time as a college scholar in the College of Arts and Sciences.

DeShala McDuffie

My program title is “Racial Disparities in Public Health.” I am also on a pre-medicine track, so the goal of my project is to view the healthcare system from a social science perspective.

Most of the time, pre-medicine focuses on hard science in terms of health and the details that are involved in human life. However, my program serves to combine the hard sciences with coursework that heavily speaks to social and psychological determinants of health.

My senior project is titled “Influence of Marital Status on Physical Activity among Stroke Survivors.” Approximately 795,000 people in the United States suffer from a stroke each year. One of the most critical aspects of recovery is returning to physical activity as it strongly improves the quality of life for stroke survivors.

Student Scholar Spotlight – Perri Mahfouz

Student Scholar Spotlight – Perri Mahfouz

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Student Scholar Spotlight – Perri Mahfouz

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Student Scholar Spotlight – Perri Mahfouz

Featured student work during their time as a college scholar in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Perri Mahfouz

My program of study is called “Medical anthropology and Global Healthcare.” It is the study of how health and illness are shaped, experienced, and comprehended in relation to cultural, historical, and political forces.

Medical anthropology, a branch of social and cultural anthropology, is concerned with the study of disease, recovery, medical procedures, the provision of healthcare, and biotechnologies in various communities. The term “global health” refers to population health in a global setting and is described as the field of study, research, and practice that prioritizes equity in health and the improvement of health for all people worldwide, particularly those in at-risk populations.

Student Scholar Spotlight – Sarah Lange

Student Scholar Spotlight – Sarah Lange

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Student Scholar Spotlight – Sarah Lange

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Student Scholar Spotlight – Sarah Lange

Featured student work during their time as a college scholar in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Sarah Lange

After witnessing a pressing need for addiction advocacy while scribing in rural emergency rooms around Knoxville, I created the “Addiction and Behavioral Neuroscience” major through the College Scholars Program. I noticed that, despite the opioid crisis disproportionately affecting East Tennesseans, stigmas prevailed in our region that discouraged at-risk individuals from seeking care. Determined to address this health disparity, I now study the biological and socioeconomic basis of addiction and its best course of treatment, combining sociology, genetics, biochemistry, philosophy, neuroscience, and public health courses to evaluate how we can treat addiction not only at an individual level, but as an entire system.

My program examines the therapeutic and pharmaceutical strategies for addiction treatment with a complex understanding of an addiction’s behavioral and neurobiological effects on the brain. My effort to merge scientific with psychological and philosophical perspectives focuses on treating patients as people rather than diseases. My effort to apply scientific coursework to community initiatives highlights my holistic approach to healthcare and underscores my humanist perspective on patient care.

Student Scholar Spotlight – Soriya Cooper

Student Scholar Spotlight – Soriya Cooper

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Student Scholar Spotlight – Soriya Cooper

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Student Scholar Spotlight – Soriya Cooper

Featured student work during their time as a college scholar in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Soriya Cooper

I am a senior college scholar with a program titled “Humanitarian I/O Psychology” (HI/OP). HI/OP delves into workplace dynamics through a lens that extends far beyond the office walls. While traditional industrial-organizational (I/O) psychology focuses on optimizing productivity and employee wellbeing within businesses, HI/OP broadens this scope to examine the wider socio-spatial and environmental impacts of organizations on the communities they operate in.

My current focus with this program revolves around understanding the experiences of individuals facing homelessness. Specifically, I’m exploring how their interactions with service providers influence their decision-making during extreme weather conditions. By collecting and analyzing interview data, my aim is to offer valuable insights to local organizations working with this population. These insights can then inform strategies for improvement, benefiting not only the individuals served but also the employees and the organization as a whole.

Student Scholar Spotlight – Leah Cleland

Student Scholar Spotlight – Leah Cleland

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Student Scholar Spotlight – Leah Cleland

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Student Scholar Spotlight – Leah Cleland

Featured student work during their time as a college scholar in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Leah Cleland

My program is entitled “Adaptation Studies with an Emphasis on Writing and Directing for the Screen and Stage.” It’s a mouthful, but it essentially means I look at the translation of stories across media: book to film, book to stage, stage to film, etc. I love storytelling and discovering more about all the ways in which a story can be told. I do a lot of creative writing, especially screenplays, and I am currently working on a futuristic adaptation of Alexandre Dumas’s The Count of Monte Cristo as my senior project.

I have also done some work with the Clarence Brown Theatre. Last semester, I acted as an assistant stage manager for their production of Ken Ludwig’s Murder on the Orient Express, a stage adaptation of Agatha Christie’s novel of the same name.

