Dr. Chandra Ward, assistant professor of sociology at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, spreads her hands six inches apart. That’s how close the self-described “goody-goody-two-shoes” came to rebelling in high school and joining a gang. “Well, when I was in high school, there were gangs, and being in a gang was popular. And I tried to join a gang. I asked this guy who I knew at my school who was in a gang, and he was like, ‘As a girl, in order to be in our gang, you have to be sexed i

For students of University of Tennessee at Chattanooga Assistant Professor and Athletic Training Clinical Education Coordinator Lynette Carlson, the proverbial picture is worth a thousand words. Or many more. Two years ago amid the pandemic, Carlson hatched the idea of single-slide graphic novels—four-panel comic strips drawn by a now-former student—to teach cultural competencies such as ethics, compassion and humility. One comic shows a female, wheelchair-bound basketball player who moves fro

The Chattanooga Police Department began tracking gun crimes closely after violence skyrocketed in 2016. But a data-crunching partnership with the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga created four years later shows marked decreases in gun-related crimes and could be preventing future crimes by taking guns off the street. The Gun Crime Intelligence Center (GCIC), funded in part by a federal Bureau of Justice Assistance grant and a collaboration of UTC and city police, has found that between 201

Even as a young boy growing up in a small German village right after World War II, Dr. Reinhold Mann was driven by his modest family to soar to great heights. Mann is among the research scientists leading the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga into the world of quantum technologies in his role as deputy vice chancellor for research. Another linchpin is Dr. Tian Li, a UTC assistant professor of physics who specializes in experimental quantum optics. The goal for UTC’s Quantum Initiative is

Nearly half of Chattanooga’s total land area consists of forest and urban tree canopy cover, but that number has plummeted by 43% since the mid-1980s while development has more than doubled – to 134%. Those numbers suggested a rising number of “heat islands,” many downtown, that are connected to chronic illnesses and dangerous and poorer neighborhoods, data states. Local civic leaders would not know any of this without the data generated by the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga’s Geograph

When Dr. Jannatul Ferdoush’s grandmother developed stomach cancer and died from it in Bangladesh, Ferdoush set her sights on unlocking the genetic mysteries of cancer. Ferdoush, who earned her doctorate degree from Southern Illinois University, is now a new tenure-track faculty member teaching genetics courses at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. The molecular biologist teaches classes in genetics, genetics lab, molecular genetics and virology, but also runs two laboratories that foc

For University of Tennessee at Chattanooga adult learner Zennia Nesmith, having severe attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder is tantamount to tracking one snowflake during a blizzard. Menopause whips the storm more. “Your memory suffers,” said Nesmith, 48, a Chattanooga native. “I can’t pay attention and can’t remember things. I have so many Post-it Notes scattered around the house.” UTC has been a godsend in several ways, she said. Nesmith has taken advantage of UTC’s Disability Resource C

Trying to create an exclusive bridal studio from whole cloth, Veatrice Conley turned to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga’s Urban Vision Initiative, which connects local entrepreneurs from underserved communities with student consultants to help pave the path to economic viability. Conley and eight other would-be entrepreneurs recently completed their first milestone, graduating from a six-week boot camp consisting of six four-hour sessions on Saturday mornings to stabilize their new b

With Little Debbie oatmeal creme pies selling like hot cakes, McKee Foods Corp. is looking for better traffic flow into and out of its Collegedale headquarters, such as a road-widening project contracted by the Tennessee Department of Transportation. The $100-million Apison Road project will be completed within about two years thanks to a cadre of University of Tennessee at Chattanooga graduates working and managing the project as employees of Charleston, Tennessee-based Wright Brothers Constru

Sherreda Peggs knew just what she had to do after her brother, Cinque, announced he was the salutatorian at their high school: She had to be valedictorian. The siblings, who played all manner of sports—even donning heavy coats in late fall to crash through the leaves in games of rugby at their Jackson, Tennessee, home—lovingly trash-talked each other throughout their childhoods. It continues today at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, where Cinque is a senior and Sherreda a junior. “W

