Cutting the ribbon to officially open the new Sorority Village Center are Sorority and Fraternity Life Advisor Lindi Smedberg, Panhellenic President Mary Beth Overton, Sam Furrow, Ann Furrow, Chancellor Jimmy G. Cheek, Governor Winfield Dunn, and Vice Chancellor for Student Life Tim Rogers.

Chancellor Jimmy G. Cheek joined alumni, sorority women, and other dignitaries today to dedicate UT’s new Sorority Village Center and Ann Baker Furrow Boulevard, the main street leading into the development.

Furrow, a 1967 alumna, celebrated the milestone. Chancellor Cheek said the event is the culmination of years of planning and the tireless work of many people.

“I’m happy that the sorority members will have a place to gather. Our sorority members are leaders on campus. Sorority women gain great leadership skills through their membership, and we are proud of the work they are doing on campus and in the community,” Cheek said.

Eight of the planned thirteen houses are occupied and three more are slated to open at the beginning of the fall semester. The new Sorority Village Center has offices for professional and graduate staff members from the Office of Sorority and Fraternity Life. The building’s conference room and lobby are now available as meeting space for Sorority and Fraternity Life organizations.

Furrow is the first woman to serve on the UT Board of Trustees and is the first and only woman to receive a full men’s athletic scholarship. She was joined today by her husband, Sam, and her family and many friends, including longtime friend Governor Winfield Dunn. Governor Dunn appointed Furrow to the UT Board of Trustees in 1970.

“The successes that I have had are because of a culture and a community of support,” Furrow said. “I am proud to be a part of Sorority Village because it will enhance the lives and the education of sorority women for many years to come.”

As a UT student, Furrow played on the men’s golf team and received a scholarship for two years. She was also president of her sorority, Alpha Delta Pi. She currently serves on the UT Development Council.

The university broke ground on the development’s infrastructure in 2011. Chapters began opening houses last fall. Once completed, thirteen of the university’s seventeen sororities will have chapter houses in the complex. The houses are funded through private donations and mortgage agreements that will be paid through residential rent and chapter fees.

The Chi Omega house has finished construction and plans to open in August. Pi Beta Phi and Zeta Tau Alpha are under construction and plan to open in August. Alpha Omicron Pi is currently under construction and is slated to open during the next academic year. Delta Gamma plans to break ground in late April.

The eight houses currently occupied are:

• Alpha Chi Omega
• Alpha Delta Pi
• Delta Delta Delta
• Delta Zeta
• Kappa Delta
• Kappa Kappa Gamma
• Phi Mu
• Sigma Kappa

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C O N T A C T :

Karen Simsen (865-974-5186, karen.simsen@tennessee.edu)

The street sign now displays “Ann Baker Furrow Boulevard.”  The campus will hold a formal dedication in the spring.

“We are pleased to honor Ann in this way,” Chancellor Jimmy G. Cheek said.

“The university traditionally has not made it a practice to name the campus streets, as many of the streets named throughout the 1990s are city-owned streets. However, this newly created street provided a special opportunity for the university to honor a distinguished alumna for her numerous accomplishments.”

The first woman to play a men’s varsity sport at UT, Furrow was a member of the men’s golf team in 1964 and 1965. She was the first recipient of Robert R. Neyland Academic Scholarship. In 1991, she helped get women’s golf added as an official UT sport. She served as interim head coach of the women’s golf team until 1992 and then volunteered as an assistant coach for fifteen years. She has helped raise more than $2 million to endow the UT women’s golf team.

Furrow is pictured in May 1963 after receiving the Neyland Academic Scholarship from vice president Herman Spivey, left, and president Andy Holt.

She went on to have a very successful amateur golf career. She was a five-time Tennessee Women’s Amateur Champion and the 1978 Women’s Southern Amateur Champion. She has been inducted to the Tennessee, the Greater Knoxville, and the Blount sports halls of fame.

