Early years Peabody College traces its history to 1785 when
Davidson Academy was chartered by the state of North Carolina, of which Tennessee was then a part. In 1806, the school moved to downtown Nashville and was rechartered under the name
Cumberland College. The institution was renamed once again to the
University of Nashville in 1827. In 1875, when the university was receiving financial assistance from the
Peabody Education Fund started by
George Peabody, the state legislature amended the charter to establish a State
Normal School. The University of Nashville's operations were split into three separate entities. Its medical school became part of the newly established
Vanderbilt University. Its preparatory school became independent as
Montgomery Bell Academy, retaining the board of trustees from the University of Nashville. The literary arts collegiate program received the donation from the Peabody Education Fund and began emphasizing teacher preparation. In 1889, it was renamed Peabody Normal College. Peabody was at that time a college for whites, although its "demonstration school" (now the
University School of Nashville) became one of the first
high schools in Nashville to be
desegregated in the early 1960s. Peabody's first African American student,
Tommie Morton-Young, graduated in 1955. The design of the Peabody campus was inspired by the classical lines of
Thomas Jefferson's design for the
University of Virginia's
Academical Village and the architecture of the 1893
World's Columbian Exposition in
Chicago, Illinois. In contrast to the main Vanderbilt University campus, which is characterized by
collegiate gothic architecture, Peabody's buildings and campus layout are examples of
Palladian and
Neoclassical styles of architecture. Peabody became a renowned
school of education, especially in the
South. Notable faculty during the twentieth century included
Joseph Peterson, Susan Gray, and
Nicholas Hobbs. Hobbs helped to establish and then directed the John F. Kennedy Center for Education and Human Development at Peabody College. The Kennedy Center was founded in 1965 as one of twelve original university-based centers funded by the
National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) following the signing of the
Community Mental Health Act of 1963. Peabody seemed financially strong, due in part to an
endowment that had been funded in part by its namesake,
George Peabody. It had shared some facilities with Vanderbilt for many years, notably the Joint Universities Library, located across the street from Peabody's main academic buildings, and indeed closer to Peabody than to much of the main Vanderbilt academic quadrangle. Also, Peabody students were eligible for participation in Vanderbilt
ROTC and the Vanderbilt Marching Band. In the early 1970s Peabody students became eligible to participate in Vanderbilt athletic teams. This was said to be a concession to the fact that Peabody had no intercollegiate athletics of its own, but cynics noted that Peabody did have a major in
physical education, a major frequently taken by scholarship athletes but one which had not been available at Vanderbilt, and the decision was seen by many as an attempt to get players onto Vanderbilt sports teams, notably
football, who were not academically eligible for admission to Vanderbilt. In 1954,
Nancy Reed won the women's individual intercollegiate
golf championship (an event conducted by the
Division of Girls' and Women's Sports (DGWS) — which later evolved into the current NCAA women's golf championship). The campus with its 22 main buildings was declared a
National Historic Landmark in 1965 for its early association with George Peabody's funding efforts. In an organizational sense, too, Peabody College constitutes a vital part of Vanderbilt University. As one of the university's ten schools, it not only trains undergraduate and graduate students – Peabody offers 6 Ph.D. programs, 3 Ed.D. program tracks, and 16 master's degree programs – but conducts substantial research in human learning and cognition and an array of other disciplines, including some research collaborations with
Vanderbilt University Medical Center. Peabody College publishes the
Peabody Journal of Education, the second longest-running publication devoted exclusively to educational research, practice, and policy. In 2017, Peabody began offering several online degree programs including an online Master of Education (M.Ed.) with a specialization in School Counseling and an online Doctorate of Education (Ed.D.) with a specialization in Leadership and Learning in Organizations. == Administration and Organization ==