From the traditional Friday afternoon parade to the pre-game Party in the Park, all members of the UT community can celebrate UT traditions at events for all ages. Homecoming’s anchor event will be the Volunteers’ football game against the Memphis Tigers at 7 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 7. A limited number of football tickets are still available to those registering for Homecoming events. After registering online, attendees will receive a confirmation e-mail with instructions on purchasing football tickets.

At 4 p.m. Friday, Grand Marshal and legendary bluegrass musician Bobby Osborne will lead the campus parade from the Rock, at the corner of Volunteer Boulevard and Pat Head Summitt Street, east on Volunteer towards Neyland Stadium. Osborne is perhaps best known to UT fans for the Osborne Brothers’ 1967 recording of “Rocky Top.”

Also on Friday, UT will celebrate 140 years of the Pride of the Southland Marching Band at an event featuring the band at 5:30 p.m. at the Knoxville Marriott.

Friday Night Live at the Square will begin at 7:30 p.m. at the Square Room on Market Square and feature nationally known comedienne — and UT alumna — Leanne Morgan and Wendel Werner, director of the UT Singers, who will offer his own humorous history of rock ‘n’ roll.

Saturday’s Party in the Park will bring past, present and future Vol fans together for tailgating at 4 p.m. in Circle Park. Members of the pep band and cheerleading squad will be on hand as fans enjoy music, door prizes, face painting, games for the kids and more.

Student organizations will engage in a week-long competition, with relays and challenges that highlight UT spirit. Fraternities, sororities and student associations will earn points for finishing in the top three of each contest as they vie for the Madge Harrison Trophy, which will be presented to the group with the highest overall total during halftime of Saturday’s football game.

Registration is required for some activities and the deadline for the larger weekend events is Monday, Nov. 2. Online registration for the Pride of the Southland Band celebration, Friday Night Live at the Square, Party in the Park and more is available here.

Additional events include:

Sunday, Nov. 1

• Anything Goes — 5:30 p.m., Fiji Island. Students participate in games and relays.

Monday, Nov. 2

• 3-on-3 Basketball Tournament — 4 p.m., HPER. Student teams.

Tuesday, Nov. 3

• Soapbox Derby — 3:30 p.m., Volunteer Boulevard in front of Stokely Athletic Center.

Friday, Nov. 6

• WUTK and College of Communication & Information Alumni Reception — 6 – 9 p.m., Patrick Sullivan’s in the Old City.
• Homecoming Kickoff Show — 7 p.m., Knoxville Civic Auditorium. Sponsored by the Black Cultural Programming Committee. Features comedians Bruce Bruce, Dominique and Steve Brown. Tickets are on sale at the UT Central Ticket Office and at Tickets Unlimited. Tickets for UT students, which include admittance to Saturday’s step show, are $22. Tickets for the general public are $17 and do not include other events.
• The Knoxville Wine Down — 7 p.m., SOBU Restaurant & Lounge, 6213 Kingston Pike. Sponsored by the Black Alumni Council. Tickets are $20 per person and include admittance to the Black Alumni Party at 9 p.m.
• Black Alumni Party/Homecoming After Party — 9 p.m., SOBU Restaurant & Lounge, 6213 Kingston Pike. Sponsored by the Black Alumni Council. Tickets are $10 per person at the door. Admission is free with the purchase Knoxville Wine Down tickets.

Saturday, Nov. 8

• Daily Beacon Open House and Buffet — 3 p.m., Daily Beacon office, 5 Communications Building.
• Army ROTC Picnic — 3 p.m., Knoxville Marriott. The suite reopens approximately one hour after the football game ends.
• College of Engineering Annual Alumni Homecoming Barbecue — 4 p.m., courtyard of Ferris and Perkins halls. $12 per adult; $8 per child.
• College of Communication & Information Open House — 4 – 6 p.m., Communications Building lobby. Tour renovated areas of the school and meet with faculty.
• College of Law Barbecue — 4 p.m., College of Law front patio. $15 per person.
• 20th Anniversary Pre-Game Faculty Showcase — 5 p.m., University Center Ballroom. “Germs and Geology: Emerging Issues in Waterborne Pathogen Research,” featuring Larry D. McKay, Jones Professor of hydrogeology and head of the Earth and Planetary Sciences department.
• 10th Annual Black Cultural Center Festival — noon, Black Cultural Center.
• Homecoming Football Game — 7 p.m., Neyland Stadium. UT vs. Memphis.
• 10th Annual Stompfest — 8 p.m., Knoxville Civic Center. Sponsored by the Black Cultural Programming Committee. Tickets are on sale at the UT Central Ticket Office and at Tickets Unlimited. Tickets for the general public are $17. Tickets for UT students, which include admittance to Friday’s Homecoming Kickoff show, are $22.
• Black Alumni Reunion — 9 p.m., Jubilee Banquet Hall, 6700 Jubilee Center Way. Join the Kappa Chi Chapter of the Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, the Black Cultural Programming Committee, the Pi Epsilon Chapter of the Zeta Phi Beta Sorority and the class of 1989 as we unite for one celebration. $15 per person.