Student Scholar Spotlight – Raghav Chari

Student Scholar Spotlight – Raghav Chari

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Student Scholar Spotlight – Raghav Chari

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Student Scholar Spotlight – Raghav Chari

Featured student work during their time as a college scholar in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Raghav Chari

My program of study is “The Philosophy of Physics.” In the evolving world of scientific discovery and theoretical exploration, the intersection of physics and philosophy has been an increasingly growing field, and multiple universities in the US and around the world have been adding it to their schools. Furthermore, the Journal of the Philosophy of Physics was founded last year, and each year more undergraduate institutions and now even some graduate institutions are offering degrees in the philosophy of physics as a program.

My program aims to bridge the gap between these two disciplines in a way that neither a major in physics nor a minor or second major in philosophy can fully achieve, with hopes that this could be a blueprint for the physics and philosophy departments at UT to join forces and offer a program in the Philosophy of Physics that many schools around the country are offering.

Student Scholar Spotlight – Bailey Cavner

Student Scholar Spotlight – Bailey Cavner

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Student Scholar Spotlight – Bailey Cavner

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Student Scholar Spotlight – Bailey Cavner

Featured student work during their time as a college scholar in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Bailey Cavner

My program of study is “Preventative Medicine in Rural Women’s Healthcare.” Women’s healthcare comprises two major portions, the scientific side and the social side. My program offers an amalgamation of these two perspectives by studying preventive medicine strategies via the physiological process of the human body, but also the healthcare policies and laws affecting the women of our society.

Women in rural communities are an underserved group of individuals. Due to a lack of resources, they face higher morbidity rates than their urban counterparts. I plan to explore the different roles of women in society: as mothers, leaders, athletes, and patients. Preventative medicine includes mental and physical health. This is why my program blends psychological evaluation with physiological evaluation. Both aspects aim to inform the patient on how to live the healthiest life from birth. It is imperative to understand how the human body ages and the health problems an individual will face at all stages of life.

Student Scholar Spotlight – Ryan Beatty

Student Scholar Spotlight – Ryan Beatty

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Student Scholar Spotlight – Ryan Beatty

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Student Scholar Spotlight – Ryan Beatty

Featured student work during their time as a college scholar in the College of Arts and Sciences.

Ryan Beatty

I’m a senior Haslam Leadership Scholar (formerly called the Haslam Scholars Program) and College Scholar studying “Narrative and Comparative Border Studies.” My program blends perspectives and methodologies across political science, sociology, geography, anthropology, and journalism to ponder questions like: What is a border? What are the implications of narratives on immigration and border policy decisions? How do different populations perceive and understand borders?

My senior project engages with these questions through qualitative research, where I have chosen images and videos from stories tagged with “border” or “immigration” from the top two most-viewed news sources in the United States—Fox News and MSNBC. Then, I will conduct qualitative interviews with Latino immigrants, an interview before showing the visuals, and an interview after showing the visuals. I hope to learn more about immigrant attitudes towards prevailing narratives surrounding immigration, the perceived differences across news sources, and even the research process.

The Universal Language

The Universal Language

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The Universal Language

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The Universal Language

Jay Raman headshot

Mark Twain said that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes. If so, that might explain how two musically inclined college scholars more than a decade apart ended up collaborating on a cultural diplomacy project in Colombia.

Jay Raman (’97) and Anne Buckle (’11) only met a few years ago, but they followed strikingly similar paths. As college scholars, they both designed programs blending international relations with music and spent semesters abroad in Europe. Raman continued his studies at Harvard Law School, while Buckle pursued a master’s degree in arts advocacy from Harvard’s School of Education.

Raman joined the Foreign Service after two years as a lawyer. His work has focused on cultural exchange, including programs that bring US artists overseas to engage with foreign audiences.

Buckle was a two-time State Department intern, and she came very close to joining the diplomatic corps herself before opting to move to Nashville to pursue a career in music

These parallel paths finally intersected when Raman came across an article about Buckle in the w magazine that described her Three Chords project, which helps young refugees express themselves through music. Raman was posted to the US Embassy in Colombia, a country that is still emerging from decades of internal conflict. When Raman learned about Buckle’s work with vulnerable communities, he reached out to see if she might be willing to share her talents with Colombian youth.

She immediately agreed and was matched with the embassy’s Youth Ambassadors program, which provides skills training to young social leaders from under-served populations.

One afternoon, Buckle logged onto a Zoom platform with 18 Youth Ambassadors and two mentors. After a brief icebreaking session, they began to write. Over the course of three hours, she coaxed them into expressing thoughts and ideas that slowly coalesced into music. By the end of the session, they had written a brand-new song from start to finish, emphasizing their role as global changemakers.

Buckle’s method opens up a world of possibilities for cultural exchange. Instead of just performing for an audience, she engages with them to help them discover something new and original. This is an incredible resource for diplomats like Raman, who work to communicate US culture and values to foreign audiences.

Another great American writer, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, wrote that “Music is the universal language of mankind.” Buckle and Raman’s project shows that music isn’t just a way to communicate. It is also one of the most effective tools we have to build cross-cultural understanding.