UT alumna Carol Aebersold (bachelor’s in music education, 1970, and former music teacher in Scott County and Cleveland) and her daughter, Carol Bell, are the creators of the Elf on the Shelf phenomenon, which has placed an elf in hundreds of thousands of homes to watch over children and report to Santa at night. In … Continued

Ground for a new Plant Sciences Building was broken in summer 1966 by Dean of Agriculture Webster Pendergrass and Trustees Clyde York and Jerome Taylor. York was head of the board’s Agriculture Committee, and Taylor was head of the Building Committee. Morton and Sweetser and Glenn Bullock and Associates were the architects. The contractor was … Continued

Ellis & Ernest Drugstore, located at the corner of Phillip Fulmer Way (formerly Stadium Drive) and Cumberland Avenue, was the student gathering place and informal student center from 1926 until purchased by the university in 1965. Terms of the purchase provided for the purchase price to be paid within 22 months and for the drugstore … Continued

One of the first two female graduates of the institution (BA 1895; MA 1899), Elma Ellis became professor of Latin and Greek at Lynchburg College in Lynchburg, Virginia. Prior to taking that post, she was professor of Greek and Latin at Milligan College, Tennessee, for three years; professor of Greek and German at Virginia Christian … Continued

Replanting of trees on the battle-scarred hill following the Civil War included setting out more than one hundred elm seedlings brought from the campus of Yale University between 1865 and 1877. In 1951 the elm disease (Pholem Lecrosis) was identified on campus elms, and a program of spraying to eradicate the insect that spread the … Continued

In January 1995 Telephone Services announced that emergency telephones would be installed in all 136 elevators over the next two years at a cost of $400,000. Test telephones had been installed in the Jessie Harris Building following a fall 1994 incident in which a faculty member in human ecology was trapped in an elevator for … Continued

A three-credit-hour interdisciplinary class for sophomore, junior, and senior students seeking to become involved in leadership positions on campus was begun in 2009 by the Student Life Division’s Office of Student Orientation and Leadership Development. Participants in the class (limited to 20 students) were chosen by application and interviews.

At its March 1, 1971, meeting, the UT Board of Trustees created the title of Trustee Emeritus for any former member of the board, either appointed or ex-officio. Trustees emeriti are entitled to attend meetings and other board activities but are not voting members of the board. In June 2011 the board voted to make … Continued

In 1993 the University of North Carolina Press published New Poems of Emily Dickinson, a volume containing 498 new poems embedded in Dickinson’s letters by UT researchers. William H. Shurr, professor of English; Anna Dunlap; and Shurr’s daughter, Emily (UT sophomore at the time) followed up Shurr’s discovery in 1991 that portions of Dickinson’s letters … Continued

Dr. Emperor joined the faculty of the Department of English in 1929 and took charge of the program in public speaking. He taught the first graduate course in eighteenth-century English literature in 1941. In 1944, upon the occasion of the sesquicentennial of the founding of the institution, he composed the official institutional ode in its … Continued