Sunday, Nov. 9

• Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity Farewell Gathering Brunch and Program — 11 a.m., Panhellenic Building.
• Zeta Phi Beta Sorority Farewell and Recognition Lunch — 1:30 p.m., Mt. Olive Baptist Church. Lunch will immediately follow the 10:45 a.m. worship service. Sisters are invited to meet at the Black Cultural Center at 10:20 to carpool to the church.

For more information about Homecoming events, including registration and R.S.V.P. details, visit the Office of Alumni Affairs’ Homecoming Web site.

Additional details on events sponsored by the Black Alumni Council, Black Cultural Programming Committee and the Black Cultural Center also can be found on the Minority Student Affairs Web site. Details on UT student events can be found on the All Campus Events Web site.

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C O N T A C T :

Rebekah Winkler, (865-974-8304, rwinkler@utk.edu)

These predictions are based upon a statistical analysis of the voting patterns exhibited by previously confirmed Supreme Court justices.

The research was conducted by Hemant Sharma, now a lecturer in the political science department, as part of his recently completed doctoral dissertation. Sharma was assisted by John M. Scheb, the professor who directed his dissertation.

The analysis takes into account the political conditions in place at the time of a justice’s confirmation, including the presence of unified party control over the White House and the Senate, the president’s approval rating at the time of confirmation, the number of seats controlled by the majority party in the Senate, and the number of votes the nominee receives in the Senate confirmation process. It also includes whether the candidate was the president’s first choice, whether the candidate is a cross-party nominee, and the amount of prior judicial experience a candidate has.

The underlying theory is that unified party government, high presidential approval ratings and strong majority party control of the Senate all work to produce more extreme justices. On the other hand, the theory suggests that a candidate confirmed by a wide margin in the Senate will exhibit a more moderate voting pattern than a justice confirmed by a narrow margin. It also holds that second- or third-choice nominees will be less extreme than first choices, and that cross-party nominees will be less extreme than candidates from the president’s own party.

Using data on 31 prior Supreme Court nominees, the UT researchers have constructed models to predict how future nominees, once confirmed, will behave on the bench. The models predict that Justice Sotomayor will exhibit a liberal voting score of 71 percent in civil rights and civil liberties cases and a liberal voting score of 56 percent in economic cases. In light of the fact that the Supreme Court hears roughly three times more civil rights and civil liberties cases than economic cases, Sotomayor’s overall score is projected to be 67 percent.

That figure, when compared to the voting scores over the past three Supreme Court terms for the other members of the current court, would make Justice Sotomayor the Court’s most liberal member. The three-term liberal voting scores for the other eight justices are: Thomas (33 percent), Scalia (36 percent), Roberts (36 percent), Alito (36 percent), Kennedy (45 percent), Breyer (59 percent), Stevens (61 percent) and Ginsburg (61 percent).

Justice Souter, whom Sotomayor is replacing, exhibited an overall liberal score of 59 percent over the past three terms. As a result, researchers are projecting a slight liberal shift in the voting behavior of the Supreme Court as a whole.

C O N T A C T :

Hemant Sharma, (973-715-4048, hsharma@utk.edu)
John Scheb, (865-974-2845, scheb@utk.edu)
Amy Blakely (865-974-5034, amy.blakely@tennessee.edu)

Called aneuploidy, the condition is an abnormal number of chromosomes, and the research team found that if a mother’s egg cell has a mutation in just one copy of a gene, called Bub1, then she is less likely to have offspring that survive to birth.

