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The first executive officer of the University of Tennessee at Martin was Calvin Porter Claxton.
Mr. Claxton was born in Greensboro, North Carolina on April 23, 1898 to the renown Tennessee
educator Philander Priestly Claxton and his wife Anne Elizabeth Porter. He received his
education at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville where attained a Bachelor of Science and
Arts degree in 1919 in Education. Prior to becoming the first executive officer he was employed
as the principle of Bell Buckle High School in Bedford County, Tennessee from 1919 to 1926.
Claxton returned to the University of Tennessee to pursue a graduate degree in the later part of
1926. In 1927, he acquired a Master of Science degree in Education. By the early summer of
1927, he was approached to direct a new Junior College in Martin, Tennessee. In early July, he
was appointed the executive officer of the University of Tennessee Junior College. He would
serve as the director of the college until 1934, when the University of Tennessee recalled him to
the Knoxville campus. Falling enrollments and the drastic economic conditions of the Great
Depression sealed his fate.
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After he departed Martin, Claxton would work in Knoxville for two years before serving as the
Director of Rural Education at West Georgia College from 1937 to 1943. From 1943 to 1954, he
worked as an education specialist for the Institute of Inter-American Affairs in Washington, D.
C. After 1954, Claxton served as a Chief Education Administrator for the United States
Operations Mission to Panama and as the Director of Servico Cooperative Interamericano de
Educacion for the Panamanian government. Calvin Porter Claxton died on August 20, 1963, he
was buried at Highland Memorial Cemetery in Knoxville.
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