Tennessee Wesleyan College is a small liberal arts college founded in 1857 in the East Tennessee town of Athens. It is affiliated with the Holston Conference of the United Methodist Church. Current enrollment is over 800 students, and the student/faculty ratio is 12:1. In the history of education, the seven liberal arts comprise two groups of studies, the trivium and the quadrivium. ... 1857 was a common year starting on Thursday (see link for calendar). ... East Tennessee is a name given to approximately the eastern third of the state of Tennessee. ... Athens is a city located in McMinn County, Tennessee. ... The term conference can be used to describe any meeting of people that confer about a certain topic. ... The United Methodist Church is the largest Methodist denomination, and the second-largest Protestant one, in the United States. ...
The College offers baccalaureate programs in fine arts, humanities, natural and social sciences as well as business, nursing, other career-related areas, and teacher certification.
Tennessee is known as the "Volunteer State", a nickname it earned during the War of 1812, in which volunteer soldiers from Tennessee played a prominent role, especially during the Battle of New Orleans.
In Tennessee, the Gulf Coastal Plain is divided into three sections that extend from the Tennessee River in the east to the Mississippi River in the west.
(Tennessee County was the predecessor to current-day Montgomery County).
The institution now known as TennesseeWesleyanCollege was established in 1857, when the Holston Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church South acquired the property of the Athens Female College, chartered in 1854 by the Order of Odd Fellows.
The school continued to operate as a women's college until 1865, when it passed from the control of the Methodist Episcopal Church South to that of the Methodist Episcopal Church, a body composed of Union sympathizers.
In 1889 the Athenscollege merged with Chattanooga University, with the two campuses governed by a single board of trustees and chancellor under the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church.