At Home in The Water
When Christine Haggerty registered for a SCUBA class in 2017, her goal was to fulfill a physical education requirement for her degree at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Instead, she discovered a passion for diving.
At first, Haggerty felt claustrophobic and wasn’t sure she wanted to continue. “My SCUBA instructors helped me feel comfortable in the water,” she says. “If they didn’t give such positive input at the start, I might have given up.” Thankful that she didn’t, Haggerty has since earned three SCUBA certifications and gone on multiple dives in local quarries and a freshwater spring near Ponce de Leon, Florida.
“There are lots of fish, sunken boats, and manmade underwater caves there,” she says. “It’s always really fun.”
While she has yet to dive in the ocean, Haggerty says doing so is her next goal. For now, she enjoys dropping in on SCUBA classes on campus and helping to reassure students who are new to diving.
Haggerty came to the Haslam College of Business with an interest in marketing, but discovered a love for management through an introductory business administration course. Now a senior, she’s majoring in management with a collateral in information management and a minor in entrepreneurship. While she doesn’t see herself starting a business right away, Haggerty says entrepreneurship has piqued her interest. “It’s made the idea of someday owning a business seem more attainable,” she says. “That knowledge and background is always good to have.”
As a freshman, Haggerty joined the Delta Gamma sorority to get to know other students. “I’m from Maryland, so I didn’t have friends when I came,” she says. Haggerty became the sorority’s director of social events, managing the budget for large
gatherings.
Following her graduation in December 2020, Haggerty joined Bechtel as a project controls engineer in Waynesboro, Georgia, just south of Atlanta. The move, coincidentally, put her much closer to the ocean, where she will be able to finally get some salt-water diving under her belt.
“I’m doing cost reporting and scheduling for a power plant construction project,” she says. “I’m looking forward to learning all I can in my new role.”
