University of Maryland

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 (1808–1864), a future U.S. Representative (Congressman) and descendant of the first Lord Baltimore, purchased 420 acres (1.7 km2) 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 200 acres (81 ha) 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 (the oldest instructional building still in use on campus) 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 (18% of the total student body) faced expulsion.

UMD is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research activity". In FY 2020, the university spent about 1.103 billion dollars in total R&D expenditures, ranking it 16th in the nation. Furthermore, ranked 17th nationally in research R&D, UMD is one of only 57 public institutions in the Association of American Universities (AAU), reflecting its status as a top-tier research hub in the Baltimore–Washington metropolitan area.

On October 14, 2004, the university added 150 acres (61 ha) in an attempt to create the largest research park inside the Washington, D.C. Capital Beltway, formerly known as "M Square" and now known as the "Discovery District."

Many of the faculty members have funding from federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, NASA, the Department of Homeland Security, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, and the National Security Agency.

The Space Systems Laboratory researches human-robotic interaction for astronautics applications and includes the only neutral buoyancy facility at a university. The Joint Global Change Research Institute, which studies human and earth systems, was formed in 2001 by the University of Maryland and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.