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Room Where It Happens

Author: Frank Cuevas, Vice Chancellor for the Division of Student Life

We are a university on the rise. UT is experiencing record success and there has never been a better time to be a Volunteer.

Amid that backdrop, I have had the incredible honor of leading the Division of Student Life through a season of rapid growth, expansion, and ascent the past few years. With 91.9% retention and a record-breaking 38,728 students on campus this fall, the university is poised to enter a new era. And the spaces necessary to facilitate this progress are the very same spaces entrusted to Student Life.

When it comes to expanding resources, elevating programs, and upgrading facilities to foster this explosive growth, Student Life is leading the way. In summer of 2024, the Frieson Black Cultural Center underwent renovations and improvements, including specific changes in response to student feedback. Intentional decisions about spaces for the center and for the Multicultural Student Life staff were driven in part by the student voice, with conversations and surveys conducted in the spring and summer.

Student Disability Services is also looking ahead to a new space, when the Melrose Building will be rebuilt on campus with an anticipated opening in 2027. For now, the office has relocated to a temporary space with no break in service to students. Staff members are also gathering student feedback about their needs and what a reimagined office could mean for supporting student accommodations on campus.

University Housing is adding residence halls, with construction of three new student housing facilities underway currently on campus as part of the first housing public-private partnership approved at a university in the state of Tennessee. The housing market is impacting students at many universities across the country, and at UT we are pursuing every possible approach to lessen the burden and stress that students experience in this area of basic need.

Student Life offices and departments also offered 143 different leadership development and training opportunities for students in 2023–2024, investing numerous hours and resources into helping Volunteers become their best selves. The launch of Tennessee Saturday Night in 2023 as a new and premiere program to welcome the incoming class to campus is another signature way Student Life is leading in this area.

Additionally, resources across the division are being deployed to match the intensive growth over the past few years. In 2023–2024 alone, Student Life created 13 new staff positions to support student success, engagement, care, and belonging on campus.

Student Life is also participating in helping students pursue their dreams and providing financial support to do so. In 2023–2024, Student Life offices and departments offered a grand total of $494,175 in scholarship money and awarded 369 individual scholarships. This commitment to responsible and effective stewardship is not just a priority in our division’s strategic plan, but it is a keystone value in how we operate, how we serve, and how we lead.

UT is experiencing tremendous growth on our campus, and as the vice chancellor for Student Life, I could not be more thrilled to be leading this division during such an exciting time in the university’s history.

What happens in every room on campus, whether a physical space or a metaphorical one, is that students are changed for the better. Everything Student Life does is intended to create places, spaces, and opportunities for students to grow, learn, lead, and serve.