by Chuck Wasserstrom
Trailblazing Arielle Scalioni Building a Civil Engineering Career Arielle Scalioni’s path to a bachelor’s degree began in an Amazon rainforest, helping build a church that doubles as a medical clinic. “I spent a month there after high school. It really helped me see the effect you could have in helping construct all these infrastructures for communities,” said Scalioni, who received her bachelor’s degree in civil engineering as part of UTC’s spring ‘22 commencement ceremonies. “That helped me choose civil engineering as my major.” But this is not “the shortest distance from point A to point B is a straight line” story. Scalioni’s path is full of twists and turns.
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Arielle’s journey
Arielle Scalioni was a featured student speaker at the 2022 Scholarship Luncheon. Born in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Scalioni and her family emigrated to the U.S. when she was 4 years old. Her parents, Carlos and Arlete, moved a lot in search of better opportunities for the family, eventually arriving in Harrison, Tennessee, around eight years ago. Scalioni spent the bulk of her formative years in Massachusetts, Florida, Pennsylvania, and Tennessee, but her mother suggested she should have an experience outside of the country.
“I’m a third-culture kid,” she explained. “That’s part of our blood. We’ve always liked to move and experience new places. “Having moved from Brazil to the U.S., I moved back there to study in a boarding school for high school. I then decided to take a break because I wasn’t sure what I wanted to study in college.” It wasn’t a break in the true sense of the word, though. Scalioni enrolled at the Wildwood (Georgia) College of Health and Evangelism, now known as the Wildwood Center for Health Evangelism—a missionary school with an emphasis on health.
