Squinting in the sunlight, waving hello to familiar faces, chatting with former professors who still remember your name. This is the experience Utah Tech wants to provide for all their students.
A garden full of seeds must be watered for beautiful flowers to bloom. Utah Tech is much like that garden: it is full of potential, but it needs room to grow and the resources to help its students flourish. As the university’s headlines have been growing beyond the borders of our city, they have been catching the attention of students statewide, out of state and internationally. With that growth have come new programs, housing, and opportunities that prepare students for the outside world. I believe this growth is necessary because it opens doors that would not have existed before. It allows for our campus to unleash its full potential, preparing students to succeed.
However, Utah Tech must be careful that growing does not mean losing the smalltown feeling that made this university special in the first place. The challenge is not whether Utah Tech should grow, but how it can grow while still making students feel known, valued, and part of a community.
Growth has created more opportunities for students to find their place and prepare for life after college. As Utah Tech grows, so do the opportunities for students to become involved and challenge themselves. This semester, the university has reached over 100 clubs, giving students more places to find people with similar interests and goals. Programs such as Mock Trial push students to compete, collaborate, and prepare themselves for experiences beyond the classroom. Utah Tech’s Pickleball team has even reached the number one ranking in the nation, showing what can happen when students are given the resources and opportunities to grow. Like a garden, a campus needs more than seeds to flourish; it needs the resources and space to help those seeds grow.
Utah Tech has also seen an increase in students from around the world. This international community allows for the opportunity of learning from individuals with completely different backgrounds and experiences. Furthermore it gives students the ability to have hard conversations, opening our minds to different and similar ways of thinking around the globe. Through my French classes I have met many students from abroad, making connections otherwise I would not have been able to. I also learned things about other countries that I could not have in any textbook.
Through the Mock Trial Club, I have been able to compete against students from across the country. Standing in front of a jury and being challenged by another team is terrifying, but so rewarding. It is more than a competition. It is a challenge to stand with my opinion and defend it. Every competition, I gain more confidence, not just in my abilities, but also in myself as a person. Through this I have met countless incredible individuals who challenge me on perspectives I had never considered before. These people helped me step out of my comfort zone and grow beyond my own limitations, especially when I was so stuck on my perspective of the case. These opportunities become even more meaningful when our faculty helps students find and make the most of them.
One of the biggest parts of what makes Utah Tech feel so personal is the faculty. Professors not only strive to connect with students in class but want us to succeed in the real world and beyond. Advisors can point us towards new classes and opportunities as well as internships.
Professors also go beyond this by taking steps and using their own networks to allow us to explore our interests. A couple of days ago in one of my classes the professor brought in a group of people all involved in legal studies. In a prior class, one of my classmates mentioned wanting to become a court interpreter. My professor then took extra steps to add an interpreter to the panel that would visit our class.
Professors aren’t just teaching information: they’re helping us figure out how to use that knowledge in our futures. They listen to what their students want to pursue and find ways to help us reach those goals. This is what our university is about, it is about being noticed. Being noticed provides our students with experiences and connections that can follow them beyond their time at Utah Tech.
Like any garden our university needs space to grow, and it has used that to provide room for new students to grow. A garden still needs adequate water space and attention to allow all plants within the garden to grow in a healthy manner. The same will need to occur if Utah Tech is going to maintain, so the individual can continue to become and not end up being lost in the statistics of the university.
One of the things that makes Utah Tech special is having a professor who remembers your name, listens when you mention your goals, and uses their connections to help you find greater opportunities. I have been lucky enough to experience how meaningful that can be. But as classes become larger and the student body continues to grow, I have to wonder how easy it will be for professors to maintain those same relationships with every student. A professor can only give so much attention to each individual, and students can only feel noticed if they have the opportunity to be seen.
Growth should not be something Utah Tech fears. Instead, it should be something the university carefully manages and plans for. There has to be a point where the university asks not only how many students it can bring in but how many students it can serve while keeping the same feeling that everyone loves.
As we continue to grow it is crucial that students don’t get forgotten. The university should assist professors by regulating class sizes to allow for a more personal experience. Our students want to feel like they matter, they want to be noticed, and not just be some stranger in a large class.
Additionally, classes such as foreign languages should be advertised more, because they do not only concern themselves with languages, but also learning more about cultures around the world. It opens your horizon to new concepts you would have not learned otherwise.
Personally I believe Utah Tech should continue focusing on opportunities that will prepare students for the real world, especially more research, internships, and clubs that allow students to compete outside of Utah. They allow for us to apply our knowledge outside of the classroom, and become more well-rounded individuals.
Have you ever been to New York City? It is beautiful, and there is something exciting about being somewhere where nobody knows you. But there are also moments where you can feel like you do not matter. You feel as if you are one person among millions, not one person in a million.
Utah Tech needs growth to reach its full potential. A more diverse student body as well as better resources allow for bright ideas to form and spread. A campus that allows for students to have difficult discussions, is a campus that flourishes.
The goal should be to grow without losing what made students want to come here in the first place. Once the university becomes too focused on numbers to know its students, it may become just another university. And the reason many of us chose to come was because you were never supposed to feel like your presence was of no importance. You were supposed to feel like one in a million.
