Honors College students go on ‘walkabout’ in Chattanooga

READING THE CITY

By Sarah Joyner

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.

It’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.

Assigned to explore the Fort Wood district and its neighboring community, Lincoln Park, freshmen Maggie Leslie, Aaron Niedzielski, Nancy Penrod and Mitaire Arhagba make their way back through campus and pose for a photo by the “Fortwood Historic District” sign at Palmetto and Vine streets. (How to spell the neighborhood’s name depends on who’s spelling it.)

Hailing respectively from Murfreesboro, Memphis, Dunlap and Smyrna, Tennessee, all four are new to living in Chattanooga. Three of the four—Leslie, Niedzielski and Arhagba—had visited the city only a handful of times each before moving into their campus dorms a few days prior. Living in Dunlap, Penrod has often visited Chattanooga.

The group immediately heads to the Mayor’s Mansion Inn at the intersection, where they walk past a man sitting leisurely on the porch and through the front door. The visit is completely unplanned, but the group is still greeted warmly by an inn employee who happens to be a fellow UTC student.

By the time the tour ends, they have seen every bathroom in the place and been invited to join their tour guide on the club sports ultimate Frisbee team at UTC.

The group continues through Fort Wood, reading the sidewalk pavers that denote the year each house they pass was built and by whom. They stop to meet a friendly calico cat who meows a greeting from a perch beneath a bird bath. They wave down a woman jogging up the sidewalk toward them.

She pauses to take AirPods from her ears and catch her breath before responding to, “So what’s the community like in this neighborhood?”

The group of students strike gold with the question.

The runner introduces herself as Jenny and says she lives one street over. She spends a solid 30 minutes giving the group a crash course in all things Fort Wood and offering some advice for getting through the next four years of college. She has two college-age sons, she adds.

From Fort Wood’s role in the Civil War to housing the city’s first hospital—and explaining the nearby location of today’s Erlanger Baroness campus—Jenny regales the group with the neighborhood’s history. She points to a large brick building behind the students, explaining how it was a school later converted to apartments. She invites the group to join the Friday night neighborhood parties.

“UTC students are always welcome,” she says.

Then she points to another house in the neighborhood.

“That’s the mayor’s house. Go knock on his door and ask him about recycling.”

Maybe she was kidding, but the four waste no time marching to the front door and knocking. They are greeted by five dogs, barking with tails wagging, but no answer from Mayor Tim Kelly. It is mid-morning on a Thursday, after all, and chances are he’s taking care of city business, not hanging around the house.

The group later explores Lincoln Park and notices some major differences between it and Fort Wood, although the two neighborhoods are separated only by McCallie Avenue. Smaller house sizes and lots. Fewer large, shady trees to escape the sun beating down in the August heat.

Later in the afternoon, lounging in the air conditioning of the Guerry Center Reading Room, the Honors freshmen reconvene. Groups had explored neighborhoods like North Shore, Southside, Highland Park, Orchard Knob, Saint Elmo and Ridgedale.

Some took the bus, the electric shuttle or contemplated the city’s bike-sharing program to get from their starting location at the EPB Building to reach their assigned neighborhood.

They share the day’s adventures. Who they met. Who talked to them. What they noticed. What they learned.

Their discussion is met with commentary and historical context from O’Dea and his daughter, Meghan, an Honors College student who earned a bachelor’s in English in 2010 and a master’s in creative writing in 2016, both from UTC.

After the walkabout, students say their impressions of Chattanooga are reshaped.

That’s one of the many goals of this exercise, explains Linda Frost, dean of the Honors College.

“We hope they [students] gain several things: a burgeoning sense of community with their fellow explorers, an understanding of how close downtown Chattanooga is to campus and a little better sense of Chattanooga overall.

“We hope they learn to ride the bus and/ or take out a bike and certainly to better appreciate the wonders of seeing as a walker.

“We hope they get a better feel for this place they are going to call home for the next four or five years, and we hope to nurture and further spark their curiosity about life and world around them, no matter what that might be.”

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.

— Blythe Bailey, Chattanooga Department of Transportation administrator