Students from Chattanooga should not instantly exclude the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga for higher education, said UTC Student Ambassador Alivia Lacy.
“Because they’re from Chattanooga, some kids say they don’t want to do UTC. But UTC is its own campus, its own thing,” she said.
UTC Campus Ambassadors Lacy and Kayia Walls talked to about two dozen Camp REACH students who took a tour of the university this summer.
Nevaeh Johnson, a 15-year-old East Hamilton sophomore in Camp REACH, said she feels like she could attend UTC.
“I liked it,” she said “It’s close to home.”
An advantage of coming to UTC is definitely the class sizes, said Lacy. The student professor ratio is about 17:1 when students get into their major. And the walk at UTC from one side of campus to the other is only about 10 to 15 minutes compared to the University of Tennessee at Knoxville where students must walk 20 minutes to class.
The purpose of taking students to UTC and hosting the camp is to prepare them for life, said Timiethea L. Delaney, who teaches music and drama at the camp. “(We want them) to believe in themselves and to believe in spite of things that may have been in the past,” said Delaney. “Whether it was good or bad, they can always achieve even higher goals to make a better life for themselves and their families.”
By Alexis Harden, 15
Camp REACH student journalist
(Camp REACH is a program of the Mary Walker Foundation)