Университет Таскулум: История и традиции старейшего вуза Теннесси.

Private university in Tusculum, Tennessee, U. S.

Tusculum University is a private Presbyterian university with its main campus in Tusculum, Tennessee. It is Tennessee's first university and the 28th oldest operating college or university in the United States. In addition to its main campus, the institution maintains a regional center for Adult and Online Studies in Knoxville, and Morristown.

In 1806, emancipated slave John Gloucester became the first African American student to study at Greeneville College. He was the first African American educated by a college in Tennessee and later helped found the First African Presbyterian Church in 1807, in Philadelphia. Samuel Doak and Hezekiah Balch sought the same goals through their separate colleges. They wanted to educate settlers of the American frontier so that they would become better Presbyterians, and therefore, in their thinking, better citizens.

Samuel Doak left Washington College and founded Tusculum Academy, on the present campus of Tusculum University, in 1818 with his son, Samuel Witherspoon Doak. S. W. Doak was named after Princeton University's then president Dr. John Witherspoon, a signer of the United States Declaration of Independence and Tusculum Academy was named after Witherspoon's estate at the College of New Jersey (Princeton). The original Tusculum was a city near Rome, Italy, and home to Roman scholar and philosopher Cicero. It was he who, along with others, identified the civic virtues that form the basis of civic republican tradition, which emphasizes citizens working together to form good societies that in turn foster individuals of good character.