About the University of Tennessee, Knoxville

As the state’s land grant, research-intensive institution, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, is a university on the move.

Founded in 1794, we’re big on tradition and proud of our humble beginnings as the first public university chartered west of the Appalachian Divide. We serve the state by educating its citizens, enhancing the culture, and making a difference in the people’s lives through research and service.

U.S. News & World Report ranks UT forty-sixth among all public universities in the nation. By attracting the best and brightest students and leading faculty, we’re on track to join our peers among the nation’s Top 25. An aggressive roadmap guides our journey.  We’re improving undergraduate and graduate education, research, support for faculty and staff, our campus infrastructure, and our resources.

With close to 28,000 students and 10,000 faculty and staff, we power the state’s economy and fuel innovations that yield ideas and solutions that improve people’s lives and our society.

Our faculty are renowned scholars in their disciplines and committed teachers who serve through the university’s nine undergraduate colleges and eleven graduate and professional programs. 

With more than 300 degree programs, we prepare and empower leaders in just about every profession. Our engineering, business, education, law, and social work programs consistently rank among the Top 50 in the nation among public universities, at the undergraduate or graduate level. UT is accredited by the Commission on Colleges of the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools to award baccalaureate, master’s, and doctoral degrees.

Consistently cited as a “best buy” and great value, we’re committed to access and affordability. A wide range of scholarships help open doors for many qualified students to become Volunteers. The number of students who study abroad has soared during recent years with the rise in new scholars, internships, and service learning opportunities around the world.

We are committed to ensuring our campus is a welcoming environment where people are open to learning from one another. We celebrate our differences and the opportunities they create through experiences with people who have different beliefs and come from other places, cultures, and backgrounds. Diversity means more to our campus community than race and ethnicity; it’s about moving beyond just tolerance to a place of understanding about political views, religion, gender identity, values, age, abilities, and sexual orientation, among other differences. 

We are proud of our students and committed to their success by providing comprehensive academic support and programs that engage them in campus life. Each new freshman class demonstrates our ever-increasing academic quality, with the 2011 freshman class with an average ACT score of twenty-seven and more than forty percent graduating high school with a 4.0 or higher GPA.

A quick drive through our 560-acre campus illustrates our momentum in enhancing our academic and student life facilities. The new $37.5 million Min H. Kao Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Building opened in early 2012, as did a $18.6 million Student Health Services building that helps take a holistic approach to student wellness. The new Baker Center for Public Policy and Haslam Business Building opened in 2008 and 2009, respectively.  

The next several years will bring top-quality performance space, auditorium, rehearsal rooms, and a music library through the new Natalie L. Haslam Music building and the Tickle Engineering Building for the civil, environmental, industrial and information engineering departments.  Work is now underway on a new $160 million student union, the largest single project in the university’s history. New sorority houses, adjacent to campus, will open in fall 2012 on Morgan Hill in a multi-year Sorority Village development. A new residence hall and several large-scale housing upgrades are also in the works. The campus master plan guides our vision, which includes a more pedestrian-friendly campus with more green space and the addition of significant classroom and laboratory space in the next decade. 

Our undergraduate and graduate students have unprecedented opportunities for hands-on work and research. Our management partnership with Oak Ridge National Laboratory places students at all levels in programs led by the world’s most talented scientists and gives them access to resources like Kraken, one of the world’s fastest supercomputers. The new Bredesen Center provides opportunities for graduate students in energy-related science and engineering.  The center puts the university front and center in training the country’s scientists to take on the world’s most challenging energy problems. The partnerships enhance the state’s role as a growing hub for research in critical challenges that include alternative energy, national security, and the creation of new materials.