Furrow was the first woman and the youngest person to be appointed to the UT Board of Trustees. She was appointed in 1970 and served for eighteen years. During her tenure, she served as the board’s vice chair and chaired the Academic Affairs Committee.

She also became the first woman to give a commencement speech at UT in 1971.

Furrow is a founding board member and vice chairman of Spiritual Heritage Knoxville. She previously served on the boards of UT Athletics, UT Medical Center, Covenant Health, Fort Sanders Foundation, National Board of AnGeL Ministries, Tennessee Valley Authority, and International Board of Joni and Friends.

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C O N T A C T :

Amy Blakely (865-974-5034, ablakely@utk.edu)

Chapters Delta Zeta and Alpha Chi Omega moved in earlier this week. The women of Kappa Delta are moving in this weekend.

UT expects a total of seven houses to be completed this fall, with as many as 270 women living in the development by the end of the semester.

Sorority Village will have thirteen houses and one administrative/meeting building once it is completed next year. The administrative/meeting building will also open this fall.

Sorority fall recruitment begins Sunday, August 19 and events will take place at the Panhellenic Building on Cumberland Avenue and the three open houses in Sorority Village. Nearly 900 women are registered to participate in fall recruitment.

The university has accommodated several sorority chapters that expected their houses to be completed this month. Most women are in residence halls. The Sigma Kappa sorority chapter is moving into an unoccupied house in Fraternity Park on a temporary basis while their house is being completed.

All new property is subject to compliance reviews and a fire marshal inspection before they open. In the works for more than six years, work began on the Sorority Village infrastructure in the fall of 2009.

UT expects seven houses to be completed this fall, with as many as 270 women living in the development by the end of the semester. UT anticipates at least three houses opening in time for fall classes, which begin August 22.

Sorority Village will have thirteen houses and one administrative/meeting building once it is completed next year. Sorority fall recruitment is set for August 19—26 at the Panhellenic Building on Cumberland Avenue and at the completed properties within Sorority Village, with transportation provided between the two locations.

The chapters with houses opening in this first phase are:

• Delta Zeta
• Alpha Chi Omega
• Kappa Delta
• Delta Delta Delta
• Alpha Delta Pi
• Sigma Kappa
• Kappa Kappa Gamma

The administrative/meeting building will also open this fall. The university is funding a portion of the facility for its administrative offices and meeting space. Alpha Kappa Alpha is funding the other portion and will have a dedicated space within.

All new property is subject to compliance reviews and a fire marshal inspection before they open.

In the works for more than six years, work began on the Sorority Village infrastructure in the fall of 2009.

Chapters are funding their houses in full through private donations and mortgage agreements that will be paid through rent and chapter fees. Each house is estimated to cost between $3 million and $5 million. Once construction is complete, the total private investment in Sorority Village is expected to exceed $45 million.

Houses were bid as separate projects through the state Building Commission, and UT is managing the construction contracts. The houses range from 9,000 to 17,000 square feet, with the largest houses accommodating up to forty-eight women.

View a few commonly asked questions about the development.

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CONTACT:

Karen Simsen (865-974-5186, karen.simsen@tennessee.edu)

What is the schedule for the remaining Sorority Village houses?

The Alpha Omicron Pi and Phi Mu chapter houses are on hold while new contractors are finalized. University Housing is accommodating women whose houses will not be ready as they had originally planned.

Houses for Chi Omega and Pi Beta Phi are scheduled for completion in spring or summer 2013.

The development’s final two houses—Zeta Tau Alpha and Delta Gamma—will begin building within the next sixty days.

What about safety and transportation?

The development will be fenced and will incorporate modern security features, including gated access, blue light emergency phones, and security cameras. Sorority women also will swipe their student IDs to enter their houses

The development will become part of the university’s “T” bus service routes. UT students ride free on all “T” routes with their UT ID.

A traffic signal will be installed at the village entrance on Neyland Drive in early August. Exterior landscaping will begin as the first houses are completed this fall. The bulk of the landscaping will be done when the development is completed.

