The National Science Foundation launched a program of Centers of Excellence in 1965, and on July 1, 1968, the UT Department of Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering and the UT Physics Department implemented a three-year, $1,450,000 grant under the program. The grant was one of about 20 awarded to that date by NSF and was designed to bring each department—already considered very strong—up to a par with the top 20 institutions in their disciplinary areas.
The Department of Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering used its $700,000 to strengthen the areas of process systems engineering, thermodynamics and transport phenomena, and properties of materials. The Physics Department focused its efforts on four major areas of research: atomic and molecular physics, plasma physics, solid-state physics, and elementary particle physics. In three years’ time, the Physics Department added 15 new faculty, and the Chemical and Metallurgical Engineering Department had added six. UT’s close relationship with Oak Ridge played a major role in the acquisition of the grant.