University of Tennessee


The University of Tennessee, Knoxville is a public land-grant research university in Knoxville, Tennessee, United States. Founded in 1794, two years before Tennessee became the 16th state, it is the flagship campus of the University of Tennessee system, with 14 colleges. It hosts more than 30,000 students from all 50 states and more than 100 foreign countries.
UT's ties to nearby Oak Ridge National Laboratory, established under UT President Andrew Holt and continued under the UT–Battelle partnership, allow for considerable research opportunities for faculty and students. Also affiliated with the university are the Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy, the University of Tennessee Anthropological Research Facility, and the University of Tennessee Arboretum, which occupies of nearby Oak Ridge. The university is a direct partner of the University of Tennessee Medical Center, which is one of two Level I trauma centers in East Tennessee.
UT is one of the oldest public universities in the United States and the oldest secular institution west of the Eastern Continental Divide. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity".

History

Founding and early days

On September 10, 1794, two years before Tennessee became a state and at a meeting of the legislature of the Southwest Territory at Knoxville, Blount College was established with a charter. The new, non-sectarian, all-male, white-only institution struggled for 13 years with a small student body and faculty, and in 1807, the school was rechartered as East Tennessee College as a condition of receiving the proceeds from the settlement devised in the Compact of 1806. When Samuel Carrick, its first president and only faculty member, died in 1809, the school was temporarily closed until 1820. When it reopened, it began experiencing growing pains. Thomas Jefferson had previously recommended that the college leave its confining single building in the city and relocate to a place it could spread out. In the summer of 1826, the trustees explored "Barbara Hill" as a potential site and relocated there by 1828. In 1840, the college was elevated to East Tennessee University. The school's status as a religiously non-affiliated institution of higher learning was unusual for the period of time in which it was chartered, and the school is generally recognized as the oldest such establishment of its kind west of the Appalachian Divide.

Reconstruction

The state of Tennessee was a member of the Confederacy in 1862 when the Morrill Act was passed, providing for endowment funds from the sale of federal land to state agricultural colleges. On February 28, 1867, Congress passed a special Act making the State of Tennessee eligible to participate in the Morrill Act of 1862 program. In January 1869, the Reconstruction-era Tennessee state government designated ETU as Tennessee's recipient of the Land-Grant designation and funds.
As a land-grant institution, ETU was bound not to exclude any citizens of the state on the basis of color or race. To get around the requirement, the university chose to pay tuition for Black students to attend a separate institution, Fisk University. The following year, in 1870, the Tennessee Constitution was ratified with a provision, Article XI § 12, that prohibited public schools from enrolling both Black and White students, a policy that remained in place until the 1950s.
In accepting the land grant funds, the university would focus upon instructing students in military, agricultural, and mechanical subjects. Trustees soon approved the establishment of a medical program under the auspices of the Nashville School of Medicine and added advanced degree programs. East Tennessee University was renamed the University of Tennessee in 1879.

World War II

During World War II, UT was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program which offered students a path to a Navy commission.

Civil rights era

Although the university was required to enroll students of any race or ethnicity as a public, land-grant institution, the Tennessee state constitution prohibited integrated education. Only white students were accepted until 1952, when the first two Black students were allowed to enroll in a graduate program. Even after educational segregation was ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 1954 in Brown v. Board of Education, the university resisted desegregation. Black students could first enroll as undergraduates in 1961.
African-American attorney Rita Sanders Geier filed suit against the state of Tennessee in 1968, alleging that its higher education system remained segregated despite a federal mandate ordering desegregation. She alleged that the opening of a University of Tennessee campus at Nashville would lead to the creation of another predominantly white institution that would strip resources from Tennessee State University, the only state-funded Historically black university. The suit was not settled until 2001, when the Geier Consent Decree resulted in the appropriation of $77 million in state funding to increase diversity among student and faculty populations among all Tennessee institutions of higher learning.

Modern era

On December 15, 2016, the UT board of trustees confirmed Beverly J. Davenport as the next chancellor of the Knoxville campus, succeeding Jimmy Cheek. She was the first female chancellor of the university. On May 2, 2018, UT President Joe DiPietro fired Davenport, citing poor communication and interpersonal skills, among other reasons. The decision received criticism from the student body and faculty, as these reasons were also listed as Davenport's strengths and why DiPietro chose to hire her a little over one year earlier. She was retained as a faculty member.

Organization

Administration

UT Knoxville is the flagship campus of the University of Tennessee system, which is governed by a 12-member board of trustees appointed by the Governor of Tennessee. The board of trustees appoints a president to oversee the operations of the system, four campuses, and two statewide institutes. Randy Boyd is the current president following the retirement of Joseph A. DiPietro. The president appoints, with board approval, chancellors for each campus. The Knoxville campus has been headed by Chancellor Donde Plowman since 2019. Provost and Senior Vice Chancellor John Zomchick is responsible for the academic administration of the Knoxville campus and is a member of the Chancellor's Cabinet.

University Medical Center

The University of Tennessee Medical Center, administered by University Health Systems and affiliated with the University of Tennessee Graduate School of Medicine, collaborates with the University of Tennessee Health Science Center to attract and train the majority of its medical staff. Many doctors and nurses at UTMC have integrated careers as teachers and healthcare professionals, and the center promotes itself as the area's only academic, or "teaching hospital".
The University Medical Center is the primary referral center for East Tennessee, Western North Carolina, and Southeastern Kentucky. It is one of three Level I trauma centers in the East Tennessee geographic region. Extensive expansion programs were embarked upon the 1990s and 2000s and saw the construction of two sprawling additions to the hospital's campus, a new Cancer Institute and a Heart Lung Vascular Institute. The new UT Medical Center Heart Hospital received its first patient on April 27, 2010.

Tennessee Presidents Center

The University of Tennessee is the only university in the nation to have three presidential papers editing projects. The university holds collections of the papers of all three U.S. presidents from Tennessee—Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, and Andrew Johnson.

Academics

Undergraduate admissions

The 2022 annual ranking of U.S. News & World Report categorizes UT as "more selective". In 2023, the university received 50,488 applications. It extended offers of admission to 23,221 applicants, or 46%, after holistic review that includes examination of academic rigor, performance and admissions test scores. 6,694 accepted students chose to enroll, a yield rate of 29%. Of all matriculating students, the average high school GPA was 4.19; of incoming students who submitted SAT scores, the interquartile range was 1190–1340; of incoming students who submitted ACT scores, the interquartile range was 25–31. UT's 2023 freshman retention rate is 91.1%, with 73.5% going on to graduate from the university within six years
20232022202120202019201820172016
Applicants50,48836,29029,90925,42321,76420,45718,87217,583
Admits23,22124,82622,41319,86717,16015,91214,52613,578
Admit rate46.068.474.978.178.877.877.077.2
Enrolled6,6946,8465,9485,5125,2545,2154,8954,851
Yield rate28.827.626.527.730.632.833.735.7
ACT composite*
25–3125–3025–3125–3124–3025–3125–3024–30
SAT composite*
1190–13401180–13401140–12901140–13101150–13301140–1310
* middle 50% range--------