Knoxville College history

The school's first building, McKee Hall, named for the Reverend O.S. McKee, was completed in 1876, and the school opened in December of that year.

Its mission today is a direct outgrowth of the purpose of its founding.Knoxville College opened as a normal school for the training of teachers, but was designated a college in 1877.

With many Black people just 10 years out of slavery and with very little education, the school began with a grade-school department and the first college class of two did not graduate until 1883.

Charles Dabney, the University’s 11th president, led the expansion of science and engineering curricula in 1887 and initiated admission of women students.

In 1890, the state designated the school the recipient of its Morrill Act funds for blacks, with which the school established mechanical and agricultural departments.

In 1892 Knoxville College established a glee club that gave concerts across the country two years later and raised $1,500 to help construct the men's dormitory, McCulloch Hall.

Understanding the medical needs of the Black community, KC established a medical department in July 1895 to train physicians.

In 1901 Knoxville College was chartered by the state of Tennessee.

Beginning in 1902 the State of Tennessee provided financial support for the College’s agricultural and industrial departments.

In 1904, students made and used or sold one million bricks.

In 1907 the Eliza B. Wallace Hospital was established at Knoxville College which not only provided training for black nurses but also provided critical health care for the black community in the era of segregation.

The College of Arts and Sciences was established in 1914.

In the aftermath of the Riot of 1919, one of the city's worst racial episodes, the school's administration (comprising black and white members) staunchly defended the city's African American community, and praised its students' restraint.

The legislature’s first $1 million appropriation led to the building of iconic Ayres Hall, which opened in Knoxville in 1921.

The Municipal Technical Advisory Service was established in 1949 to serve local governments across the state.

President Andy Holt took office in 1959 and ten years later, enrollment had tripled and the University’s meteoric growth called for administrative restructuring.

Holt had already established the University’s first ties to Oak Ridge National Laboratory and, in 1964, the UT Space Institute in Tullahoma opened and statewide research dollars for UT reached an all-time high.

Holt oversaw the transition of burgeoning UT entities from a statewide presence into a statewide system, made official by the UT Board of Trustees in 1968.

The Institute for Public Service (IPS) was formally organized in 1971 to deliver outreach to government, business and industry.

Two years later, in 1973, what is today known as the Law Enforcement Innovation Center began was introduced as Southeastern Community Oriented Policing Education.

Efforts to establish a Nashville campus ended in a merger with Tennessee State University in 1979.

When Leonard Adams came to Knoxville College from Detroit in 1988, the first things he noticed about the South were the hills, the heat and the bright red dirt under the historically Black campus in the Mechanicsville neighborhood.

Joe Johnson, who served as an assistant to Holt; vice president for development; and chancellor at Memphis, was named UT president in 1991.

UT celebrated its bicentennial in 1994.

From 1997 on, Adams said Knoxville College began admitting an increased number of foreign students, who were more readily able to pay for a degree from the unaccredited college.

The research venture between the University and Oak Ridge National Laboratory was formally solidified in 2000, when UT-Battelle, a partnership formed between UT and Battelle Memorial Institute, won the contract to manage the facility for the United States Department of Energy.

Enrollment had dwindled to just 11 students, and the college was struggling to pay back a $4.5 million loan from 2003 and more than $425,000 to the federal government for the Stewart Science Hall cleanup.

In 2005, UT-Battelle won extension of its contract – without having to re-compete – to manage Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

The National Science Foundation awarded a $65-million grant to the University in 2008 – then the largest NSF grant in Tennessee history – to build and operate a supercomputer through a partnership with ORNL, which has established itself as a DOE Leadership Computing Facility.

Jan Simek, a UT Knoxville administrator and highly regarded professor of anthropology, was named interim president upon Petersen’s departure in 2009.

In January 2010, the school hired Doctor Horace A. Judson as interim president.

In April 2015, the school announced it was suspending classes for the Fall 2015 term in hopes of reorganizing.

In May 2016, the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation recommended the college become a state Superfund site due to ongoing contamination concerns from the Stewart Science Hall.

Following DiPietro’s announced retirement in 2018, UT Knoxville alumnus Randy Boyd was selected and appointed to lead the UT System as interim president beginning in late November 2018.

In 2019, Boyd announced the launch of UT Promise—a last-dollar academic scholarship guaranteeing free tuition and fees for Tennessee residents with family household incomes below the state median.

Formal discussions began in fall 2020 about the possible expansion of the UT System and acquisition of Martin Methodist College, a small, 150-year-old, private college located in Pulaski, Tennessee.