According to the University of Tennessee-Knoxville, the school’s board of trustees has approved the construction of a new building that will cost more than a quarter of a billion dollars.
“The board voted in favor of an amendment to the campus master plan to allow for construction of the building beginning as soon as fall 2023, as well as a $127,350,000 increase in funding for the project, bringing the total budget to $227,350,000,” according to the UT Daily Beacon.
The building will be part of the Haslam College of Business.
“We’re experiencing unexpected, phenomenal growth and most of the growth, much of it, is driven by interest in the Haslam College of Business,” Chancellor Donde Plowman reportedly said.
Over the past four years, the Haslam School of Business has experienced a 42 percent undergraduate enrollment boom. The business college’s enrollment grew by more than 1,000 students between 2021 and 2022.
The school is named for James Haslam, founder of the Pilot Flying J chain of truck stops.
Bill Haslam, son of James, is a billionaire and the former governor of Tennessee. The school has reportedly decided to award the young Haslam with an honorary doctorate degree.
Part of the business college is its world-renowned entrepreneurship program, which was recently ranked seventh in the world in the Texas Christian University Global University Entrepreneurship Research Productivity Rankings.
“This ranking and the growth in our entrepreneurship-related publications in the past few years represent an extraordinary accomplishment, especially in light of the fact that our entrepreneurship-focused faculty size is smaller than most, if not all, of the schools reported above us,” Russell Crook, head of the Department of Management and Entrepreneurship in UT’s Haslam College of Business said at the time.
“We are producing a substantial body of research focused on entrepreneurship, much of which has practical application to our students and alumni involved with entrepreneurship and innovation.”
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Pete D’Abrosca is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Pete on Twitter. Email tips to [email protected].
Photo “University of Tennessee, Knoxville” by University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
