Since its founding as Chattanooga University in 1886, The University of Tennessee at Chattanooga has developed an institutional excellence which rests on an unusual blend of the private and public traditions of American education.

For 83 years the University was a private school. Three years after its founding, the University was consolidated with another church-related school, East Tennessee Wesleyan University at Athens, under the name of Grant University. In 1907 the name University of Chattanooga was adopted.

In 1969 the University of Chattanooga and a junior college, Chattanooga City College, merged with the University of Tennessee, one of the oldest land-grant universities in the nation, to form the UTC campus. Pledged to the service of the entire state, the University of Tennessee has emerged as a statewide system consisting of four primary campuses. The new campus was given the mandate to devote the major portion of its resources to the development of excellence in undergraduate education and in selected areas of graduate study.