Research Opportunities
Research is a priority for the campus. We consider effective teaching and faculty involvement in scholarship, research, and creative activities as interdependent. Our goal is to foster your intellectual growth and application of your new knowledge. To this end, graduate faculty members involve students in their research on a regular basis.
For example, master’s students in Environmental Science study the interaction of water quality on fish and mammals; MBA students manage financial portfolios; English students explore the rhetoric of media; doctoral students in Learning and Leadership analyze assessment models; and doctoral students in Computational Engineering engage in studies of drag resistance.
Read about the lastest research published and presented by our faculty.
Research Emphasis
Unique to our campus and internationally recognized for its pioneering work is the National SimCenter, a computational engineering research and education center that specializes in high-fidelity, physics-based computational modeling and simulation. SimCenter researchers use high-performance supercomputing to solve physical problems that arise in engineering analysis and design applications from any engineering discipline.
The National SimCenter is expanding and adapting its technology base to additional research areas that are vital to the nation’s long-term security and economic well being. These areas include solid and fluid mechanics, electromagnetics, energy and mass transport, chemical reactions, and materials science. The National SimCenter has also opened a new Alternative Energy Laboratory devoted to fuel-cell experiments.
Another research partner on campus advances clean transportation technologies to promote a healthy environment and energy independence through research, education and technology transfer.
The Hamilton County Center for Entrepreneurial Growth, designed to help high-tech start ups move rapidly and successfully from idea to successful implementation, is also located on UTC’s campus.
The Graduate School sponsors an annual research day where you can present posters and papers for critique by your peers, faculty, and community experts. Awards are presented for outstanding contributions.
To enhance research efforts on campus, the University received last year over $13 million in external funding.
Research Day 2007
Seven UTC graduate students received awards for outstanding presentations and papers in the recent Seventh Annual Graduate Research Day.
Awards for outstanding presentations of research projects were made to the following students for their respective topics:
- Justin Conley (Environmental Science) “Pharmaceutical Concentrations in the Tennessee River”
- Chara Davis (Secondary Education) “ An Investigation of Homogeneous versus Heterogeneous Groupings in Cooperative Learning Situations”
- Louie Elliott (Computational Engineering) “Fuel Cell Simulation and Design Optimization”
- Miyuki Tatsumi (Computer Science)
Awards for outstanding research papers were made to these students:
- Justin Lewis (English) “God Must Be Dead If You’re Alive: The Dead Kennedys, Fantasy Themes, and the Construction of Politipunk’s Rhetorical Sphere”
- Michael Wade (Computer Science) “An Investigation of the Soduko Puzzle”
- Barbara Zielke (Public Administration) “The Influence of Increased Eligibility Requirements for Federal Funding on Public Radio Station Programming Decisions”
The Graduate School is now accepting proposals for Research and Scholars Day 2008.
