When most people think about a university, they think about classrooms, laboratories, research papers and commencement ceremonies.
At Tennessee Tech University, those things are certainly significant parts of who we are, but they are not the whole story.
We believe institutions like ours must serve those beyond the university walls. While educating students is our highest calling, Tennesseans should also expect public universities to find other creative ways to advance the public good—not by wading into partisan debates, but by offering our expertise, creativity and resources in ways that strengthen the communities we call home.
The late Rev. Billy Graham once said, "We are not cisterns made for hoarding, we are channels made for sharing." That
is a fitting description of what a university should aspire to be.
Here at Tennessee Tech, nearly 11,000 students pursue an education that prepares them for bold futures, and more than a quarter are the first in their family to attend college. We are also proud to provide jobs to more than 1,200 faculty and staff members while supporting numerous contractors, vendors and local businesses.
Those contributions matter. Universities are powerful economic engines for their regions. But it cannot stop there.
There should be no better neighbor than a university. The knowledge and skills developed on our campuses should never be confined there.
That's why Tech created projects like Rural Reimagined. Launched in 2019, its goal is simple: leverage the full resources of the university to uplift Tennessee's rural, at-risk and economically distressed communities.
Over the years, Rural Reimagined has worked in all 78 rural-designated Tennessee counties on over 1,000 projects, all provided at no cost to the communities served. From tourism branding and economic impact studies to grant support and community planning, our faculty, staff and students are helping rural communities unlock opportunities they might not otherwise have the resources to pursue.
In Meigs County, Rural Reimagined designed a tourism website for the chamber of commerce. In Fentress County, our students worked with local officials to create a new county seal. In Putnam County, the initiative developed a logo and tourism plan for Monterey centered on the scenic Bee Rock Overlook, and the list goes on.
Rural Reimagined has grown into a partnership with the Tennessee Department of Economic and Community Development to place “Rural Fellows” directly in distressed and at-risk communities. Notably, one fellow was serving in Cocke County before Hurricane Helene struck, providing an on-the-ground connection as the community began its recovery.
We are also expanding opportunity for the next generation of Tennesseans through GEAR UP (Gaining Early Awareness and Readiness for Undergraduate Programs), which provides tutoring, mentoring and college-readiness support to more than 1,700 young students in some of Tennessee's most underserved counties, where only 13% of adults hold a college degree. By engaging students beginning in middle school and following them into their senior year of high school, the program helps keep them on track for postsecondary education.
Our engineering students are putting this same spirit of service into practice on a deeply personal level. For more than 25 years, the Tech Engineering for Kids project has tasked mechanical engineering students with designing and building custom assistive devices for children with special needs.
They have created adaptive musical equipment so a child born without arms could play the drums, a specialized lift so a young student with disabilities can safely enjoy a family swimming pool and an all-terrain wheelchair to help a paralyzed young adult explore the outdoors, among other projects. Each item is provided at no cost to the families served while giving our students invaluable real-world experience.
While we are proud of this work, we cannot be complacent. This fall, Tech's Center for Addiction Prevention and Support plans to open a free mental health clinic in Cookeville, providing counseling for adults while preparing students in our forthcoming Master of Social Work program to serve the Upper Cumberland.
Our sister institutions across the state are devoting meaningful resources to serve their neighbors, too—from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville's UP & UP Project, which provides a free mobile mental health clinic across a five-county area, to East Tennessee State University accounting students' involvement with the IRS Volunteer Income Tax Assistance program.
The challenges facing our communities cannot be solved by any one institution alone, but universities possess remarkable assets: talented people, innovative ideas and a mission rooted in the future.
Those gifts are not meant to be stored up for ourselves. They are meant to be shared.
Dr. Philip B. Oldham is the president of Tennessee Tech University in Cookeville, Tennessee.
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: Universities should make the best neighbors | Opinion
