When you ask UTC Chancellor Roger Brown about his accomplishments after five years on the job, he doesn’t mention the swanky new buildings on campus. He doesn’t talk about his school’s enhanced academic programs. Nor does he boast about UTC’s impressive athletic program.
When you ask Brown about his remarkable success, he talks about people. That’s when a smile crosses his face and his eyes brighten. “Families and students are choosing UTC as their first choice, more than ever before,” says the chancellor, taking a break from meetings to sit at a table in the University Center’s café. “They are recognizing the outstanding achievement of our faculty and the benefits of a Chattanooga education.”
Brown is a charming, dignified man with a smile that opens up between his beard and mustache to put anyone at ease. Even in 100-degree weather, he wears a suit with a blue and gold tie, but he’s not reluctant to take off his coat to reveal himself more as a colleague and less like a high-level administrator with a Ph.D.
Speaking from experience, Brown talks passionately about the importance of UTC making a top quality education accessible to first-generation college students. He believes in public education because he is a product of the system.
He has come a long way from his humble beginnings. A native of Paperville, Tennessee, near Bristol, Brown was the eighth of nine children in a working-class family. His father was a carpenter and his mother worked in a factory until 1951. “We were a blue collar family, and I had a typical large country family experience. Great big meals around tables, sleeping several kids to a bed, and on the holidays when all of the cousins came over, we ate in shifts.”