Message from the Director – Fall 2021
Message from the Director – Fall 2021
Forging Ahead
Professor Jeffrey Kovac was the previous director of the College Scholars program and he has been extremely helpful to me as I took over the position last year, for which I am grateful. Kovac opened his director’s message in the fall 2020 College Scholars newsletter with these two lines: “When I was appointed director of College Scholars in the fall of 2011, my predecessor, Professor Christopher Craig, told me it was the best job at the University of Tennessee. After nine years as director, I think that was an understatement.”
Despite the struggles and stresses of life during Covid-time, I start my second year as director sharing this sentiment of Professors Craig and Kovac. I feel very lucky indeed to be able to work with this incredible group of students. The achievements of many of these students over this past difficult year are the main focus of this newsletter. The College Scholars themselves are what make this program great.
One of the main ways I get to interact with College Scholars is our weekly Honors seminar, held on Wednesdays. Last fall, we held these seminars via Zoom. In spring of this year, we held some seminars face to face and some on Zoom. This fall, we are holding all our seminars face to face. With most every College Scholar enrolled in the seminar this semester, it has been a good way to catch up and reconnect with one another. (We zealously wear masks and the room in which the seminar is held is quite large, allowing decent social distancing.)
One of my main goals as director is to increase diversity and inclusion in the College Scholars program. We continue to make strides toward the former goal. We are trying to reach the latter goal in a number of ways, one of which is through peer mentoring networks that were established in fall of 2020. This was most assuredly not the optimal time frame in which to start these networks, given the pandemic and the virtual nature of our meetings, but some groups were able to meet over the course of the academic year. This fall we have set aside some time in the weekly College Scholars seminar for these peer mentoring network groups to get together and talk. Each group comprises five to seven students with a diverse array of interests, programs of study, and year at UT (sophomores to seniors).
Another of my main goals as director is to grow the program. This past spring, we had six College Scholars graduate. Since late summer of 2020, though, we gained eight new College Scholars. We have planned a number of approaches to increasing applications to College Scholars. Soriya Cooper and Emily Morgan (two of those eight new College Scholars) and I recently met via Zoom with the advisors of the different departments and units in the College of Arts and Sciences to talk (brag?) about the College Scholars program. We are forming an outreach committee whose task will be to try to recruit new applicants. We plan to table on the pedestrian walkway of UT a few times each semester to talk with students about the program. We are also forming a swag committee to update College Scholars Program merchandise to help spread the word about us around campus.
Over the past year we had a couple of our alumni advisory board members rotate off the board, and we thank them for their work to help strengthen the program. We have added three new members to the Board – Desta Bume, Kevin Burdette, and Amelia Parker – and brief introductions to them can be found in this newsletter. In addition to the annual board meeting held each spring (held virtually this year), we have started quarterly meetings via Zoom, to generate ideas and help make sure we are all keeping on task to build and strengthen this amazing program. One idea that came out of these meetings was to try to increase current and alumni College Scholars networking on LinkedIn. Current College Scholars are interested in building relationships with alumni, and LinkedIn seems like an ideal platform for this.
In other news, Professor Jeffrey Kovac and his wife Susan started an endowment for our program in 2019. Jeff is professor emeritus in the Department of Chemistry and Susan was an instructor in the law school and also a child advocacy attorney with the Tennessee Department of Children’s Services. Their endowment will ultimately provide funding to support a visiting scholar each year, and we look forward to that first visitor! Alumni and friends may give to the endowment securely online at giving.utk.edu/Kovac, and can support other College Scholars funds at scholars.utk.edu/giving.
Two College Scholars who graduated in 2020 were particularly helpful to me as I transitioned that summer into becoming the new director. I know that they also have been helpful to a number of current College Scholars. They are Maya Bian and Courtney Wombles, and we catch up with them briefly in this newsletter.
Although the delta variant continues to make life challenging for us all, we look forward to this academic year and to 2022. I would love to hear from you – please keep in touch via email at scholars@utk.edu or phone at 865-974-3975.