Tennessee, University of

▪ university system, Tennessee, United States

      state university system based in Knoxville, Tennessee, U.S. It is a comprehensive, land-grant (land-grant college) institution of higher education. In addition to the main campus there are branch campuses at Chattanooga and Martin, as well as a health science centre at Memphis. The university offers a wide range of undergraduate, graduate, and professional degree programs. The Graduate School at the main campus provides programs of study leading to the master's degree in about 75 fields and to the doctoral degree in some 45 fields. The university is home to dozens of research facilities, including the Energy, Environment, and Resources Center; the Center for Legume Research; the Center for the Study of War and Society; the Institute for Rare Isotope Measurements; and the Science Alliance, which is conducted in association with Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The University of Tennessee Space Institute in Tullahoma was established in 1964. The Memphis campus contains colleges of Medicine, Dentistry, Pharmacy, Nursing, Allied Health Sciences, and Graduate Health Sciences, and the School of Biomedical Engineering. Total enrollment is approximately 42,000.

      The University of Tennessee was founded in 1794 as Blount College. The name was changed to East Tennessee College in 1807, to East Tennessee University in 1840, and finally to the University of Tennessee in 1879; instruction was suspended during the American Civil War. The school received land-grant status in 1869, under the provisions of the Morrill Act of 1862. Graduate-level course work began in 1821; the first master's degree was awarded in 1827 and the first doctorate in 1886. A department of graduate studies, established in 1879, became the Graduate School in 1912. Women were first admitted in 1892.

      The Chattanooga branch, founded in 1886, became the University of Chattanooga before joining the state university system in 1969. The Martin branch, established by Baptists in 1900 as the Hall-Moody Institute, joined the system as a junior college in 1927. It became a senior college in 1951 and gained coequal campus status in 1967. Its tree-lined campus at Martin is a registered botanical garden. The Health Science Center in Memphis was founded in 1911.

      Notable alumni include economists Frank Hyneman Knight (Knight, Frank Hyneman) and James M. Buchanan (Buchanan, James M.) (who received the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1986) and critic Joseph Wood Krutch (Krutch, Joseph Wood).

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