University of Maryland, College Park

The University of Maryland is a system comprising 15 campuses. The system has a rather complicated history.

The oldest component of the system is the University of Maryland Baltimore (UMB), which traces its roots to the Maryland College of Medicine, founded in 1807.

In 1812, the medical college was rechartered as the University of Maryland. In 1920, the University of Maryland System was created through a merger between the Baltimore school—renamed the University of Maryland Baltimore (UMB)—with a pre-existing agricultural school that then became the flagship campus of the overall system under the name of the University of Maryland College Park (UMCP).

For its part, UMCP descends from Maryland Agricultural College, founded in 1856 in College Park. During the Civil War the school underwent severe financial difficulties, and for two years was obliged to retrench severely, transforming itself into a boys’ preparatory school. The college reopened in 1867 and its financial situation became stabilized as enrollment gradually increased over the following years.

In 1912, another disaster befell the agricultural college when most of its buildings were destroyed in a fire. Nevertheless, students and faculty continued classes under improvised conditions. In 1916 the state took over the still-struggling agricultural college, which was then renamed Maryland State College.

Only four years later, in 1920—as has already been mentioned—the now state-run agricultural college in College Park was merged with the already-existing University of Maryland in Baltimore to create the new University of Maryland System. UMB and UMCP both emerged out of this event in their present forms.

The system then underwent steady growth, with a major administrative reorganization in 1988. Today, the University of Maryland comprises 12 full-fledged universities and three regional education centers, with a total of more than 172,000 students. UMCP, with over 41,000 students, remains the flagship campus.

UMCP has been associated with nine Nobel laureates, namely:

• Physicists, Raymond Davis, Jr., William D. Phillips, John C. Mather & Hannes Alfvén
• Chemists, Herbert Hauptman & Jerome Karle
• Biochemist, Marshall Nirenberg
• Economist, Thomas Schelling
• Poet, Juan Ramón Jiménez

Other distinguished UMCP-connected individuals include the following:

• Children’s book authors, Jeff Kinney & Jason Reynolds
• Cartoonist, Aaron McGruder
• Comedian and screenwriter, Larry David
• Actors, Dianne Wiest & Michael Ealy
• Philosopher, Peter Carruthers
• Mathematicians, George Dantzig, James Yorke & Charles Fefferman
• Computer scientists, Sergei Brin, Keith Marzullo, Ashok Agrawala & Uzi Vishkin
• Astronomers, Barbara A. Williams & Michael A’Hearn
• Physicists, Michael Fisher, John Dawson, Sylvester James Gates, Jr., Christopher Jarzynski & Victor Galitski
• Chemist, Tobin Marks
• Microbiologist, Rita Colwell
• Ecologist, Simon Levin
• Electrical engineer and astronaut, Judith Resnik
• Economist, Melissa Kearney
• African American Studies pioneer, Manning Marable
• Investigative journalist, Carl Bernstein
• Radio personality, Robin Quivers
• Puppeteer, Jim Henson
• Comedian and podcaster, Ari Shaffir
• TV journalists, Connie Chung and Gayle King
• TV political analyst, Kirsten Powers
• US Representative, Steny Hoyer