The Tennessee Chairs of Excellence program was a facet of Governor Lamar Alexander’s Better Schools Program, passed by the Tennessee General Assembly in 1984. While much of the program dealt with K–12 education, three areas (increased general funding, the Chairs of Excellence program, and the Centers of Excellence program) were designed specifically to improve higher education in Tennessee (and garner the support of higher education advocates for the program).
Controversy had surrounded the division of the initial $10 million appropriation for the Centers of Excellence, and in mid-May 1984 Representative John Bragg (D-Murfreesboro) proposed creation of the $10 million Chairs of Excellence program, to be divided equally between UT and the board of regents. Both the House and Senate approved inclusion of the program in their budget versions, with every state dollar to be matched one for one in establishing the chairs. The program was designed to attract promising and prominent professors to the state’s higher education institutions.
The statewide University of Tennessee was eventually allocated $17.5 million to fund one half of 35 chairs. Each chair was to have an endowment of $1 million, of which the state would provide one half and the institution was to raise a matching amount from private funds, dollar for dollar. In Knoxville, sixteen chairs were established: two in Agriculture, four in Business Administration, four in Engineering, one in Communication, and five in Arts and Sciences (History, Romance Languages, English, Environmental Studies, and Physics).