The findings appear in the online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences for the week of July 13.

Sundar Venkatachalam, an assistant professor of biochemistry and cellular and molecular biology at UT Knoxville, originally was studying the gene for a possible connection to colon cancer, when he found his lab mice showed strange fertility characteristics.

“Where you would normally expect a female to have eight to 10 pups, there were only one or two pups that survived to term in the litters of females that had one copy of Bub1,” said Venkatachalam. “So this was unusual when we were looking for cancer effects, especially in this group of females.”

Ordinarily, both copies of a gene in a chromosome must carry the same mutation in order for an organism to be adversely effected, but the drastic effects of a single mutation were unexpected.

Venkatachalam, working with pathologist Robert Donnell at the UT College of Veterinary Medicine and LBNL researcher Francesco Marchetti, also found that the harmful effects of this mutation increased with a mother’s age. As the female mice got older, there was eventually a complete loss of their ability to support a full-term pregnancy that lined up with an increase in aneuploidy. The same is true in humans: the chance of having an aneuploid pregnancy increases with the age of the mother.

For the past several years, scientists have used mice to study the genetic causes of aneuploidy. They’ve zeroed in on mutations in a handful of genes as the culprits, including Bub1.

The gene plays a role in a checkpoint that ensures that chromosomes are properly divided during meiosis, the cell division process that enables a stem cell to become an egg. This checkpoint hiccups when Bub1 is mutated, sometimes producing an egg with an extra chromosome or an egg with a missing chromosome.

The team linked the issue to females by mating both a male with one bad copy of the gene with a normal female and a female with a bad copy of the gene with a normal male. When the female carried the bad copy, there were fewer births.

Further research revealed this is because aneuploidy was generated in the egg and passed on to the single-cell zygote that forms when a sperm fertilizes an egg. And this led to the loss of the embryo.

“This work certainly points to Bub1 having a role in maternal age-induced fertility issues,” said Venkatachalam. “Now that we know the gene seems to have this role, the next big question is why, and we hope to continue the research in that direction.”

“Heterozygosity for a Bub1 mutation causes female-specific germ cell aneuploidy in mice” was published in the July 13-17, 2009 online early edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Funding for the work came from UT Knoxville’s Department of Biochemistry, Cellular and Molecular Biology and the U.S. Department of Energy.

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CONTACT:

Jay Mayfield, (865-974-9409, jay.mayfield@tennessee.edu)

The computer, funded by a $65 million grant to UT Knoxville from the National Science Foundation (NSF), is the fastest academic supercomputer in the world, and the opportunity to use the machine is rare enough for elite researchers, much less for undergraduates.

More than 30 students in the Data Structures and Algorithm Analysis class in UT Knoxville’s department of electrical engineering and computer science (EECS) were given special user accounts on the computer, a Cray XT5, that allowed them to write and test different programs on the computer. One of the students, Chris Richardson, said the experience was a look at the forefront of science.

“The thing that opened my eyes the most was the way that this is going to be the wave of the future,” he explained. “There is always going to be a desire for faster and more efficient computing, and this will be it.”

The class, led by David Banks, an associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science with a joint appointment in the UT-Oak Ridge National Laboratory Joint Institute for Computational Science, had the opportunity to see the differences between programming on their own computers and on Kraken, which is roughly 100,000 times more powerful than the average home computer.

“JICS is a unique organization,” said Banks. “It is the only place in the world where faculty at a flagship university can partner with the staff at a national laboratory in order to teach undergraduates from different departments how to write code and run it on a world-class supercomputer.”

Before working on Kraken, the students were trained in how to make the computer’s 60,000 individual processors talk to one another effectively.

Staff scientists and faculty from the UT-ORNL Joint Institute for Computational Sciences taught the students the basics in their on-campus programming labs to ensure they were ready to use their allotted time on Kraken effectively. That preparation and training stands to serve the students well as they continue in their careers.

“Multi-processor programming definitely sets you apart from the competition when applying for any computer-related job,” said sophomore Michael Jugan, a computer engineering major from Knoxville. “Making a program run efficiently on multiple processors requires a better understanding of the computer’s hardware than regular coding does.”

