Perez Dickinson spent two years at Amherst College before coming to Knoxville where his brother-in-law, Joseph Estabrook, was principal of the Knoxville Female Academy. Dickinson taught at Hampton Sidney and then attended UT (as East Tennessee College) and was awarded an honorary AB degree in 1832. He bought a lot on Main Street (razed for … Continued

At its June 2000 meeting, the board of trustees postponed consideration of raising tuition and fees because of the lack of final funding information from the state. Discussion turned to an informal proposal to add fees for specific majors—namely, engineering. President Wade Gilley indicated that engineering required more money than what was being provided by … Continued

In fall 1972 UT implemented a program of differentiated housing, which ranged from not allowing members of the opposite sex of residents any access to the public areas or rooms of residents to allowing open visitation in lobbies and individual rooms. Initially, there was considerable confusion about the length of the visitation periods and the … Continued

UT became one of the first educational institutions to have the technology to digitally record textbooks in January 2007 when Disability Services and Oak Ridge’s Recording for the Blind and Dyslexic teamed up to install equipment for volunteers to record textbooks on campus.

The UT Dining Club was established to allow members to use their VOLCard as a debit club, having funds spent at a UT Dining Services facility deducted from the card balance. Originally, the Dining Club was open only to dormitory residents, with residents (or their parents) receiving a monthly bill. It was opened to all … Continued

With the opening of two restaurants (Panda Express and Raising Cane’s) in the building purchased by UT across from the Baker Center, Cumberland Avenue restaurant owners expressed concern about the competitive advantage those restaurants would have because they could accept UT’s Dining Dollars. Students also expressed the desire to use Dining Dollars at restaurants other … Continued

In 1989 geology graduate students Johnathan Bryan and Daniel Frederick rediscovered the first record of dinosaur remains from Tennessee. The fossilized remains of a hadrosaur, a duck-billed dinosaur that grew to a length of 40 feet, were located amidst thousands of specimens stored in the paleontological collection when the two were cleaning the collection and … Continued

At its winter 1975 meeting, the board of trustees adopted a policy permitting reissuance of diplomas to include name changes that might occur as a result of divorce or other factors.

In April 1976 Governor Ray Blanton signed into law a bill allowing state colleges and universities to withhold diplomas until all tuition and fees had been paid. UT already had a policy of holding transcripts and continued to do so. In winter quarter 1981, UT implemented the policy of withholding both the transcript and the … Continued

The direct deposit of employees’ pay in their bank accounts began in September 1982. Student employees were able to have their paychecks direct deposited effective August 12, 1994. Employees received a paper statement of the transaction. In July 2009 UT moved to distribute payroll statements only online.