The Institute is dedicated to the study of the art and culture of ancient Egypt through teaching, research, exhibition, and excavation. It is staffed by Egyptologists who are faculty members of the Art Department and the History Department. Supporting the Institutes programs is the Art Museum at The University of Memphis which houses the Institutes growing collection of Egyptian antiquities, the largest in the Mid-South. The Institute also sponsors an epigraphic project at the Great Hypostyle Hall of Karnak Temple, Luxor, Egypt. The Institute spans the disciplines of cognitive psychology, computer science, philosophy of mind, neuroscience, linguistics, physics, and mathematics.
Training includes graduate courses, thesis and dissertation research, workshops, and seminars.
The Center is a resource facility of The University of Memphis, designed to provide expertise in the use of microscopy to graduate students, faculty, and researchers at The University of Memphis and throughout the immediate area. The Center for the Humanities promotes scholarly research and teaching within the humanities at The University of Memphis. Its programs are designed to facilitate discussions of general interest and to encourage scholarly collaboration across departmental and college boundaries. It also seeks to make the scholarly resources of the Universityespecially those relating to the study of the humanitiesavailable to the community at large. The Center was founded in 1987 and renamed in 1991 for history professor Dr. Marcus W. Orr.