Historic move: University of Tennessee music college will be the first named after a woman
The budding College of Music at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville will be branded with a familiar name in a historic first for the campus.
Only a year old, the college will be named the Natalie L. Haslam College of Music on July 1 after a "transformational" donation from the Haslam family.
The exact amount of the donation was not immediately shared with Knox News.
This marks the first college at UT Knoxville named for a woman and the fourth named for a person or family, joining the Tickle College of Engineering, the Herbert College of Agriculture and the Haslam College of Business.
Natalie Haslam's name already is attached to one aspect of the college, the Natalie Haslam Music Center, which opened in 2013. She is a philanthropist, a former UT "Miss Tennessee," a 1952 alumna and the wife of Pilot Corporation founder Jim Haslam.
"UT has meant a great deal to both Jim and me all our lives,” Natalie Haslam said. “It is a true honor, and I’m very blessed.”
The College of Music recently completed its “historic inaugural academic year,” Chancellor Donde Plowman said in her letter of recommendation. The college was born out of the School of Music and is the first college of music at a Tennessee public university ? or in the Southeastern Conference for that matter, according to UT.
The renaming aligns with Haslam's passion for music and comes with an endowment from the Haslam family.
"I am not a musician, but music has always meant a lot to me,” Natalie Haslam said in a UT news release. “If we are lucky, music is a part of our lives at almost every turn – from the church services and weddings we attend, to football, basketball and other sports functions, and even to the parties, movies, plays and social activities in our lives. There’s always music."
The endowment will help the college's 350 undergraduate and graduate students while supporting faculty members, paying for scholarships and maintaining the college.
The gift from the Haslams meets the requirements for naming a college as outlined by the UT System Board of Trustees, which approved the naming at its annual meeting June 25.
The donation needs to reflect the size, budget and prominence of the college and must be transformative to improve the college's competitiveness. The college's advancement office works with the vice president to determine the correct donation amount.
For the board to consider a donation, it needs to be enough to establish an endowment that's either at least $75 million or enough to generate and distribute substantial income for the facility within a set range.
Keenan Thomas is a higher education reporter. Email [email protected]. X, formerly known as Twitter @specialk2real.
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This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: University of Tennessee at Knoxville music college gets Haslam name