Computational science is emerging as a vital element in how scientists conduct their work, using computers’ analytical power to address questions in ways that were not previously possible

The students used Kraken remotely, just like other scientists and researchers from around the U.S. who use the computer as part of the NSF TeraGrid network. John Cobb of ORNL sponsored the initial TeraGrid account for this project.

At the end of the semester, members of the class were given the opportunity to see the machine up close and meet with staff from the National Institute for Computational Science, the UT-led consortium that manages the computer.

“It is important for the nation’s continued leadership in computing that we expose as many students as possible, as early as possible, as often as possible, to programming on these high-end platforms,” said NICS Director Phil Andrews.

“When I was standing and looking at Kraken, I could not help but wonder how much data was passing through the machine at that moment,” said David Prenshaw, a student in the class.

Kevin Tomsovic, professor and head of EECS, said that the experience serves as a model way to inspire tomorrow’s computational leaders.

“Two great challenges in computer science education today are to excite a new generation about the diverse range of problems we study and to attract top students to our field,” he said. “Incorporating supercomputing early in the curriculum helps accomplish both.”

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C O N T A C T :

Jay Mayfield, (865-974-9409, jay.mayfield@tennessee.edu)

Associate Professor and Assistant Director Suzie Allard and Assistant Professors Bharat Mehra and Vandana Singh — all faculty in the School of Information Sciences (SIS), which is part of the College of Communication and Information — received the Laura Bush 21st Century Librarian Program grants from the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS). The awards will be paid over the next four years.

UT is in elite company because only one other university in the nation — the University of Maryland — garnered as many IMLS awards this year, SIS Director Edwin Cortez said. He credits this, in part, to the tremendous support provided by the college’s Center for Information and Communication Studies, headed by SIS Professor Carol Tenopir.

“The quality, creativity, and capacity of our faculty to address real-world needs are remarkable,” Cortez said. “I am more than pleased to work with an exceptional faculty who continuously measure the pulse of information needs of various communities and then find solutions to address gaps in information literacy, education and technology.”

The three projects funded are:

– ScienceLinks2, awarded $711,727

“ScienceLinks2 PhD: Linking Education and Science to Develop the Next Generation of Educators for Science Librarians and Data, Information and Communication” will build curriculum, provide mentoring and support the research agendas of six doctoral students who will become educators of the next generation of science data and information specialists.

ScienceLinks2 builds on two previous science information initiatives at the school: the IMLS-sponsored Science Links, a master’s-focused program successfully completed in 2008, and NSF’s DataONE, a major international initiative which includes faculty and researchers in the UT Libraries and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Allard is the principal investigator for ScienceLinks2. Other College of Communication and Information faculty involved in the project include Associate Dean Sally McMillan; Ben Bates, professor of journalism and electronic media; Karen Hilyard, assistant professor of advertising and public relations; Lorraine Normore, SIS assistant professor; Vandana Singh, SIS assistant professor; Lu Tang, assistant professor of computer science; and Peiling Wang, SIS professor. Thura Mack, an SIS alumna, will be the library coordinator for the project.

– Improving rural librarians’ technology literacy, awarded $567,660

“Rural Library Professionals as Change Agents in the 21st Century: Integrating Information Technology Competencies in Southern and Central Appalachian Region” will help tackle lagging information technology literacy in Tennessee’s rural southern and central Appalachians.

Mehra will work with Assistant Professors Singh and Kimberly Black to recruit and mentor 16 IMLS-funded technology support librarians as they earn their master’s degrees. In addition, SIS faculty will work with three regional library systems — Clinch-Powell Regional Library, Sevier County Public Library System and the Watauga Regional Library — to offer students coursework tailored for a specialization in Information Technology and Rural Librarianship. Upon graduation, students will be prepared to assume leadership roles in their libraries and the region.

– Improve library technology, awarded $321,178

“Technical Support for Integrated Library Systems’ Comparison of Open Source and Proprietary Software” will compare the amount of technical support librarians need to operate various computer systems used to acquire, manage and circulate library materials. This research project seeks to better inform librarians about the maintenance and management costs associated with these tools.
Singh is the principal investigator on this project.

