Ryan “Rhino” Westbrooks relocated to the East Tennessee area in August of 2023 for his wife’s job at Smith & Wesson. A twice-deployed member of the Massachusetts Army National Guard, Westbrooks wasn’t sure how the transition would impact him. Any worries were resolved once he enrolled at the University of Tennessee.

Westbrooks is a senior in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering. He is taking six classes this semester while also serving as a student teaching assistant for three classes with Professor Floyd Ostrowski and a research assistant for the East Tennessee Initiative for Smart Energy Management (ETISE) program.

“I absolutely love it here,” said Westbrooks, who turns 48 in December. “Most of the professors are professors of practice, which I really appreciate. I appreciate that they have people who lived it and have been in the real world and seen the theories at work.”

Westbrooks will be celebrating Veterans Day with a sense of gratitude for the community and support he’s found at UT. He’s fully immersed himself into campus life, joining clubs, volunteering for activities, and attending nearly all sporting events.

Westbrooks is a social engagement peer mentor for the Veterans Impact Program (VIP) within the Veterans Success Center. VIP is a one-semester cohort program for incoming student veterans that supports their transition to UT.

“It helps the veteran students know that there’s a strong community here that they can lean on. It’s mostly geared towards incoming students who are new to the area. They don’t know anybody here,” Westbrooks said. “There are a lot of non-traditional students who are trying to adjust from military lifestyle to a bigger campus lifestyle, and we tend to relate to each other far more than we can relate to other students.”

More Than a ‘Dad Figure’

Westbrooks enlisted in the Army at 17. He came from a military family. His father was a Marine in Vietnam, one his grandfathers was in the Army and served in World War II, and another grandfather was in the Navy.

“None of them ever talked about or ever pushed it on any kids. I just looked at it for long-term goals,” Westbrooks said. “We weren’t a wealthy family by any means, and originally, it was more about a balance between a sense of duty and community and a sense of some way to pay for college.”

Westbrooks was a medic for 10 years with the Army National Guard. He was deployed twice, including to Bosnia in 2001 on the same week of the 9/11 attacks.

Before enrolling at UT, Westbrooks had taken college classes off and on for 20 years in different majors. He received his associate’s degree at a junior college while raising a family and working various jobs at companies like Hasbro and Smith & Wesson.

“I worked with manufacturing for 25 years, and I’ve always worked with engineers and helped them with their jobs. That got me interested in majoring in engineering,” Westbrooks said. “I love to problem solve. I love fixing things, and I like to make things easier to do and streamline things. In industrial engineering, we’re doing a lot of problem solving and making things better—better for more people, better for workers, better for a company, and better for the system as a whole.”

As a disabled veteran, the US Department of Veterans Affairs is paying a stipend for Westbrooks’ education at UT.

He is scheduled to graduate in May and plans to stay one more year for his master’s degree. He has a 3.92 GPA and is being initiated this week into Tau Beta Pi, the oldest national engineering honor society in the country.

The father of five is surrounded in his classes at UT by students who are as young as his children. He isn’t deterred by the age difference, especially when it comes to mentoring other veterans.

“I am more than just that dad figure who’s in class. They can relate to me and understand my mindset better,” he said. “They say, ‘Oh this is Rhino. He’s served too. He knows the stuff we’ve been through. He’s been there before.’ We have that shared experience so we can gravitate to each other.”

Life of Service

Over the summer, Westbrooks went to Costa Rica with the Clay and Debbie Jones Center for Leadership and Service. He volunteered more than 200 hours at the Big Orange Pantry on campus this past summer and plans to do more in the winter.

“I’m big on giving to the community. I’ve always been,” he said. “My mother actually founded a soup kitchen up north at her church, so I think I get a lot of that from her.”

Westbrooks and his wife attend as many UT sporting events as possible. Last spring, he finished No. 1 in Rowdy Rewards student attendance with a record 15,650 points. He has season tickets for men’s basketball, women’s basketball, and women’s volleyball, and is on the waiting list for softball and football

“My wife and I just love to be involved. We get to as many games and matches as we can to support the Vols and Lady Vols,” Westbrooks said. “We really feel a sense of pride and connection with everyone when we are there.”

Although Westbrooks rarely misses any classes or events at UT, he is making an exception for Veteran’s Day. He’s already alerted his professors about his potential absence. He plans to spend the day with a group of veterans enjoying each other’s presence and the free food provided by local establishments.

“That is my holiday. It means more to me than my birthday,” Westbrooks said. “Unlike other holidays that people celebrate together, Veteran’s Day is the only holiday that a select few have earned the right to celebrate. Whether or not they were deployed, whether or not they saw combat, regardless of their role in the military or the branch in which they served, veterans wrote a blank check to their country, willing to sacrifice everything.”

Contact 

Rhiannon Potkey (865-974-0683, rpotkey@utk.edu)