State looking to buy Lambuth University
This is troubling on many fronts.
First, from an athletic standpoint, there is not a Tennessee public university that does not play NCAA D1 athletics. If
not operated as a satellite campus of Memphis or Martin, where does Lambuth fit in the future?
Second, buying a school when the State couldn't afford to even start a College of Pharmacy at an existing University and is cutting budgets at all Universities?
Third, this drains funding and weakens the entire THEC system.
Just my opinions.
Both UT-Chattanooga and Auburn were both Methodist colleges before becoming state universities. I believe it's still in the UTC rules that a certain number of board members must be Methodists. At least it was a few years ago.
I used to work at Auburn and staff members of Auburn Methodist Church received benefits like discount football tickets, etc when I was living there. Pretty much the same perks as adjunct faculty members.
I didn't know Chattanooga was once a methodist school
In 1886 the Methodist Episcopal Church, North founded Chattanooga University. Strife within the church over educational policy in the South soon undermined Chattanooga University and led to its consolidation in 1889 with a rival school, Grant Memorial University in Athens, Tennessee.
In 1889 the consolidated school adopted the name U. S. Grant University. Its administrative center, undergraduate college, and preparatory department were removed to Athens, leaving the Chattanooga campus with makeshift specialty programs in business, law, medicine, and theology. Internal problems survived the reorganization
Faculty members predicted that the school was "approaching dissolution," but the president who took office in 1898 refused to join the death watch. John H. Race, a Northern Methodist clergyman without prior experience in college administration, transformed the fractious pseudo-university into a genuine liberal arts college. Race eliminated the preparatory and specialty programs and concentrated on elevating academic standards in the undergraduate college, which reopened in Chattanooga in 1904 and six years later gained membership in the Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools of the Southern States. He raised $750,000 in capital funds, including large sums from steel baron Andrew Carnegie and the Rockefeller-funded General Education Board. In 1909 the church transferred ownership of the school property to local trustees, who thereupon changed the name to the University of Chattanooga.
The complete severance of denominational ties came in 1935 when the university board dropped the requirement that two-thirds of its membership be Northern Methodists.
A perplexing challenge arose in 1968 when a public institution, the University of Tennessee, announced plans to build a four-year college in Chattanooga. Faced with the choice of competing head-on with the state university or joining forces with it, trustees of the Chattanooga institution merged it with the University of Tennessee to become the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga. An unusual feature of the merger agreement was the creation of the University of Chattanooga Foundation, which retains and manages the endowment once held by the University of Chattanooga. Income from the endowment provides scholarships, distinguished professorships, and special programs not usually found on the campus of a state-supported institution. In 1996 the UC Foundation endowment stood at $65 million.