Standing in front of a giant screen in Chattanooga’s Walker Theatre on Sept. 12, Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly pulled up a colorful map of the southeastern United States.
A red push pin identified Chattanooga, and a series of vibrant, radiating circles showed the distances between top-tier research universities in the region — what the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education refers to as R1 universities. The colors ranged from blue to red depending on the distance, with deep red meaning a location is about 300 miles from an R1 university.
“You see anything wrong with this map?” Kelly asked the audience during his annual State of the City address. “I do.”
Chattanooga is about 100 miles from the nearest R1 university. It’s in a yellow-green gulf between Vanderbilt University in Nashville, the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, the University of Alabama in Huntsville, the University of Georgia in Athens and three major institutions in Atlanta.
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