March 15, 2024 was a historic day at UT Martin. The campus held its first investiture for the 12th Chancellor, Dr. Yancy Freeman Sr.
The Kathleen and Tom Elam Center was filled with people coming out to support and witness this historic event. Some guests in attendance included UT President, Randy Boyd, and staff of Tennessee senators, including Marsha Blackburn, Bill Hagerty, David Kustoff and Tandy Darby. Local government officials were also in attendance, including the Mayor of Martin, Randy Brundige, Weakley County Mayor, Jake Bynum and Director of Community Development for the City of Martin, Brad Thompson. There were some familiar faces as well as former chancellors Margaret N. Perry, Nick Dunagan, Thomas A. Rakes, Robert M. Smith and Keith S. Carver Jr. made an appearance.
The ceremony was started by Mace Bearer Dr. Dan Pigg with Dr. Amy Yeung singing the national anthem. The invocation was by Dr. Cornealius Lester, pastor of Christ Missionary Baptist Church. The welcome and introduction of academic symbols was given by Dr. Philip Cavalier. Remarks were made by President Boyd, Dr. Dan McDonough, Madeleine Griffey, Michelle Runions and Andy Collins.
The New Pacer Singers sang two special songs, His Eye Is on the Sparrow and Unclouded Day, as well as leading the crowd in the Alma Mater.
The main theme of each speaker was “energy.” Each person making remarks used this word to describe the way Chancellor Freeman has already made an impact on campus. He holds a passion for fighting for UT Martin to be a top school, making students feel included and for seeing a bright future for the student body.
Chancellor Freeman’s investiture address was the main event of the ceremony. A crowd of faculty, staff, students and alumni waited to hear what the new chancellor’s ideas would be.
He thanked the staff who put together the event and the former chancellors before moving on to the UT Martin students. “You are intelligent, compassionate, engaging and resilient. You compete, and you win in every endeavor. I couldn’t be prouder to serve you in this role. Chancy Yancy loves UTM students.”
Chancellor Freeman had many ideas on how to make the next decade of UT Martin its greatest. He first started by saying that he wanted to increase the number of students to 10,000, “This 30 percent increase will come by making investments in recruiting the students, more bold marketing to emphasize the value of a UTM experience and implementing proven strategies to ensure the success of our students.”
“We will invest in the best practices, like undergraduate research, some of them instruction and comprehensive advising. We will increase our number of international students to 5 percent of our student population. We will continue to focus on affordability and access to families who might otherwise believe that a UT education is out of reach,” says Freeman.
He also wants to increase the number of graduate students by adding in graduate programs for jobs that haven’t been made yet, but will need employees once created, by the time students graduate.
He also wants to focus on capital projects, “The average age of our facilities, and I think that this is correct, is 80 years old. We must work to ensure we have state of the art facilities with cutting edge technology to match our incredible teaching prowess and ethical care. Today’s prospective students are savvy consumers… My focus over the next year will be advocating to secure funds for the new College of Business and Global Affairs.”
UT Martin also just finished a capital fundraising project which earned a record breaking $178.2 million. This was Chancellor Freeman’s segway into talking about how the university is going to be “Fundraising and Friendraising” to help achieve the goals set for UT Martin to have the best decade yet. As Chancellor Freeman says, “Failure is not an option.”