What about parking?

The village will have dedicated Greek Sorority (GS) student parking. In order to qualify for a GS parking permit, an individual must be a sorority member and a resident of the village. A GS permit is valid only in the GS parking area at Sorority Village and in campus unreserved staff and commuter areas between 5:00 p.m. and 3:00 a.m.

Students who will begin the fall 2012 semester living in on-campus housing but who will later relocate to Sorority Village during the 2012-13 academic year will be allowed to purchase a GS permit. For the 2012-13 academic year only, GS permits will be honored in campus non-commuter parking areas in order to accommodate students in this situation.

Who owns the houses and the development?

UT owns the land at Sorority Village, and the sorority chapters will hold an equity interest in their houses. Just like the houses in Fraternity Park, the houses in Sorority Village hold a land lease agreement with the university. Because of this, UT is managing the contracts for the building projects.

How will the Panhellenic Building be used in the future?

The Panhellenic Building—the main meeting facility for fourteen of the campus’s nineteen sororities—will remain open and serve a function for sororities until the spring or summer of 2013.

Some of the University Center functions will be moved to the lower two floors of the Panhellenic Building during the construction of the new Student Union. UT’s ROTC program will move into the upper two floors of the Panhellenic Building during summer 2014.

The program is now housed in the Stokely Athletic Center. The university will renovate Panhellenic to prepare for the ROTC program, once the last of the sorority chapters move out next year.

The ROTC program will move to Hoskins Library after Stokely closes this fall. ROTC will then occupy Hoskins for twelve to eighteen months as renovations to the Panhellenic Building are made to establish the program’s permanent home.

For more info on Sorority Village, read here.

The university is completing infrastructure work at the site, which will allow the individual sorority chapters to begin work on their houses, which will be built in phases of several houses at a time. Working closely with the sorority chapters, the university hopes to welcome its first group of residents to Sorority Village in the fall of 2012.

In total, thirteen of UT’s seventeen sororities will have residential facilities in the village. The university is funding a portion of a common-use facility that will house administrative offices and meeting space. One sorority is funding the other portion of the common-use facility to have a dedicated office and meeting space within that building.

The houses will range from 9,000 to 17,000 square feet and will each house up to forty-eight women. Each house is estimated to cost between $3 million and $5 million. Once construction is complete, the total private investment in Sorority Village is expected to exceed $45 million. Sorority chapters are funding their houses in full through private donations and mortgage agreements that will be paid through residential rent and chapter fees.

UT’s Board of Trustees approved a proposal in 2006 that set aside approximately twenty-one acres of university-owned property on the southeast corner of Neyland Drive and Kingston Pike, across from the university’s Visitors Center. For more than thirty years, UT’s sorority women have lived in several residence halls and used meeting space in the Panhellenic Building, which was built in 1963.

The development will be fenced and will incorporate modern security features. Landscaping plans will highlight the village site and streetscape, with the goal of making the land as picturesque as it has always been. The village will have its own parking, but also will become part of the university’s T bus service route.

Sororities slated to build in the new community are:

• Alpha Chi Omega
• Alpha Delta Pi
• Alpha Kappa Alpha*
• Alpha Omicron Pi
• Chi Omega
• Delta Delta Delta
• Delta Gamma
• Delta Zeta
• Kappa Delta
• Kappa Kappa Gamma
• Phi Mu
• Pi Beta Phi
• Sigma Kappa
• Zeta Tau Alpha

*Alpha Kappa Alpha will not have a house in the village but will have meeting space in the shared-use building.

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CONTACT:

Beth Gladden (865-771-1284, bgladden@utk.edu)

The site, which consists of Confederate cannon emplacements and trenches facing the Fort Sanders area, was uncovered during archaeological surveys of the area prior to preparing the land for construction of UT’s Sorority Village.

UT archeologists and members of the East Tennessee Civil War Association believe it is the only archaeologically confirmed Confederate battle site in Knoxville.

