Students in UTC’s Innovations in Honors program are changing the city’s transportation game.
As part of Dr. Jordan King’s Innovation Lab, housed in the UTC Honors College, students have spent the 2024-25 academic year coming up with ideas and working with the Chattanooga Area Regional Transportation Authority (CARTA) to address issues in Chattanooga’s public transit system.
Earlier in the school year, students met with CARTA representatives and leadership to discuss potential ideas. CARTA personnel then visited the Innovation Lab classroom to hear their proposals.
To cap off the experience, the students will soon share their ideas at Chattanooga’s City Hall.
“The students have gone from feeling like they’re students at the beginning of the year to now feeling like they’re consultants, partners and collaborators with CARTA,” King said.
He explained that each student group contributes differently—with some focusing on gathering data, others testing solutions and some implementing ideas like social media campaigns to strengthen connections between UTC and CARTA.
“The idea is that every group does something that at least helps make something possible in the future,” he said.
One student group includes Catherine Wood and AJ Galluzzi—whose work involves identifying ways to increase awareness and accessibility of CARTA’s free downtown shuttle service.
“At the very beginning of the year, CARTA gave us a list of all the problems they had. They were just like, ‘Here’s everything. Fix it,’ explained Wood, a sophomore modern and classical languages and literatures major from Chattanooga.
Their group chose to focus on the shuttle system by improving outdated maps, creating more accessible routes and raising public awareness about the service.
“A lot of people don’t know the shuttle system is actually free to use,” Wood said. “However, the maps are super outdated and hard to get around.”
Early in the process, they realized some of their proposed routes were physically impossible due to the size and movement of the bus, while others were too costly due to funding constraints.
“We started with the idea of making new routes and spent a little over a month thinking about how we can make it work,” said Galluzzi, a senior from Nashville majoring in both economics and finance. “When we met with CARTA, one of the people said, ‘We looked at your routes and one of them we can’t do because the shuttle system can’t make that turn.’
“Another one said, ‘This route is long and we really want to do it, but we don’t have enough funding.’”
Despite the challenges, the students found a new focus for their project—the closure of the Walnut Street Bridge.
“The shuttle is a way that connects people who don’t have cars and transportation downtown,” Wood said. “We want to keep that going and expand it because right now, there’s the issue with the Walnut Street Bridge. With its closing, people can’t access the North Shore area on foot, so we’re trying to get the shuttle system up and moving.”
Another student group, Lola Baker and Daniela Salas, focused on improving transportation access for Chattanooga’s Hispanic community.
“Our main piece of feedback was that they wanted us to focus on an underrepresented community,” said Baker, a sophomore environmental science major from Nashville.
Salas, a junior social work major and international student from Mexico, helped introduce La Paz—a Chattanooga advocacy group for the Latino community—as a community partner, recognizing the organization’s connections with the city’s Hispanic population.
The goal, Baker and Salas said, is to create presentations and learning sessions that educate Hispanic residents on how to navigate CARTA’s transit system.
“It’s not always easy to figure out how to use CARTA—and for someone who doesn’t speak English, it’s even harder,” Salas said. “We are just trying to get out there and give them information in their first language to explain how they can get around without a car.”
Salas, who moved to the U.S. from Mexico two years ago, knows what language barriers are like and how they can make navigating the Chattanooga area difficult.
“When I started school, it was really hard for me,” she said. “I didn’t really speak English, and I also know that if you are here and you speak Spanish, you use Spanish with your family and friends. You don’t really have the need to learn English unless you have to use it at work or school, so a lot of people never fully learn it.”
With their work, along with the hours of research and collaboration from the other groups, students in the Innovation Lab could bring about significant change to the city of Chattanooga and its transportation landscape.
Although not every project will come to fruition, King said the student’s ideas may inspire CARTA initiatives down the road.
“Sometimes it’ll be more about colle
cting information that helps lead to a better decision on something in the future,” King said. “Other times, it’s about testing something out and getting feedback that maybe suggests, ‘Here’s how we could tweak that in the future and do it better.’ Other times, CARTA is actually implementing something.
“It looks different for every group, but the overall goal is: How can the students do something that is a positive learning experience for them but also helps CARTA identify how to make better decisions or have a bigger impact on the types of things they want to do moving forward?”
King also said that by presenting to the city, students will be able to showcase their research and learn how to communicate their ideas to community leaders and stakeholders—an essential skill no matter their career path.
“It’s a celebration of their learning,” he said, “but they’re getting to participate in decision-making and planning and all these things for the city, too, which is really cool.”
Scott Wilson, CARTA’s chief of staff, commended the students for their creativity—as well as their strong focus on practical solutions.
“We were particularly surprised by the creative approaches to integrating technology with traditional transit solutions—especially the ideas around personalized mobile experiences that would make transit more intuitive for first-time riders,” Wilson said.
He said some of the students’ ideas could easily fit into CARTA’s current system, like improving digital communication and making route maps easier to understand.
One idea that could be put to use right away, he said, is the social media campaign created by one of the student groups.
“The work of the social media team can be integrated immediately and provide a foundation for further collaboration,” he said.
Wilson, along with Chief Administrative Officer Veronica Peebles and Communications Specialist Savannah Ward, were the three CARTA representatives who visited the Innovation Lab to provide feedback on the students’ presentations. The three of them also happen to be UTC alums.
Wilson described it as a “full circle” moment.
“There’s something special about contributing to the education of the next generation of Mocs,” Wilson said. “I see in these students the same curiosity and potential I had when I walked the campus, and it’s rewarding to help them understand real-world applications of their studies while potentially shaping the future of public transit in the city we all call home.
“My UTC experience helped me find my voice and purpose, and I hope our collaboration with the honors program does the same for these promising students.”
Students also had a chance to work closely with CARTA CEO Charles Frazier.
“The UTC honors students have given CARTA something invaluable—fresh vision,” Frazier said. “Their journey from creative concepts to practical solutions demonstrates exactly why these partnerships matter. They’ve identified opportunities in digital engagement and user experience that align perfectly with our strategic priorities.
“By investing in these bright minds today, we’re not just improving transit now—we’re cultivating tomorrow’s public transportation advocates and leaders.”
