The Pom Pon Squad became the UT Dance Team

A pomp is a small sheet of tissue paper that is rolled into a ball and then either stuffed into wire mesh on a float or glued to a float outline. The word is also used as a verb—for example, “to pomp a float” or “pomping a float.”

UT junior in English Leslie Wylie and her horse Rowdy Intentions won the gold medal in the H-A dressage division of the US Pony Club National Championships in August 2001. She had ridden in equestrian competitions since the age of 10. She found her initially sickly horse through the Internet. After nurturing him back to … Continued

Approximately five hundred participants in the Poor People’s March on Washington, a vision of Martin Luther King Jr., stayed overnight in Knoxville on May 9, 1968. Two students requested that the marchers be allowed to sleep in Stokely Athletics Center, but the administrative response was that “UT facilities are available only for University-related functions that … Continued

Ethel Acuff Poore (Mrs. Harry T.), who graduated from UT in 1913, became the first woman to head a state school for the deaf when she went to Tennessee School for the Deaf as superintendent in 1921. She was also the first woman to be elected president of the American Instructors of the Deaf, the … Continued

The Porter Cup, a 1920s gift of Mr. A. W. Porter of Nashville, was awarded each year to the best all-round athlete of the university.

James T. Porter, dean of liberal arts (now Arts and Sciences) from 1925 until his death in 1931, joined the UT faculty in 1908 as a professor of physics. A native Virginian, he received the AB and AM degrees from Randolph Macon College and the PhD in physics in 1905. He was chair of the … Continued

The university announced in 2008 that the branch of the US Postal Service in the Carolyn P. Brown University Center would close as an official post office branch. The university paid the salaries of the employees and all other bills associated with the operation of the branch, while receiving rent from the US Postal Service. … Continued

A proposal from the Faculty Senate Staff and Benefits Committee resulted, in 1996, in institution of the postretirement service program for tenured faculty. Under the program, a means of phasing into retirement was provided. The faculty member retired and retained the eligibility for retiree insurance, paid by UT. The retired faculty could teach 15 semester … Continued

A plaque in the Science/Engineering Building commemorates Charles Postelle’s bequest of more than $1 million to endow professorships in nuclear engineering and biochemistry. Postelle received the baccalaureate degree from UT in education in 1943 and taught biology and chemistry in the Birmingham, Alabama, and Colletsville, North Carolina, public schools. In 1966 he earned the master’s … Continued