C O N T A C T :

Amy Blakely (865-974-5034, amy.blakely@tennessee.edu)

For more UT news, visit http://www.utk.edu/news/

Check out our new faculty experts guide at http://www.utk.edu/news/experts/

See UT faculty, staff and students making news at http://www.utk.edu/news/in_the_news/

Yilu LiuLiu, currently the director of the Center for Power Engineering at Virginia Tech, will hold appointments at ORNL’s energy and transportation science division and the department of electrical engineering and computer science in UT Knoxville’s College of Engineering.

“Dr. Liu’s expertise meshes closely with key priorities for the state and for the nation,” said acting UT President Jan Simek. “Her appointment as a Governor’s Chair and the work she will accomplish here enhances the university’s role as an energy leader.”

The Governor’s Chair program, funded by the state of Tennessee and ORNL, attracts top scientists to broaden and enhance the unique research partnership that exists between the state’s flagship university and the nation’s largest multi-program laboratory.

“We’ve made strategic investments to position Tennessee to be a leader in the renewable energy sector, and our partnership with the University of Tennessee and ORNL is central to that future success,” said Gov. Phil Bredesen. “I’m confident that Dr. Liu will be a valuable contributor as a Governor’s Chair to UT-ORNL’s cutting edge energy technology research.”

“There is perhaps no issue more pressing than the need to change the way we distribute energy, and her research and teaching will continue to push UT Knoxville to the forefront of national energy research,” said UT Knoxville Chancellor Jimmy G. Cheek. “Yilu Liu is exactly what we are looking for in a Governor’s Chair, and we are proud to add her expertise to UT Knoxville’s participation in the program.”

Liu’s work focuses on developing new and better ways to monitor and understand the flow of energy through the nation’s power grid on a large scale. While at Virginia Tech, she led the creation of FNET, the North American power grid monitoring network, which her group continues to operate.

She also has done research into ways to develop the “smart grid,” a term used to describe the next generation of electric transmission technology that will move energy more efficiently and effectively from where it is generated to where it is used.

As a Governor’s Chair, Liu will have the opportunity to further her research by taking advantage of the advanced resources and expertise available at both UT Knoxville and ORNL. The laboratory’s Electric Grid Research and Development Program conducts about $20 million in research each year.

“A smarter, more efficient power grid is vital to the nation’s energy plan and a key part of ORNL’s research portfolio,” said ORNL Director Thom Mason. “Dr. Liu’s work will greatly strengthen our scientific efforts to address this energy challenge.”

Liu has spent her entire post-doctoral career at Virginia Tech. She began as an assistant professor in the school’s department of electrical engineering in 1990, rising to the rank of full professor in 2001. Liu earned her master’s degree and doctorate in electrical engineering from Ohio State University in 1985 and 1989, respectively. She earned her bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Xian Jiaotong University in Xian, China, in 1982.

About the Governor’s Chair program:

The UT-ORNL Governor’s Chair program is designed to attract exceptionally accomplished researchers from around the world to boost joint research efforts that position the partnership as a leader in the fields of biological science, computational science, advanced materials and neutron science.

Other UT-ORNL Governor’s Chairs include:

- Jeremy Smith, a computational biologist, who came to UT Knoxville and ORNL from the University of Heidelberg in Germany. He was appointed in 2006.
- Howard Hall, an expert in nuclear security who came to UT Knoxville and ORNL from Lawrence Livermore National Lab. He was appointed this year.
- Alexei Sokolov, a polymer scientist who came to UT Knoxville and ORNL from the University of Akron. He was appointed this year.

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C O N T A C T :

Jay Mayfield, UT Knoxville (865-974-9409, jay.mayfield@tennessee.edu)
Mike Bradley, ORNL (865-576-9553, bradleymk@ornl.gov)

Called Kraken, the computer has been named the world’s sixth fastest in the most recent edition of the Top500 list of the most powerful computers, announced today at the International Supercomputing Conference in Hamburg, Germany.

The Top500 list, recognized as the global standard for comparing massive computers, is created every six months by UT Knoxville Distinguished Professor Jack Dongarra and his colleagues.

“The University of Tennessee is better now than it has ever been,” UT Acting President Jan Simek said. “Having the fastest university-managed supercomputer in the world allows UT to keep getting better, and Kraken is another tool that helps us attract the best students, the best researchers and the best professors, something every university strives for.”

