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 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 in 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 more than 27,000 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 to 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 scholarships, 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 2012 freshman class having 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. This past year saw the opening of the $37.5 million Min H. Kao Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Building and an $18.6 million Student Health Building. In 2013, the new Natalie L. Haslam Music Center and the John Tickle Engineering Building will be open to offer even more opportunity for strengthening our academic programs. Work is now underway on a new $160 million student union, the largest single project in the university’s history.

Several new sorority houses, adjacent to campus, will welcome their first residents this fall. The houses are part the new Sorority Village development on Morgan Hill. A new residence hall is also under construction and planning is underway for another to follow in the next few years. Construction will begin next summer on a renovation and expansion to Strong Hall to accommodate sorely needed classroom and laboratory space.

Our 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 through our partnership with Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary Research provides opportunities for graduate students in energy-related science and engineering and 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. The new UT Humanities Center is broadening research opportunities in the disciplines through a fellows program modeled after the National Humanities Center.