Chattanooga Mayor Tim Kelly has made clear his belief that the city needs a top-tier research university, and EPB has taken a step in that direction through a new quantum partnership with Vanderbilt.
But Kelly’s push isn’t the first time city leaders and people of influence felt the need to improve Chattanooga’s higher education profile.
In September 1966, the Greater Chattanooga Chamber of Commerce announced it had appointed a committee to study the possibility of establishing a four-year, state-supported school in the Scenic City. Attorney and future Chattanooga Mayor Robert Kirk Walker was selected to lead the panel, according to Chattanooga Times Free Press archives.
Of course, the city was already the home to the University of Chattanooga, but it was a private college with only a few thousand students. At the time, the Scenic City was the only major metropolitan area in Tennessee without a state-supported four-year school.