From ever-increasing research dollars to affordability and value, the University of Tennessee is recognized by national publications for academic quality and programs that best prepare students to compete in a global economy.
As the state's flagship, research-intensive university, the University of Tennessee continues in its unique role of promoting education, research and public service to enhance its national reputation as a top-tier institution of higher education and to ensure the region's strong economic growth into the future.
Academic Reputation
Over the past three years, seven UT faculty members have received National Endowment for the Humanities fellowships, making UT one of only nine universities in the nation so honored.
In its 2008 America's Best Colleges ranking, U.S. News and World Report placed UT in the top 30 percent of national public universities, ranked 45th among 164 public institutions. UT also is in the top 40 percent of all national universities, ranked 96th among 262 colleges and universities around the U.S.
U.S. News and World Report also gave high rankings to UT's undergraduate programs:
The College of Business Administration's program in supply chain management and logistics is ranked eighth in the nation, ahead of the same program at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and its overall undergraduate program is 36th among national public universities.
The College of Engineering's overall undergraduate program is ranked 34th among national public universities, gaining momentum with the construction of the $37.5 million Min Kao Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Building funded in part by a gift from Kao, one of the college's most successful alumni.
Forbes Inc. ranked UT's MBA program in the College of Business Administration 9th among public programs. UT was ahead of programs at universities such as Vanderbilt, Georgetown, Indiana and Wake Forest.
Kaplan Publishing ranked UT as one of the nation's top 25 "cutting edge schools" in a recent guide to colleges.
Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine ranked UT as one of the top 50 universities in the nation in 2006 for "best value," a measure of the quality of academic programs compared to costs and financial aid. UT was 48th out of 130 public colleges and universities.
Washington Monthly magazine ranked UT 88th among 162 national public universities in 2006, and 144th out of 245 colleges and universities around the U.S.
UT's student body is another sign of the university's academic quality:
Fully one-third of the nearly 4,100 entering freshmen admitted in fall 2007 had a core high school GPA of 4.0.
The new class has an average ACT score of 26, up from 25.8 the previous year and 25.6 in 2005.
The percentage of black students at UT jumped 1.9 percentage points between 2001 and 2004, the largest increase of any of the nation's flagship state universities, according to the Journal of Blacks in Higher Education.
Despite last year's end of the Geier Consent Decree, which provided scholarship funds for African American students, UT's efforts to ensure access to the university and promote a diverse learning environment continue to be strong.
Minority students make up about 14 percent of this year's freshman class. Of those, about 9 percent are African American.
To further enhance its accessibility to all students, the Knoxville campus has added $1 million to support its new Tennessee Pledge and Promise scholarship programs, which focus on improving access and success to Tennessee students.
Almost 82 percent of freshmen enrolled at UT Knoxville in 2005 returned to UT for their sophomore year in 2006, which is a higher rate of retention than any other four-year public university in the Tennessee Board of Regents system. UT Knoxville also had the highest six-year graduation rate in the group, at 57.2 percent.
As UT's academic impact is felt by more Tennesseans, so is its economic impact on the state and the region.
"Places Rated Almanac" has named Knoxville as a "most livable city," due to its business-friendly investment opportunities, affordable housing, a highly trained workforce and excellent public education. Knoxville is at the junction of three major interstate highways that put the city within a day's drive of 75 percent of the U.S. marketplace. Knoxville also has one of the lowest overall tax burdens in the nation, according to the Tax Foundation.
A large part of the region's economic growth is expected to come from UT's partnership with the Battelle Memorial Institute to manage Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) on behalf of the U.S. Department of Energy. This partnership formalizes the university's longstanding collaborative relationship with one of the nation's premier research facilities.
The lab's exciting new facility, its "crown jewel," is the Spallation Neutron Source (SNS) research facility. SNS will allow researchers from the United States and all over the world to use neutrons to understand the most fundamental structures and processes of matter, transforming it for uses that were unimaginable even a few short years ago.
UT and ORNL have created joint institutes in areas such as biological sciences, computational sciences, heavy ion research, nanophase materials sciences and neutron sciences. These joint institutes take advantage of the instructional and research strengths offered by the university and the national lab.
The state of Tennessee has partnered with UT and ORNL through its Governor's Chair program, which allocates funds to attract top scientists and researchers from around the world to work at the joint institutes.
UT and ORNL will manage a new $125-million bioenergy research center that will search for ways to produce alternatives to gasoline. The Bioenergy Science Center, to be located at the Joint Institute for Biological Sciences, will study how to more efficiently extract cellulose from plants such as switchgrass and poplar trees. The results of this research will be used at the Tennessee Biofuels Initiative, a 5-million-gallon-per-year pilot plant for demonstration of switchgrass-to-ethanol conversion.
Across the university's campuses and institutes, UT brought in $307.9 million in grants for fiscal year 2006, up from $285.1 million in 2005, marking the second consecutive record-breaking total. Leading the way in total awards was the Knoxville campus with $126.7 million.
As research funding increases, UT continues to forge partnerships around the region and the nation. The Center for Transportation Research is a hub connecting universities across the Southeast in conducting vital research to improve the nation's transportation safety through new approaches and new technologies. The UT Research Foundation is partnering with local, state and national agencies to construct the Innovation Valley Center for Entrepreneurship, a 15,000-square-foot, $2.5-million facility that will house, develop and promote new technology businesses.
The University of Tennessee is moving forward in its mission to be the preeminent public research and teaching university linking the people of Tennessee to the nation and the world.
