Located on a 20-acre (81,000 m2) tract of land at 1405 Madison Street (U.S. Highway 41-A) approximately two miles east of downtown Shelbyville, the college serves individuals from a broad geographical area including but not limited to Bedford, Coffee, Franklin, Lincoln, Marshall, Moore, and Rutherford counties.

The first of its kind to be constructed, the Tennessee College of Applied Technology - Shelbyville, opened its doors on November 30, 1964, for full-time preparatory programs with forty-one students enrolled in six programs (Air Conditioning/Refrigeration, Auto Mechanics, Drafting, Industrial Electricity, Machine Shop and Welding).

[3] The colleges have been recognized by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Harvard's Graduate School of Education, the New York Times, EcoSouth and other leading organizations for job placement and completion rates.

[8] Each of the Tennessee Colleges of Applied Technology offers programs based on geographic needs of businesses and industry.

During this same year, the college began using Certiport and COMPASS as additional ways to achieve certifications and qualification based testing.

In August 2015, the college expanded to Lewisburg, Shelbyville (MTEC Building) and Tullahoma, Tennessee with the Industrial Maintenance Program.

This LMS Cloud array is used to supplement classes with Moodle Learning Management System Servers, Nida Servers, streaming video, online classes, Microsoft SharePoint Services, medical education, file sharing and collaboration.

[14] Beginning August 2011, TCAT Shelbyville became the first institution to offer online through their on campus LMS cloud servers.

This move became one of the first higher education live hardware projects in the cloud presenting CIT students IaaS (infrastructure as a service) cloud computing to practice configuring servers, network devices and other advanced hardware from anywhere in the world.

[17] In September 2013 TCAT Shelbyville expanded their cloud services to include file sharing for instructors and students.

[citation needed] The Tennessee College of Applied Technology - Shelbyville is accredited by the Council of Occupational Education (COE).