The first inclusion of architecture in the university’s curriculum was the lectures on engineering and architecture for students in the last year of study in the English and Scientific Department, first listed in the catalog of 1844. A century later, in the 1940s and more insistently in the 1950s, practicing architects urged the university to institute a curriculum in architecture since there was no School of Architecture in Tennessee.
On the basis of a study completed in 1963, the administration recommended the inauguration of the program, and it had received all necessary approvals by fall 1964. Having admitted its first class in 1965, the College of Architecture and Design has the only professionally accredited architecture program in Tennessee. The college was briefly allied with the Graduate School of Planning (as the College of Architecture and Planning) that had opened in fall 1965 following substantial pressure for institution of such a program by state and local officials, municipal planners, and TVA. The undergraduate program in interior design was transferred from the College of Human Ecology to the College of Architecture and Design in 1996, with the graduate program being recommended for termination because of low enrollment. The landscape architecture program (joint with the College of Agricultural and Natural Resources) was initiated in 2008. The National Architectural Accrediting Board accredits the undergraduate and graduate programs in the college.