Kraken, which ranked 15th on the previous edition of the list, published in November 2008, has nearly quadrupled its peak speed in the last six months, clocking in at a speed of 606 teraflops, or 606 trillion calculations per second.

The system, funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and part of UT’s National Institute for Computational Science (NICS), is still on the move toward the petascale — 1,000 trillion calculations per second, and a major milestone in high- performance computing.

“Kraken’s leap into the top 10 represents another wave of success in our efforts to be a global leader in all aspects of supercomputing,” said UT Knoxville Chancellor Jimmy G. Cheek. “In addition to Kraken’s speed and impact on the scientific community, the definitive list of the fastest computers is developed by one of our own faculty members.”

While speed is an interesting measure of a computer, at its core, Kraken is about research. As the most powerful supercomputer funded by the NSF TeraGrid — a network of supercomputers across the United States — Kraken is a vital part of one of the world’s largest computational platforms for open scientific research.

“We are pleased to be the largest resource provider in the NSF’s TeraGrid and we look forward to continuing to advance the NSF’s mission by supplying the scientific community with the best computing resources and environment possible,” said NICS Project Director Phil Andrews.

Kraken and NICS, both housed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, stem from a NSF Track II award of $65 million to UT and its partners. NICS won the award in an open competition with leading computing institutions across the country.

Kraken joins another East Tennessee computer in the top 10, as ORNL’s Jaguar system retained its second-place overall position in the list.

The NSF award places NICS and UT among a select group of supercomputing facilities. As a result of the collaborative relationship between UT and ORNL, NICS promises to deliver state-of-the-art scientific research. NICS offers researchers a great opportunity to test code on a system that ultimately will move to the petascale. For more information, visit the NICS Web site at http://www.nics.tennessee.edu/.

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C O N T A C T :

Jay Mayfield, (865-974-9409, jay.mayfield@tennessee.edu)

“The U.S. Navy’s Destroyer Acquisition Plan: Examining Options for Acquiring DDG-1000 and DDG-51 Destroyers to Meet Maritime Capability Requirements” provides a factual foundation for understanding the factors involved in the Navy’s recent decisions regarding its destroyer modernization plans. It also provides a comprehensive analytical baseline for future decisions on the best way to meet current and future sea power needs.

The NDBI team included researchers and authors from the Monitor Group; it set out to accomplish two objectives:

– Evaluate the destroyer modernization alternatives and compare the capabilities offered by each within given budget parameters.

– Understand the acquisition options being considered by the Navy and provide information on which is the most suitable for transition to the Future Surface Combatant (FSC).

The independent study, which was commissioned by the Raytheon Company, is posted on the National Defense Business Institute Web site (http://www.NDBI.utk.edu). Additionally, the study will provide data for the industry as it considers future business options supporting the Department of Defense national security requirements.

The NDBI is the first university-based institute focused specifically on helping the Department of Defense, other government agencies and the defense industry analyze and find innovative, practical solutions that help improve the results of their acquisition and business management programs. NDBI offers academic and research expertise through partnerships with the UT Knoxville’s College of Business Administration and its Center for Executive Education, the Howard H. Baker Jr. Center for Public Policy and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

C O N T A C T :

Cindy Raines (865-974-4359, craines1@utk.edu)

Because of the broad range of purchasing and relationships that the campus and its employees have statewide, UT economists say this impact translates to 1.8 additional jobs for every person working on campus, and $3.10 in income for every dollar directly earned by university employees.

UT Knoxville’s Center for Business and Economic Research (CBER) not only examined the direct impacts of campus operations, payroll, purchases and tax revenue, but also the indirect impact of campus spending. The analysis uses 2007 information.

The study found that UT Knoxville provides 12,723 full-time and part-time jobs with a payroll totaling $295.8 million. The campus also spent $138.8 million on goods and services, and generated $68 million in tax revenues for state and local governments.

In addition, spending by the university’s 26,400 students generated significant economic activity in the state, with an estimated $156.1 million in student spending creating around 2,200 jobs with $66.1 million in payroll.

In fact, during FY07, CBER economists found that spending by the campus, its students and employees was responsible for almost 23,000 people working in Tennessee.

“This report is based on a conservative, though comprehensive, analysis of the income, jobs and tax revenues arising from the Knoxville campus’ activities,” said UT economist Bill Fox, CBER director and author of the study.