Four years, and greyhound dog trainer Larry Conarty can’t shake the nauseating memories. He still recalls the festive atmosphere, the trainers who sipped beer, smoked marijuana and snorted cocaine after-hours at Coeur d’Alene Greyhound Park, priming themselves for 20 seconds of entertainment. An unlucky four-legged lady, a born loser on the track and unfit as a pet, was taken from her wooden crate, placed on a wet floor and prepped for the “Tijuana hot plate.” A stiff wire was oiled and shove

To federal prosecutors, the killing of a grizzly bear named Sy is just another case of poaching, a low-profile incident overshadowed by humans peddling cocaine, wildlife defenders say. But to research biologist Jon Almack, Sy’s death is a murder - and there is a suspect - that saddens him like the loss of a family member. In 1983, north of Priest Lake, Idaho, Almack trapped the bear, the first in the Selkirk Mountains, and buckled a radio collar around her dark brown neck. Almack, then a Univ

Claimants’ attorney fees in Florida have jumped 41.7% in the wake of the state Supreme Court’s ruling that capping those payments was unconstitutional.

A New Jersey lawmaker known for embracing the “recovery movement” has introduced legislation that would require all prescribers to comply with a strict protocol or receive no reimbursement for opioids.

Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine appears to be a man of his word. As some of you will recall, my Feb. 10 column dealt with proposed changes to the state’s special-education regulations. It’s a complicated process, but in short, these Virginia Department of Education proposals would eliminate or reduce parental involvement in how the state handles children with disabilities. My 5-year-old son has benefitted from Virginia’s regulations, which allow interested parents to advocate strongly for their children and win such accommodations as speech therapy. On a Feb. 21 visit to Bristol, Kaine attended an editorial board meeting of the Bristol Herald Courier. I handed him my Feb. 10 column and got him to promise he would read it on the flight back to Richmond.

By J. Todd Foster   | Editor   | When East Hamilton Middle-High School opened in 2009, it turned to Prater’s Flooring in Chattanooga for its gymnasium floor.When the NCAA wanted new floors for its men’s and women’s Final Four tournament in March 2009, it...

Fellow for News Leadership 2009 J. Todd Foster was named managing editor of the Bristol (Va.) Herald Courier in January 2007. He oversees the newspaper, as well as seven weeklies in Southwest Virginia. Foster is also in charge of working with the television partner, WJHL-TV in Johnson City, Tenn., and with TriCities.com. Foster joined the Bristol newspaper after four years as the top editor of The News Virginian in Waynesboro, Va. and since 2003 has won 38 Virginia Press Association awards, including 16 in 2005 for news, feature and opinion writing and page design. The Waynesboro paper won 106 statewide awards during Foster's 2003-06 tenure. A regular contributor to People magazine for four years, Foster learned the identity of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's secret Watergate source "Deep Throat" -- W. Mark Felt -- in 2002 but abandoned magazine and book projects with Felt's family in 2004 over issues of finance and ethics. Vanity Fair broke the story of Felt in 2005. Foster still freelances for the national magazine Campaigns & Elections and was a finalist for the national Genesis magazine award in 2000 for a six-month investigation for Reader's Digest into no-kill animal shelters across the U.S. He spent 14 years from 1985-1998 as an investigative reporter, specializing mainly in government corruption and animal abuse, for The (Portland) Oregonian, The Spokesman-Review in Spokane, Wash., the Pensacola News Journal and the Chattanooga Free Press. A native of Tullahoma, Tenn., Foster began his journalism career in 1978 as a 17-year-old sports editor for a weekly in Winchester, Tenn. He graduated from Middle Tennessee State University in 1982.

By J. Todd Foster  | There’s not a day that goes by that I don't think about my dad. He passed away nine yearsago come August, and his grave is the only one I’ve ever visited.Dad (technically he was my stepfather) taught me much: He introduced...

While the nation's struggling big media honchos bemoan the end of print, an obscure newspaper in the coalfields of southwestern Virginia turned off the endless white noise and captured a Pulitzer Prize. Let's look at the small picture. Instead of complaining about how American newspapers have lost 43 percent of their ad revenue in three years, the Bristol Herald Courier believed in the impossible. They dug for news, while others kept groaning about cutbacks.