The University of Tennessee is a public land-grant university headquartered at Knoxville. Founded in 1794, it is the flagship institution of the statewide University of Tennessee system with nine undergraduate departments and eleven graduate departments and hosts more than 26,000 students from all 50 states and more than 100 foreign countries. In its 2009 ranking of universities, U.S. News & World Report ranked UT 118th among national universities and 52nd among public institutions of higher learning. Its ties to Oak Ridge National Laboratory, established under UT President Andrew Holt and continued under the UT-Battelle partnership, have positioned the University as co-manager and allow for considerable research opportunities for faculty and students enjoyed by few other institutions of comparable standing.

Also affiliated with the University are the Howard H. Baker, Jr. Center for Public Policy, the University of Tennessee Anthropological Research Facility, and the University of Tennessee Arboretum, which occupies 250 acres of nearby Oak Ridge, Tennessee and features hundreds of species of plants indigenous to the region. The University is a direct partner of the University of Tennessee Medical Center, the only Level I trauma center in the East Tennessee region and a self-proclaimed 'teaching hospital' due to its aggressive medical research programs and position as the primary career destination for most medical school graduates of the University of Tennessee Health Science Center at Memphis.