Plans for the 21 acres between Neyland Drive, Kingston Pike and Alcoa Highway will be slightly modified to commemorate this key location in the Siege of Knoxville, which took place from Nov. 18 through Dec. 4, 1863, and more specifically the Battle of Fort Sanders on Nov. 29, 1863.

UT will preserve approximately 60 feet of the south end of the trench where Confederate soldiers did battle and mark it with a plaque. The view to the east, facing Fort Sanders, also will be preserved.

Plans for Sorority Village have been under way for more than three years. Work on the infrastructure for the 13 residential houses along with a central meeting facility for all chapters will begin in early September.

“The university appreciates the historical value of this site and we are proud to commemorate the battle and those who took part in this significant event in our nation’s history,” said Jeff Maples, senior associate vice chancellor for finance and administration. “We are pleased to work with the East Tennessee Civil War Association to determine the best way to honor the history, but also accommodate the needs of our campus community.”

A trench was indicated in the location of the site on a Civil War-era map created by Union engineer Capt. Orlando M. Poe, but it previously had not been excavated. A team of archeologists with UT Knoxville’s Archaeological Research Laboratory (ARL) uncovered the area over the past four months.

The group, led by Elizabeth Kellar DeCorse, research assistant professor, and senior archaeologist and field director Michael Angst found unusually well-preserved evidence of cannon emplacements, including the original ruts left by the cannon wheels, and artifacts including friction primers, belt buckles and metal remnants believed to be left from when soldiers in the trench burned available items to stay warm.

Because the site is the first archaeologically substantiated Confederate battery position used in Knoxville’s Battle of Fort Sanders, it helps shed light on history.

“Confederate records of the siege and battle are woefully incomplete or totally missing. This fills in some of those gaps,” said Steve Dean, president of the Civil War Alliance. “Aside from the physical location pinpointed by the project, the careful archaeological work has provided a glimpse into the difficult conditions experienced by the soldiers who were in the trenches.”

One unique feature of the trench is that a number of small hearths were carved out of the sides of the trench to allow soldiers to light fires in relative safety within the trench itself. Records from the era show that the winter of 1863 into early 1864 brought particularly bitter cold to the Knoxville area.

“UT is to be commended for funding the archaeological work and furthermore helping preserve at least a portion of the site. Our shared goal should be that the legacy of the Civil War, the terrible struggle that helped define this country’s future, will be properly memorialized and available to the public to appreciate,” Dean said.

A display about the excavations on Morgan Hill will be added to the long-term exhibition on the Battle of Fort Sanders at UT’s McClung Museum. (http://mcclungmuseum.utk.edu/).

About Sorority Village
UT is covering $1.25 million of the $4 million infrastructure project for Sorority Village, which involves installation of utilities, roads, parking and site preparation. The 13 residential houses will be built in phases. The first phase includes a shared facility that includes a nonresidential space for Alpha Kappa Alpha and a central meeting space for all chapters.

Sorority chapters are contributing to the remaining infrastructure costs and funding their chapter houses in full through private donations and mortgage agreements that will be paid through residential rent and chapter fees.
Once construction is completed, the total private investment in Sorority Village will be at least $45 million. Alumni leaders from participating sorority chapters have been raising private funds for the facilities over the past several years.

“We appreciate the collaborative relationship with sorority leaders and our shared commitment to a high-quality development that will enhance what is scenic and historic land for the university,” said Maples. “Sorority Village will be a significant addition to our campus and the Knoxville community, as well as a great example of a successful private-public development partnership.”

The houses will range from 8,000 square feet to 17,000 square feet and house up to 48 women each.

Morgan Hill is named for Harcourt Morgan, UT’s 13th president and founding director of UT’s Agricultural Experiment Station, who also once lived on the property.

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Pictured: The illustration accompanying this release is courtesy of Charles Faulkner, professor emeritus of anthropology at UT Knoxville.

C O N T A C T :

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