TENNESSEE, UNIVERSITY OF

state university system based in Knoxville. It is a comprehensive, land-grant university, classified as a Research University I by the Carnegie Foundation. In addition to the main campus there are branch campuses at Chattanooga and Martin, as well as a medical centre at Memphis. The university offers over 300 undergraduate, graduate, and professional degree programs. The Graduate School at the main campus provides programs of study leading to the master's degree in about 85 fields and to the doctoral degree in 55 fields. Research facilities include the Energy, Environment, and Resources Center and the Science Alliance, which is conducted in association with the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. The University of Tennessee Space Institute in Tullahoma was established in 1964. The Memphis campus contains colleges of Medicine, Dentistry, Pharmacy, Nursing, Allied Health Sciences, and Graduate Medical Services, and a branch of the College of Nursing. Approximately 41,500 students are in enrollment. The University of Tennessee was founded in 1794 as Blount College. The name was changed to East Tennessee College in 1807, to East Tennessee University in 1840, and finally, to the University of Tennessee in 1879. University instruction was suspended during the American Civil War. The school received land-grant status in 1869, under the provisions of the Morrill Act of 1862. Graduate-level course work began in 1821; the first master's degree was awarded in 1827 and the first doctorate in 1886. A department of graduate studies, established in 1879, became the Graduate School in 1912. Women were first admitted in 1892. The Chattanooga branch, founded in 1886, became the University of Chattanooga before joining the state university system in 1969. The Martin branch, established by Baptists in 1900 as the Hall-Moody Institute, joined the system as a junior college in 1927. It became a senior college in 1951 and gained coequal campus status in 1967. Its tree-lined campus at Martin is included in the National Botanical Register. Alumni include economists Frank Hyneman Knight and James M. Buchanan (who received the Nobel Prize for Economics in 1986) and critic Joseph Wood Krutch.