Twenty members of the UT Flood Recovery Team receive Miles Memorial Award for Community Service for efforts to help East Tennessee in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene
KNOXVILLE, Tenn. – The University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture celebrated the accomplishments of some of its top faculty, staff, researchers and Extension experts at UTIA’s annual awards luncheon. The 2026 ceremony was held on the UTIA campus in Knoxville on August 4. Many of the awards are gifts made possible by faculty, alumni and friends of the institute.
UTIA Senior Vice Chancellor and Senior Vice President Keith Carver hosted the celebration and praised the honorees for their devotion to the land-grant mission. “Our UTIA staff and faculty continue to overwhelm me with their enthusiasm and unparalleled expertise,” he said. “I am always in awe of their dedication to providing real life solutions to the people of Tennessee. These award winners represent the efforts and accomplishments this past year that will most benefit all Tennesseans and society – impacts that will have lasting benefits through teaching, research and Extension for years to come.”
Among the numerous awards is the William T. Miles M.D. Memorial Award for Community Service. Named for the late William T. Miles, a respected medical doctor, this award was established by his son, the late Curtis W. Miles, a longtime devotee of the field trials at the Ames AgResearch and Education Center located near Grand Junction, Tennessee. Curtis W. Miles’ life philosophy was to “treat people like you want to be treated,” and so this award recognizes significant contributions and community service.
Twenty members of the faculty, staff and graduate students from multiple departments and colleges across the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, have collaborated, and are continuing their efforts, to help multiple communities recover from the effects of the devastating flooding that followed the aftermath of Hurricane Helene in late 2024. Team members have performed on all levels of the effort, from managing the immediate response – including staging needed supplies and managing massive amounts of debris from the cleanup – to performing in-depth soil analyses of the displaced substrates and helping land owners develop new land management and business plans. In some cases, the powerful flooding totally stripped the top soil from properties along rivers and creeks and scattered it on other properties downstream, offering scientists a unique opportunity to study the long-term effects of such devastating weather events on farming production, soil remediation and land reclamation. For the affected landowners, their efforts have offered hope for the future of their livelihoods.
Members of the UT Flood Recovery Team receiving the award included (listed alphabetically by department):
Sam Neary, Aaron Smith and Brad Wilson, Agricultural and Resource Economics
Shelli Rampold, Agricultural Leadership, Education and Communications
Tamara Alimurka, Hunter Armstrong, Ali Bledsoe, Sophie Fandino, Eminé Fidan, Shawn Hawkins, Andrea Ludwig, and Forbes Walker, Biosystems Engineering and Soil Science
Haochen Li, Civil and Environmental Engineering
Annette Engel, Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences
Gustavo Costa, Malerie Fancher, David McIntosh, Linus Parrish, Bruno Pedreira, and Annette Wszelaki, Plant Sciences
Justin McKinney, UT Northeast Tennessee AgResearch and Education Center
Another William T. Miles M.D. Memorial Award was given to Joe Smith, associate professor of veterinary clinical pharmacology and farm animal medicine in the College of Veterinary Medicine. Smith’s research pertains to clinical pharmacology of all species and focuses on pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics in large animals.
The University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture is comprised of the Herbert College of Agriculture, UT College of Veterinary Medicine, UT AgResearch and UT Extension. Through its land-grant mission of teaching, research and outreach, the Institute touches lives and provides Real. Life. Solutions. to Tennesseans and beyond. utia.tennessee.edu.