The nascent discipline of engineering is reflected in the first catalog of the university (then East Tennessee College) in 1838, with the listing of Joseph Estabrook as “President and Lecturer on Chemistry, Mineralogy, etc.” The catalog of 1844 divided collegiate curricular offerings into the Collegiate Department and the English Department, (soon changed to English and Scientific Department), with “Surveying” and “Mineralogy and Geology” being in the English Department. An attached note to the curriculum stated that during the last year, an opportunity would be provided to attend lectures on engineering and architecture.
Students who completed the English and Scientific Department curriculum, which included the early engineering disciplines, were not entitled to degrees and were not counted among the institution’s graduates. In 1847 departments, in the modern sense, were established, and the Mathematical Department and the Department of Natural Sciences contained the elements of engineering, including the lectures in engineering and architecture in the final year.
The institution acquired its first qualified teacher of engineering in 1860. In 1869, when the university became Tennessee’s land-grant institution, the institution committed to provision of instruction in agriculture and the mechanical arts, moving the institution along the path toward instruction in modern engineering disciplines. At that time, the technical courses were taught by the professor of mathematics, and there were no laboratories for teaching engineering.
The mechanical arts course was expanded to include courses leading to bachelor’s degrees in civil, mechanical, and mining engineering in 1879. In 1886 Schools of Mathematics and Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Physics, and Chemistry and Metallurgy led to degrees in civil, mechanical, and mining engineering. In 1887 a School of Mechanic Arts was created to increase the amount of shop training for engineers.
Reese Hall (then known as the Mechanical Building) was erected as an engineering building in 1888 and housed the power plant, forge shops, pattern shops, machine shop, and mechanical drawing room. When Science Hall was completed in 1892, the Engineering Department occupied the top floor (Civil and Mechanical Drawing), but the combined space was soon too small, and Estabrook Hall was built in 1898.
In 1892 President Dabney recruited Dr. Charles Perkins (PhD, from Johns Hopkins) to teach physics and electricity. He also recruited Charles Ferris, then working in the city engineer’s office in Grand Rapids, Michigan, to teach mechanical drawing and freehand art. In 1904 an extension division of the College of Engineering was established to provide engineering training to employed men. In 1905 the legislature appropriated $22,500 “to be used towards establishing Schools of Technology” in the university. An addition to Estabrook Hall was made with those funds to provide classrooms and laboratories for engineering. The 1907 appropriation for buildings allowed both the building of a new facility for agriculture and the renovation and retrofitting of Carrick Hall for mining engineering and geology, as well as strengthening the faculty and the curricula in engineering.
The reorganization of the academic program by President Ayres in 1905 established a
College of Engineering, but this was primarily a curricular division. Administrative responsibility remained centralized in the dean of liberal arts and the president. In 1913 President Morgan reorganized administrative responsibilities, and Charles Ferris became the first dean of the College of Engineering. In 1920 writing in the Volunteer, Ferris described the college: “the College has a threefold task. Its first task is to train leaders of industry, men who can fill positions of responsibility in the factories, in transportation, in teaching the sciences and their application to modern life. The College must be the State’s laboratory for research, where the resources of the state may be studied and understood, where waste may be eliminated, where new processes may be discovered that will add to human progress. The College of Engineering needs to reach beyond the campus to teach the masses of workmen the theory back of their trades, that they may become skilled workmen.”
The college celebrated its 175th anniversary in 2013, with the centerpiece being the opening of the new John D. Tickle Engineering Building. It concurrently celebrated the 40th anniversary of its engineering diversity programs.