Haslam College of Business - Melton Scholars

The Melton Scholars program pairs accomplished undergraduate students with business analytics and statistics faculty members to actively pursue academic research. Recipients receive funding and course credit for two semesters during their senior year while they conduct an original research project. By the time they graduate, they will have submitted a paper to an academic journal, presented at a research conference, and/or converted the research into cutting-edge instruction.

Our Benefactor

The Melton Scholars program is made possible because of a generous contribution by George Melton. Melton is a Tennessee native, born in Maryville, and a graduate from Red Bank High School in Chattanooga. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in statistics from UT in 1968. George met his wife Margaret (Peggy) at UT in 1967, and they are celebrating nearly 50 years together.

After serving in the U.S. Army Signal Corp, including spending one year in Vietnam, George enjoyed a successful 43-year career in the aerospace and defense industry, which included executive positions with Allied-Signal, Tracor, BAE Systems, EG&G and Wyle Inc.

Since graduating from UT, George has lived in New Jersey, Virginia, Maryland and Texas, and now lives in Ojai, California He is eager to support the university and to enrich students’ lives at UT by providing the opportunity for undergraduates to form meaningful connections with faculty members. These types of interactions are relatively rare at UT, and students would not have had access to this opportunity without Melton’s generous donation.

Additional details about the scholarship:

• Participants will be signed up for 3 units of BAS 494R each semester (up to 3 units can be used to satisfy BAS major/concentration/collateral requirements).
• Scholars will receive an award of $3400 for the year ($1700 disbursed at the end of Fall semester, the remainder at the end of Spring semester).
• Participants will meet with your matched faculty member weekly to ensure adequate and steady progress on the research is maintained.
• Scholars are expected to participate in at least one of the following (see links contained in https://studentsuccess.utk.edu/urf/ for more details)
  • the Exhibition of Undergraduate Research and Creative Achievement (EURēCA, an annual event that showcases research and creative activities by currently enrolled undergraduate students in collaboration with a University of Tennessee, Knoxville faculty mentor), which usually takes place in April.  See https://eureca.utk.edu
  • The National Conferences on Undergraduate Research, which usually takes place the end of March.  See https://www.cur.org/events-services/ncur/
  • The Undergraduate Research Symposium (URSA) for UT students (https://studentsuccess.utk.edu/urf/tag/ursa/)
  • Submit a publication to Pursuit, a journal at UT for publication of undergraduate research (https://trace.tennessee.edu/pursuit/)
  • Another avenue proposed by your research mentor if appropriate

Application procedure:

To be considered for the 2025-2026 academic year Melton Scholarship, please submit the following to Adam Petrie no later than April 6:

• Resume and unofficial college transcripts (which can be freely downloaded from myUTK)
• Statement of Interest – tell us why you want to be a Melton Scholar and what you hope to get out of the program!  What about analytics excites you?  Have you applied analytics methodology on your own “for fun”?  In your statement of interest, address how you envision your participation in the program will be related to your plans after graduation (graduate school, job, location, etc.).
• List of Interests and Skills – Since we want to pair students and faculty members with common interests, please outline what broad topics (supply chain, forecasting, customer segmentation, text mining, healthcare, etc.) appeal to you.  Also let us know what analytics techniques (e.g., regression, visualization, predictive analytics, market-basket analysis, clustering, time-series, web scrapting, etc.) are your favorites, if you have any so far.  Finally, address your software and/or programming proficiencies (Excel, R, Python, JMP, NCSS, etc).
• Write-up an Airline Delay Mini-Case

Evaluation and Acceptance:

• Qualified candidates will be contacted for an interview with a potential faculty mentor in the weeks following the application deadline.
• Offers will be made and formal acceptances must be completed before the Spring semester has concluded.