University of Tennessee : Ask Biography

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The University of Tennessee (also referred to as the University of Tennessee, Knoxville or UT) is a public land-grant university headquartered at Knoxville. Founded in 1794, it is the flagship institution of the statewide University of Tennessee system with nine undergraduate colleges and eleven graduate colleges and hosts almost 28,000 students from all 50 states and more than 100 foreign countries. In its 2011 ranking of universities, U.S. News & World Report ranked UTK among the best national universities and public institutions of higher learning at 104th of all national universities. Its ties to Oak Ridge National Laboratory, established under UT President Andrew Holt and continued under the UT-Battelle partnership, have positioned the University as co-manager and allow for considerable research opportunities for faculty and students enjoyed by few other institutions of comparable standing.

Also affiliated with the University are the Howard H. Baker, Jr. Center for Public Policy, the University of Tennessee Anthropological Research Facility, and the University of Tennessee Arboretum, which occupies 250 acre (1 km2) of nearby Oak Ridge, Tennessee and features hundreds of species of plants indigenous to the region. The University is a direct partner of the University of Tennessee Medical Center, it is one of two Level I trauma center in the East Tennessee region. As a teaching hospital, it has an aggressive medical research programs and positions itself as the primary career destination for most medical school graduates of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center at Memphis.

Known for its passionate football tradition, Tennessee's primary economic engine and largest institute of higher learning, the University was nearly destroyed during the Civil War, but rebounded with substantial growth during the Reconstruction era of the United States. The University of Tennessee is the only university in the nation to have three presidential papers editing projects and holds collections of the papers of all three U.S. presidents from Tennessee-Andrew Jackson, James K. Polk, and Andrew Johnson.