Jessie W. Harris became the director of what was then known as the School of Home Economics under the College of Agriculture in 1925. She became the first female dean of a college on the Knoxville campus when Home Economics became its own college in 1957. The college, which was renamed the College of Human Ecology in 1985, merged with the College of Education in 1987 and was renamed the College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences in 2002.