READING THE CITY Honors College students go on ‘walkabout’ in Chattanooga By Sarah Joyner
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t’s the Thursday before fall semester begins. Dorms are unpacked. Freshman Honors students are still getting to know campus and one another. Today, they’ll get a crash course in Chattanooga. As they head out to explore the city, they are asked to read it like a poem. Look at it through a different lens, then another. Talk to the people they see. Seek answers to questions like, “What is the community here? What is it like to live here? Who lives here and why?” “If you get a little lost, that’s OK,” Associate Dean of the Honors College Gregory O’Dea explains to the large group of freshmen. This Honors College traditional walkabout has deeper ties to the National Collegiate Honors Council. The idea of exploring or mapping a city in this way is coined by the Council as “City as Text™.” UTC Honors College adopted “City as Text” for freshman orientation about five years ago. In fall semester 2021, O’Dea leads the freshmen to their first stop of the day—Miller Plaza in downtown Chattanooga, strategically chosen because of its location at the intersection of Martin Luther King Boulevard and Market Street at the heart of the city.
That’s exactly what Blythe Bailey, Chattanooga Department of Transportation administrator, emphasizes when he greets the group at their first stop. Everyone gathers on the stage at Miller Plaza, a place that frequently comes alive with evening music, weddings and folks stopping for a quick weekday lunch. “This represents a really important place for Chattanooga,” Bailey says. Knowing the where, why and what was in Chattanooga is a meaningful part of living here, he says. “This is going to be your home for the next four years. It’s important to know where you are and what the history is.” Bailey leads the group across Market Street and to the top of the eight-story EPB Building, where they take in vast views of the Scenic City. From Lookout Mountain to Missionary Ridge, the students get a bird’s-eye view of Chattanooga and a brief history lesson before they break off to explore the city’s neighborhoods. Students are divvied up into groups of four and handed a sheet of paper, assigning them a specific neighborhood to explore for the next four hours or so, before all meeting back at the Honors College headquarters in the Guerry Center on campus that afternoon.
Honors College freshmen take a unique reading assignment every August before the start of a new academic year. Instead of reading books or articles, they’re reading Chattanooga. 8 | The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Magazine