Blount College, the University of Tennessee’s forerunner, was established in Knoxville in 1794, two years before Tennessee became a state. Located near the center of Knoxville’s present business district, Blount College was nonsectarian in character, which was unusual for an institution of higher education in that day. The university has remained nondenominational and is said to be the oldest such institution west of the Appalachian Divide.
From the outset, Blount College was all-male, as were most colleges at the time. The restriction was ended in 1892 when the first women students were admitted. The University of Tennessee thereafter was fully coeducational.
In 1807 the state legislature changed the name to East Tennessee College, and in 1826 the present site at Knoxville, the 40-acre tract known as “The Hill,” was acquired. The college’s name changed again in 1840 – to East Tennessee University.
The Civil War forced the institution to close, and its buildings were used as a hospital for Confederate troops and later occupied by Union troops.
East Tennessee University reopened after the war, and in 1869 the state legislature selected the university as the state’s federal land-grant institution, under terms of the Morrill Act passed by Congress in 1862. This enabled the university to broaden its offerings by adding agricultural and engineering courses to its curriculum, as well as military science, which the Morrill Act required.
The university has grown almost constantly since then. The medical campus, founded in Nashville and acquired by the university in 1879, moved to Memphis in 1911. The University of Tennessee at Martin, established in 1900 as a private institution, became part of the University of Tennessee in 1927. The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga was established in 1969 when the private University of Chattanooga merged with the University of Tennessee.
The Space Institute, a graduate research and education center near Tullahoma, opened in 1964. The Institute of Agriculture, headquartered in Knoxville, traces its beginnings to 1869 when UT became Tennessee’s land-grant institution, and the Institute for Public Service was founded and brought together several government and industrial outreach programs in 1971.
