University of Maryland, College Park
The University of Maryland, College Park is a public land-grant research university in College Park, Maryland, United States. Founded in 1856, UMD is the flagship institution of the University System of Maryland and is the largest university in the state of Maryland.
UMD is the largest university in Maryland and in the Washington metropolitan area. Its eleven schools and colleges offer over 200 degree-granting programs, including 113 undergraduate majors, 107 master's programs, and 83 doctoral programs. UMD's athletic teams are known as the Maryland Terrapins and compete in NCAA Division I as a member of the Big Ten Conference.
A member of the Association of American Universities, the University of Maryland's proximity to Washington, D.C. has resulted in many research partnerships with the federal government; faculty receive research funding and institutional support from many agencies, such as the National Institutes of Health, NASA, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the Food and Drug Administration, the National Security Agency, and the Department of Homeland Security. It is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – very high research activity" and has been labeled a "Public Ivy". According to the National Science Foundation, the university spent a combined $1.14 billion on research and development in 2021, ranking it 17th among American universities.
History
Early history
On March 6, 1856, the forerunner of today's University of Maryland was chartered as the Maryland Agricultural College. Two years later, Charles Benedict Calvert, a future U.S. Representative and descendant of the first Lord Baltimore, purchased of the Riversdale Mansion estate nearby today's College Park, Maryland. Later that year, Calvert founded the school and was the acting president from 1859 to 1860. On October 5, 1859, the first 34 students entered the Maryland Agricultural College. The school became a land grant college in February 1864.Civil War
During the Civil War, Confederate soldiers under Brigadier General Bradley Tyler Johnson moved past the college on July 12, 1864, as part of Jubal Early's raid on Washington, D.C. By the end of the war, financial problems forced the administrators to sell off of land, and the continuing decline in enrollment sent the Maryland Agricultural College into bankruptcy. The campus was used as a boys' preparatory school for the next two years.The Maryland legislature assumed half ownership of the school in 1866. The college thus became, in part, a state institution. By October 1867, the school reopened with 11 students. In 1868, the former Confederate admiral Franklin Buchanan was appointed president of the school. Enrollment grew to 80 at the time of his resignation, and the school soon paid off its debt. In 1873, Samuel Jones, a former Confederate Major General, became president of the college.
Twenty years later, the federally-funded Agricultural Experiment Station was established there. During this same period, state laws granted the college regulatory powers in several areas—including controlling farm disease, inspecting feed, establishing a state weather bureau and geological survey, and housing the forestry board. Morrill Hall was built the following year.
Great Fire of 1912
On November 29, 1912, a fire destroyed student housing, school records, and most of the academic buildings, leaving only Morrill Hall untouched. There were no injuries or fatalities, and all but two students returned to the university and insisted on classes continuing. The first building built after the fire was the Calvert Hall in 1914. A new administration building was not built until the 1940s.Twentieth century
During Phillips Lee Goldsborough's tenure as Governor of Maryland, the state purchased Maryland Agricultural College, taking control of the school in 1916 and renaming it Maryland State College. In the same year, the first female students, Elizabeth Gambrill Hook and Charlotte Ann Vaux, enrolled at the school. On April 9, 1920, the college became part of the existing University of Maryland, replacing St. John's College, Annapolis as the university's undergraduate campus. In the same year, the graduate school on the College Park campus awarded its first Ph.D. degrees and the university's enrollment reached 500 students. In 1925 the university was accredited by the Association of American Universities.By the time the first black students enrolled at the university in 1951, enrollment had grown to nearly 10,000 students—4,000 of whom were women. Before 1951, many black students in Maryland were enrolled at the University of Maryland, Eastern Shore.
In 1957, President Wilson H. Elkins pushed to increase the university's academic standards. His efforts resulted in creating one of the first Academic Probation Plans. The first year the plan went into effect, 1,550 students faced expulsion.
On October 19, 1957, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom attended her first and only college football game at the University of Maryland after expressing interest in seeing a typically American sport during her first tour of the United States. The Maryland Terrapins beat the North Carolina Tar Heels 21 to 7 in the historical game now referred to as "The Queen's Game".
