The College of Home Economics (later, College of Human Ecology, presently College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences) established a day care center at the Golf Range Apartments as a child-care “laboratory” for instruction and research in 1966. The program was extended to full-day day care in 1982 and renamed a Child Development Laboratory. In 1986 the program was made year-round. The college’s Child Development Laboratories were accredited in 1987 (the first program in Knoxville) by the National Academy of Early Childhood Programs.
The program was relocated to a facility on Lake Avenue as part of the Early Learning Center for Research and Practice in 2011.