Chattanoogan: UT’s Savannah Clay Goes From Freshman Disappointment To Senior Torchbearer Award

When she was an incoming freshman at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville, Silverdale Baptist Academy graduate Savannah Clay of Ooltewah faced some initial disappointment.
 
She learned she had not been admitted to the school’s College of Nursing as she desired.
 
“I was really discouraged. It was the only place I wanted to go,” she recalled during a recent interview.
 
But taking a health-care perspective toward the situation, she gave herself a prescription – work hard that first year in school and possibly later be admitted. She also focused on helping others as well as herself, and she became involved in school-related service and extracurricular activities.
 
And the next year, after maintaining a grade point average of close to 4.0, she was indeed admitted into the nursing program. Now, she looks back on that initial adversity in a positive way, she said.
 
“I was so fortunate it did happen my freshman year because I don’t know if I would have worked as hard,” she said.
 
She also continued to stay very involved in student service and leadership groups, and even started her own projects, including working to educate people on the importance of cultural sensitivity in health care.
 
As a result of all this work, she recently received some more news from UT officials. But this was a little happier than the news received four years earlier – she was named one of the Torchbearers in this year’s graduating class.
 
To say being named a Torchbearer is a prestigious honor is almost an understatement. The university describes the Torchbearer recognition simply as “the highest honor UT gives its students.”
 
In recent years, the UT administration has started a tradition of letting the honorees know they have been chosen as Torchbearers by surprise, and this happened with her.
 
Miss Clay said she was sitting in a pediatrics class recently and the instructor told the students that a guest speaker was coming. However, some UT administrators soon walked in and said a Torchbearer was sitting in the class.
 
“I was excited but I wasn’t quite sure it was me,” Miss Clay recalled with a laugh. “I thought it might be someone else.”
 
However, she quickly learned she was the student of honor.
 
“It just felt very humbling and invigorating,” she said. “I could barely focus on my work. It made me really reflect on my time at the university and know I have affected people in a positive way.”
 
She is one of only seven graduating seniors receiving the honor this year and is the only Chattanooga area student. Also joining her as a Torchbearer is a familiar name – former Tennessee Vols quarterback Josh Dobbs.
 
“He’s a really good guy,” she said. “He is really humble with all he’s got going on for him.”
 
Miss Clay became acquainted with the Pittsburgh Steelers’ football draft pick not only through the Torchbearer recognition program, but also through serving as a member of the student Volunteer Team that helps with recruiting.
 
“I’ve worked every home game,” she said. “The families come up for the game and I spend time getting to know the families. I answer questions and offer the student perspective and help them navigate the UT experience.”
 
She has also done volunteer work related to people on the opposite end of the attention spectrum from the high-profile football team. That has included working with underserved Knoxville residents at the Volunteer Ministry Center and the Lost Sheep Ministry for homeless and low-income people.
 
She has also connected with Knoxville area Arab-Americans and learned to teach peers how to provide culturally appropriate care for that community.
 
Miss Clay, a nursing major and psychology minor, also worked with the UT Multicultural Mentoring Program for first-year minority students, saying she found it beneficial as a freshman mentee.
 
She arrived in the fall of 2013 among thousands of fellow freshmen after graduating from the small Silverdale Baptist Academy in a class of only 50 students. However, she did not find UT too intimidating.
 
“I made friends really quickly and enjoyed the bigger environment,” she said.
 
She also credited Silverdale with helping her, adding that she was involved at the school in the Beta Club, the National Society of Scholastic Scholars, did service work and played softball and volleyball.
 
Besides becoming well grounded in school studies in high school, she was also well rooted geographically in Chattanooga. Her mother, Sabrina Clay, attended Brainerd High, while her father, Chris Clay, went to the now-closed Kirkman and played football.
 
But perhaps her biggest influence as far as her career plans has been her grandmother, Mildred Moreland, who was a nurse.
 
“She worked at Erlanger for many years,” she said.
 
Miss Clay remembered that people would always come up to her grandmother when she was with her and thank her for her help in a health-care situation. Those experiences and a job shadowing experience in high school made her want to get into nursing, she said.
 
As fate would have it, Miss Clay will also begin working at Erlanger Hospital, too, in its critical care unit beginning in early June.
 
She will soon replace her Torchbearer award mementoes with a Caduceus pin, but not before taking a little time to look back on her UT career while going through this week’s graduation.
 
“It’s definitely been different and challenged me in ways I have never been challenged before, but I learned a lot,” she said.
 
Jcshearer2@comcast.net