Phi Beta Kappa established a chapter at The University of Maryland in 1964. In 1969, the university was elected to the Association of American Universities. The school continued to grow, and by the fall of 1985 reached an enrollment of 38,679. Like many colleges during the Vietnam War, the university was the site of student protests and had curfews enforced by the National Guard.
In a massive restructuring of the state's higher education system in 1988, the school was designated as the flagship campus of the newly formed University of Maryland System. It was formally named the University of Maryland, College Park. All five campuses in the former network were designated distinct campuses in the new system. However, in 1997 the Maryland General Assembly passed legislation allowing the University of Maryland, College Park, to be known simply as the University of Maryland, recognizing the campus' role as the flagship institution of the University System of Maryland.
In 1994, the National Archives at College Park completed construction and opened on a parcel of land adjoining the campus donated by the University of Maryland, after lobbying by President William Kirwan and congressional leaders to foster academic collaboration between the institutions.
Twenty-first century
In 2004, the university began constructing the "M Square Research Park", which includes facilities affiliated with the U.S. Department of Defense, Food and Drug Administration, and the new National Center for Weather and Climate Prediction, affiliated with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. In May 2010, ground was broken on a new Physical Science Complex, including an advanced quantum science laboratory.The university suffered multiple data breaches in 2014. The first resulted in the compromise of over 300,000 student and faculty records. A second data breach occurred several months later. The second breach was investigated by the FBI and Secret Service and found to be done by David Helkowski. Despite the attribution, no charges were filed. As a result of the data breaches, the university offered free credit protection for five years to the students and faculty affected.
In 2017, the university received a record-breaking donation of $219.5 million from the A. James & Alice B. Clark Foundation, ranking among the country's largest philanthropic gifts to a public university. Darryll J. Pines became the 34th president of the university in 2020. Pines was a professor of Aerospace Engineering at the university before becoming president.
In 2021, the university announced it had raised $1.5 billion in donations since 2018.
In April 2024, UMD students joined other campuses across the United States in protests against the Gaza war. Students called attention to the genocide in Palestine and for the university to divest from companies that support the Gaza war. Activism continued in the next academic year with the placement of small flags in the lawn on McKeldin Mall, representing the more than 150,000 Palestinians killed in Gaza.
Campus
The center of the university's is McKeldin Mall, which is the largest academic mall in the United States. The Mall is bordered on the west and east by McKeldin Library and the Thomas V. Miller, Jr. Administration Building, respectively. Academic buildings surround McKeldin Mall on the north and south ends. They are the homes to many departments in the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences, College of Arts and Humanities, and the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. South of McKeldin Mall are the North Hill Community, at the southwesterly corner, and the original center of campus, Morrill Hall and the Morrill Quad. South of the Morrill Quad are the South Hill and South Campus Commons Communities, and the Southwest Mall and the Robert H. Smith School of Business to the southwest.Running parallel to McKeldin Mall to the north is Campus Drive, the main thoroughfare through campus. Another thoroughfare, Regents Drive, runs perpendicular to the Mall and is home to the Memorial Chapel and the Campus Farms. Regents Drive crosses Campus Drive at the campus hallmark, The "M", which is a mound with a large "M" formed by flowers in its center. The northeast quadrant of campus, formed by Campus and Regent Drives, is home to many of natural sciences and applied sciences departments. The Rossborough Inn, which, was built during the years 1798 to 1812, is the oldest building on campus. There are five regularly used entrances to campus; the main entrance, off of Baltimore Avenue and onto Campus Drive, is referred to as North Gate and features the Gatehouse, an ornate gateway honoring the university's founders. The, 18-hole University of Maryland Golf Course sits at the northern edge of campus, as does the Observatory.
The campus contains 7,500 documented trees and garden plantings, leading the American Public Gardens Association to designate the campus the University of Maryland Arboretum & Botanical Garden in 2008. There are also nearly of urban forest on campus and the Arbor Day Foundation has named the university to its 'Tree Campus USA' list. The recreational Paint Branch Trail, part of the Anacostia Tributary Trails system, cuts through campus, as does the Paint Branch stream, a tributary of the Northeast Branch Anacostia River. The university's first Leed Gold building, Knight Hall, opened in April 2010 as the new home for the Philip Merrill College of Journalism. In 2021, President Pines pledged that the University of Maryland would achieve carbon neutrality by Earth Day 2025.