The College of Education traces its roots to the 1844 preparation course for teachers, which offered free tuition to two young men from each county in Tennessee who would agree to teach for three years in East Tennessee following graduation. (The course, The Art of School Teaching, first appears in the 1844 catalog.) This program failed to attract students, as did the 1873 and 1874 three-year course of study “particularly designed to prepare youth for the occupation of teaching.” The 1880 establishment of a state, two-year normal course also failed to draw significant enrollment, even though it was complemented (and later temporarily replaced by) a summer normal institute in 1880, which was discontinued in 1885.
A new Teachers’ Department opened in 1891, originally designed for men who had previously taught. In the 1892 school year, women entered the department, and in 1894 the faculty allowed students to pursue the curriculum even if they had not previously taught. With the resignation of Professor T. C. Karns in 1899, the training program collapsed. In 1902 Professor Philander P. Claxton was named professor of pedagogy, and the Department of Education (with funds from the General Education Board) was opened in January 1903 with 65 students.
Part of the funding for the new department came from the General Education Board—$5,000 a year for three years, to be matched with $4,500 from the university. One of the requirements for the funds from the General Education Board was that the university operate a practice school. President Dabney secured a $3,000 grant from G. F. Peabody to equip a practice school and a domestic science laboratory and raised enough money from other sources to qualify. Countless delays arose, however, in working out an arrangement with the City of Knoxville to operate a nearby school as a practice school. When President Brown Ayres took office in the summer of 1904, he decided not to continue efforts to establish a practice school, and he recommended to the UT Trustees that only one professor of pedagogy and one domestic science teacher be retained. The board of trustees concurred, and the faculty of the education department did not gain back its numerical strength of five full-time faculty and several part-time instructors until about the time of World War I. In 1911 the Department of Education became the School of Education. In 1926 the school became the College of Education, and John A. Thackston, who had joined the faculty in 1916 as professor of education, was named the first dean. The National Council for the Accreditation of Teacher Education (NCATE) first accredited the college in 1954. In 2002 the college was merged with the College of Human Ecology to form the College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences.