Chancellor Loren Crabtree
No Time Like the Present
While there is no time like the present to live and learn at Tennessee, planning for the future is essential. This is a good time at UT, and we are poised on the cusp of even greater things to come.
Imagine making college degrees accessible to 8,000 more Tennessee students every year -- by increasing our enrollment on the Knoxville campus from 27,000 to 35,000 over the next decade or so.
Already, students are flocking to Knoxville in unprecedented numbers. More than 12,000 applicants competed for about 4,200 spots in UT’s fall ’06 freshman class, and it appears that applications for fall ’07 may exceed 13,000. We turn away many applicants who can succeed at UT because prudent enrollment management requires that our enrollment match our fiscal resources.
To take on more students, we need more faculty to teach them, more residence halls to house them, and more classrooms and laboratories to give them the level of education worthy of the state’s flagship research university.
As we plan campus growth to educate more students, we also plan to strengthen UT’s significant role in powering the state economy. We already attract some of the best creative minds in the world to this Innovation Valley, and businesses hungry for the new knowledge our research continuously uncovers are relocating here. In fact, Forbes magazine recently rated Knoxville the 4th best place to live and work, not just in the Southeast, but in the entire U.S. We want to enhance the attraction.
To pursue our highest aspirations for the citizens of Tennessee, UT has to cross the river. We will build buildings on Cherokee Farms, a 200-acre former dairy farm on the Tennessee River. Picture a superlative science, technology and engineering research park on that land. And picture new and renovated buildings for classrooms on a main campus made fine and fit for the best students, the best faculty, and the best staff and administrators we can find.
This campus metamorphosis, like all others in UT’s history, will require sound vision and strong commitment from every part of the university community. State funding is critical for capital building projects and infrastructure at Cherokee Farms. So are the private contributions from alumni and friends whose generosity and vision have always powered UT’s unfolding. The outcome will be worth the considerable effort -- for every time UT grows in stature, all Tennesseans grow with us.
