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The University of Tennessee, Knoxville takes a strengths-based approach to provide students, faculty, and staff with a shared language to encourage, develop, and empower all Vols.

We utilize CliftonStrengths as a tool to help students understand their natural talents and how to leverage them to become the best version of themselves to succeed on campus and wherever they go next. CliftonStrengths helps us cultivate a unique Volunteer experience.

What is CliftonStrengths?

CliftonStrengths is an online talent assessment that measures natural patterns of thinking, feeling, or behaving. Utilizing over five decades of research, CliftonStrengths helps individuals identify their natural talents and encourages them to invest in what they do best, transforming these talents into strengths. The assessment was designed to be a beginning not an end for personal development. It serves as a filter for how we see and interact with the world. It allows us to understand ourselves and others better through a common language.


Talent x Investment = Strength


How Can Strengths Help You?

I am a Student

At UT, students discover their top strengths and creatively apply them in academics, careers, and personal pursuits.

Discover your strengths

I am a Faculty or Staff Member

Faculty and staff at UT recognize and leverage their strengths while also supporting students in identifying and utilizing their own unique strengths.

Incorporate strengths in your work


Focus on Your Strengths

We’ve all wondered who we are and what makes us unique.

The CliftonStrengths assessment answers those questions. This online test (formerly named the Clifton StrengthsFinder) measures the intensity of your talents in each of the 34 CliftonStrengths themes. These 34 themes represent what people do best. They categorize all that’s right with humankind, distilled down to 34 different themes. The CliftonStrengths assessment produces a report featuring customized descriptions of your dominant strengths in ranked order.

“What would happen if we studied what was right with people versus what’s wrong with people?”

— Donald O. Clifton

Strengths Award Recognition

While more than 600 universities around the globe utilize CliftonStrengths in their student experience, UT is one of only ten who have been recognized with the Don Clifton Strengths for Students Award for their excellence in this area.

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