President Phil Oldham’s new initiative Grand Challenge, is helping increase student involvement in rural areas throughout the state.
“The Grand Challenge is the big new initiative under President Oldham that is following Governor Bill Lee’s new executive order to serve rural communities,” Kinsey Potter, a professional communications intern for the Grand Challenge committee, said.
Grand Challenge’s goal is to develop and support the success of rural communities through academic discipline.
As one of 15 committee members, Potter said her main goal is to inform students about the initiative and how they can make a difference. She said the goal inspired her to create a new club on campus called Rural Reimagined.
“I thought why not create a club that gives students involvement and a home,” Potter said, “while also creating a place where students of all different majors of all diverse backgrounds can come together and use their skill sets to create a yearly service project.”
Potter said she uses the Grand Challenge as the foundation of the club and plans to do an annual service project in order to give back to rural areas.
“So, our main goal each year as a student organization is to go create the service project and go out and perform it and at the end of each year get something published to say what students at Tennessee Tech are doing,” Potter said.
Potter said she expects Rural Reimagined to become an official student organization at the end of the month.
“I am very excited to be a part of Rural Reimagined this year and I’m looking forward to helping innovate solutions to transform rural living,” Kester Nucum, vice president of Rural Reimagined said.
Rural Reimagined’s first meeting is during dead hour Nov. 21 at a location yet to be decided. The agenda for the meeting involves designing shirts for the club and outlining the spring semester’s project.