The report does not include, however, income created by visitors to the Knoxville campus for athletic and academic events, conferences and other purposes.

“In addition to the economic impact on the state, UT Knoxville offers many qualitative benefits to people across the state,” Fox said, including a better-educated and better-trained workforce, cutting-edge scientific research and discovery and new business incubation for local and state economies.

The report is based on information from FY07, Fox said, but the conclusions remain valid.

“The economy has changed radically since these numbers were collected,” he said, “but the university continues to have an impact at least as large as was measured in the study, because federal stimulus funds have deferred significant cutbacks in our teaching and research functions.”

The study included nearly 12,800 faculty, staff and students, who work for the Knoxville campus and the athletic department. It did not include other Knoxville-area employees who work for the UT system or other UT campuses or institutes.

Founded in 1794, UT Knoxville offers more than 300 degree programs and is the state’s largest comprehensive, research-extensive university. UT Knoxville students come from every Tennessee county, every state and more than 100 other countries. There are more than 300,000 UT Knoxville alumni.

To read the report, visit http://cber.utk.edu.

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C O N T A C T :

Bill Fox, 865-974-6112, billfox@utk.edu
Karen Collins, 865-974-5186, karen.collins@tennessee.edu

The award, given by the Radio-Television Journalism Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC), recognizes an electronic journalism educator who has made a significant and lasting contribution to the field in the areas of teaching, service and scholarship.

Swan has been with UT Knoxville since 1985 teaching television news, international broadcasting and management courses. Swan was department head from 1985 to 1994, overseeing the acquisition of a commercial all-news AM radio station, WUTK-AM, and moving the department of broadcasting into a state-of-the-art facility. He also developed and continues to produce a unique weekly television news program broadcast on the NBC affiliate WBIR-TV in Knoxville. During his tenure the department became accredited by the AEJMC for the first time and has held that accreditation since.

Swan has conducted more than 150 TV journalism and management workshops in nearly 50 countries, and he has brought journalists from many of those countries to the U.S. for workshops. He has served as a news trainer and consultant for all News Corp Europe TV stations and has conducted workshops for the Voice of America, IREX, the U.S. State Department and CNN.

Swan is the author of three books on radio-TV management, radio station operations and landing a job in the media, has produced numerous news and public affairs television programs, documentaries and written papers and has made presentations at journalism and broadcasting conventions.

Before coming to academia, Swan worked as a news director, anchor, reporter and producer at radio and television stations in Missouri. He also has led broadcasting programs at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale.

The Edward L. Bliss award is given by the Radio-Television Journalism Division of the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication. The award is named for a longtime writer, producer and editor for CBS News. Bliss was known for his work with Edward R. Murrow and Walter Cronkite and ended his career as an educator at American University, which now houses the plaques bearing the award winners’ names.

Past winners of the Ed Bliss Award (formerly Distinguished Broadcast Journalism Educator Award): Jack Shelly, Iowa State (1983); Ed Bliss, American University (1984); Dick Yoakam, Indiana (1985); Henry Lippold, Wisconsin-Eau Claire (1986); Rod Gelatt, Missouri (1987); Mitchell Charnley, Minnesota (1988); Don Brown, Arizona State (1989); Irving Fang, Minnesota (1990); Ernest F. Andrews, Syracuse (1991); Al Anderson, Texas- Austin (1992); Michael Murray, Missouri-St. Louis (1993); Joseph R. Dominick, Georgia (1994); Joan Konner, Columbia (1995); Gordon Greb, San Jose State (1996); Travis Linn, Nevada-Reno (1997); Vernon Stone, Missouri (1998); Elmer Lower, ABC, NBC (1999); Ken Keller, SIU-Carbondale (2000); Lincoln Furber, American University (2001); James Hoyt, Wisconsin (2002); Phillip O. Keirstead, Florida A&M University (2003); Thomas Griffiths, Brigham Young University (2004); Peter Mayeux, University of Nebraska (2005); Bill Knowles, University of Montana (2006); Jim Upshaw, University of Oregon (2007); and Glenn Johnson, Washington State University (2008).

Swan will be honored in a ceremony at the AEJMC National Convention on Aug. 6 at Emerson College in Boston.

C O N T A C T :

Amy Blakely (865-974-5034, amy.blakely@tennessee.edu)