The Department of Audiology and Speech Pathology was established in 1962 in the College of Liberal Arts (now Arts and Sciences), with a focus on graduate work to prepare personnel for professional positions in clinics, hospitals, rehabilitation centers, and state and federal agencies. The US Department of Vocational Rehabilitation authorized a training grant of $23,208 to assist the new department in its first year of operation. The new department worked closely with the College of Education’s (now College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences) Department of Special Education, which for several years had the responsibility for training speech and hearing specialists (for the public schools) and classroom teachers (for the deaf and hearing-impaired children). Staff of the state’s East Tennessee Hearing and Speech Center, located on campus, served as part-time faculty in the new program, which was initially located in the Nielsen Physics Building. In 1966 the East Tennessee Hearing and Speech Center merged into the UT Department of Audiology and Speech Pathology.
The nationally ranked program, accredited by the American Hearing and Speech Association, was one of three campus academic programs proposed for elimination as part of budget cuts required in 2008. Dean of Arts and Sciences Bruce Bursten explained that the program was one with few interrelationships with other College of Arts and Sciences programs; was the only College of Arts and Sciences department not offering general education coursework; was not affiliated with Oak Ridge National Laboratory; and was not, unlike many top-rated similar programs, affiliated with a medical school. The program was one of four programs in Tennessee at the time.
Considerable institutional and community negative reaction to the proposed elimination of the department arose. Those opposed pointed to the 100 percent placement rate of graduates, the affiliation of the department with UT Medical Center and Children’s Hospital, its national ranking, and the fact that approximately 20 percent of students taking its courses were not Arts and Sciences students. The 1966 agreement with the Hearing and Speech Center ensured that that facet of the department would remain at least through 2047.
The board of trustees delayed action on the elimination of the three programs until its October 2008 meeting. Interim Chancellor Jan Simek announced in September that, after a study of alternatives that would allow the program to meet the educational and clinical needs of East Tennesseans, a group composed of representatives from the chancellor’s and president’s offices, UT, Memphis, and the Department of Audiology and Speech Pathology, had developed a plan under which the program would be transferred to the UT Health Science Center in Memphis under the College of Allied Health. The graduate program and the clinic would continue to operate in Knoxville, while the undergraduate program would be phased out. The plan was presented to the board of trustees’ Executive and Compensation Committee in September and to the full board, which approved the plan, in October. The board of trustees also approved expending funds from the 1999 UT Hospital Lease and Transfer Agreement to assist UTHSC with upfront costs associated with the program.
As approved by the board of trustees, the shift to the Center for Health Sciences was accomplished by July 1, 2009. Currently enrolled students were able to complete their degrees, and undergraduate degrees were then offered through the College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences in special education with an emphasis on communication sciences and speech disorders. The outcome was generally seen as being advantageous to the program since it would then be linked with an administration skilled at operating clinical programs.
In September 2013 UTHSC broke ground for a $20 million, 80,000-square-foot Audiology and Speech Pathology building on the UT Medical Center campus. The building, anticipated to be completed in 2015, provided for consolidation in one location of all academic and clinical components of the program, replacing the existing situation of operating in three different locations on the UT Knoxville campus. The three-story building was planned to include a clinical floor with diagnostic and treatment rooms for speech, swallowing, hearing, and dizziness disorders, plus an academic floor with research laboratories, lecture halls, classrooms, conference rooms, computer work areas, and space for offices and students. At the groundbreaking, UTHSC also announced that the bachelor’s degree program would be reinstated in fall 2014, with students graduating with a bachelor of science degree in Audiology and Speech Pathology jointly operated by UT Knoxville and UTHSC.