The University of Tennessee Board of Trustees approved proposals today to name or rename several buildings on the Knoxville campus. The trustees held their winter meeting on the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, campus.
Several UT Knoxville facilities are being renamed as they transition to new uses. All of the names approved will honor families or individuals who have made a significant contribution to the university and its history. One of the names marks a first in UT history.
The new Fred D. Brown Residence Hall is the first building on the UT Knoxville campus to be named for an African-American person.
“We are proud that we can carry on the legacy of these individuals who have contributed to UT’s rich diversity and inspiring history,” said Chancellor Jimmy G. Cheek.
Approved by the board were proposals to name:
- The new residence hall currently under construction on Andy Holt Avenue to the Fred D. Brown Jr. Residence Hall in honor of the longtime staff member who created the Office of Diversity Programs in the College of Engineering. The construction project is the first new residence hall to be built in forty-three years, and the hall will accommodate 700 men and women when it opens in 2014.
Now in its fortieth year, the Office of Diversity programs has recruited and supported more than 900 students from underrepresented groups who have graduated from the college. Brown founded it with just seventeen students, and his work has had a significant impact on the engineering profession.
UT Trustee Spruell Driver submitted a letter to the board detailing his gratitude to Brown for his influence on his own career.
“He made it his mission to personally identify and successfully recruit the best students in Tennessee and neighboring states with a high aptitude for engineering studies,” Driver noted.
Driver, a Nashville attorney, enrolled in UT in 1982 through what was then called the Minority Engineering Scholarship Program. He graduated in 1987 with a degree in industrial engineering and then went to Duke University’s law school.
“Mr. Brown went to great lengths to ensure that his students got off to a strong start academically and that we had a cohesive support structure to ensure successful persistence to graduation,” his letter stated.
Brown graduated from Hall High School in Alcoa, Tennessee, and earned his college degree from the Tuskegee Institute. He did post-graduate work at UT, Tennessee State University, Fisk University, and Vanderbilt University. He taught at Hall High School in Alcoa and Oak Ridge High School. He was the first African-American teacher at Oak Ridge High soon after it was integrated and became the first African-American member of the Alcoa Board of Education.
- The former Student Health Center, 1818 Andy Holt Way, to Temple Hall in honor of Oliver P. Temple and his daughter, Mary Boyce Temple. The new Student Health Building opened last year on Volunteer Boulevard. The former health center is currently being renovated for College of Nursing and College of Arts and Sciences programs.
Two previous buildings and a street have been named for the Temples throughout UT history. Temple Hall once served as an assembly center on the Agriculture Campus but no longer exists. The main route through campus, Temple Avenue, was renamed Volunteer Boulevard. Temple Court, which housed Career Services on the corner of Cumberland and Volunteer Boulevard, was razed in late 2012 to make room for a larger Student Union now under construction.
Oliver Temple was a trustee of East Tennessee University, which was later named the University of Tennessee, from 1820 until his death in 1907. He was a Greenville, Tennessee, lawyer and once ran unsuccessfully for Congress against Andrew Johnson. He was a driving force in expanding UT’s agriculture programs and its land grant designation.
Mary Boyce Temple continued her father’s work by establishing a foundation in 1919 to purchase and breed purebred animals and improve plant breeding. She later gave her library to UT.
- The new football practice facility the Anderson Training Center in honor of the Anderson families of Knoxville and Florence, Alabama. The families’ generosity helped to make the new state-of-the-art facility a reality. This 145,000-square-foot building includes an amphitheater-style team room, coaches’ offices, position meeting rooms, a first-class dining facility, players’ lounge, a 7,000-square-foot locker room, and a 22,000 square-foot multilevel weight room, as well as a new training room and hydrotherapy area. The Anderson Training Center will be central to the physical training and development of all Tennessee athletic teams.
The board also approved a proposal to modify the name of the Frank H. McClung Museum to the Frank H. McClung Museum of Natural History and Culture to better reflect its mission.
The John D. Tickle Engineering Building’s name was also modified to include the middle initial D of its benefactor, a 1965 graduate of the college. The Tickle building will be home to the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering. The building is set to open to students in fall 2013.
Read more about today’s Board of Trustees meeting at the University of Tennessee System website.
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C O N T A C T :
Karen Simsen (865-974-5186, karen.simsen@utk.edu)