University of Maryland, College Park

The Maryland Agricultural College, the university’s forerunner, was chartered on March 6, 1856. Planters and members of the Maryland State Agricultural Society secured the charter, and many of the founders, including William Tilghman Goldsborough, were enslavers.⁠[1][2]

Charles Benedict Calvert (born 1808), one of the founders, took over the family estate after his father’s death in 1838 and was bequeathed about 120 enslaved people; the 1850 census shows him still holding 65. In Congress, where he served as a member of the U.S. House of Representatives from 1861 to 1863, he was known as a proponent of slave owners’ property rights.⁠[2][3]

In 1858 Charles Benedict Calvert and his brother George H. Calvert sold the state 428 acres of the Rossburg Farm for $20,000, half the land’s original cost, as the site of the college; the brothers also lent the college half of the purchase price.⁠[1][3]

The college was formally dedicated in 1859 and enrolled white male students, called cadets. That year Benjamin Hallowell accepted the presidency on the condition that the campus farm not use slave labor; he resigned 30 days later.⁠[1]

In 1862 President Abraham LincolnAbraham LincolnAbraham Lincoln (February 12, 1809 – April 15, 1865) was the 16th president of the United States (1861–1865). Born to a frontier farming family in Kentucky, he had less than a year of formal schooling, taught himself law, and served in the Illinois legislature and the U.S. House of Representatives before winning the presidency as the Republican candidate in 1860. During the Civil War he preserved the Union, issued the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 and pushed the Thirteenth Amendment abolishing slavery through Congress. He was shot by John Wilkes Booth at Ford’s Theatre in Washington on April 14, 1865, and died the next day.Open the full entry signed the Morrill Land Grant Act, and the college awarded its first degrees, to William B. Sands and Thomas Franklin.⁠[1]

In 1864 some 6,000 Union troops under Gen. Ambrose E. Burnside and 400 Confederates of Jubal Early’s raid camped on the campus; that year the Maryland legislature accepted a Morrill grant, and in 1865 it designated the college the state’s land-grant institution. The college failed to reopen in the fall of 1866 and reopened in October 1867 with 16 students.⁠[1]

In 1871 Pastor A. Cooke of Panama became the first international student. The Hatch Act of 1887 created federally funded agricultural experiment stations, and the Rossborough Inn became headquarters of the Maryland Agricultural Experiment Station; Pyon Su, a Korean student admitted in 1887, earned his degree in 1891, becoming the first Korean to graduate from a U.S. college.⁠[1][2]

In 1892 Richard W. Silvester began a 20-year presidency and the college fielded its first football team; the College of Engineering was founded in 1894, and in 1898 Morrill Hall, the oldest academic building still in use, was built for about $24,000.⁠[1]

On November 29, 1912, a fire that began at a Thanksgiving dance destroyed all the dormitory rooms, half of the classrooms and offices and most of the college’s records; no one was injured or killed. Silvester then resigned.⁠[1]

In 1915 Chunjen Constant Chen became the first Chinese student. In 1916 the state took full control of the college and renamed it the Maryland State College of Agriculture, and Elizabeth Hook and Charlotte Vaux became the first women students. Albert F. Woods became president in 1917 and created seven schools, each with its own dean; in 1919 Grace B. Holmes became the first woman to receive a bachelor’s degree.⁠[1]

In 1920 the College Park and Baltimore campuses were consolidated and Woods became president of the University of Maryland; that year the Graduate School awarded its first Ph.D. degrees, and enrollment reached 522, including 22 women.⁠[1]

In 1925 the Association of American Universities accredited the university. The Class of 1933 funded Testudo, a 300-pound bronze terrapin statue. In 1935 H. C. “Curley” Byrd was appointed acting president and led a major expansion; he supported segregation. Under the GI Bill, enrollment nearly doubled in 1946 to almost 10,000 students.⁠[1]

In 1951 Hiram Whittle became the first African American undergraduate student. In 1952 Parren Mitchell became the first African American graduate student to take all his classes at College Park; he later became Maryland’s first Black member of Congress. Elaine Johnson arrived in 1955 as one of seven Black students and in 1959 became the first African American woman undergraduate to complete her degree.⁠[1]

In 1957 Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Philip attended a football game that became known as the Queen’s Game. In 1963 Darryl Hill became the first Black football player at Maryland, and two years later Billy Jones did the same in basketball; in 1966 Rebecca Carroll became the first African American woman to earn a doctorate in education.⁠[1]

In 1970 Charles Edwin Bishop became the first chancellor of the College Park campus, and National Guard troops responded to protests against the Vietnam War. In 1982 John B. Slaughter became the first African American chancellor.⁠[1]

In 1988 the five University of Maryland campuses were reorganized into the University of Maryland System, College Park became the flagship, and the chancellor’s title changed to president.⁠[1]

In 2002 the men’s basketball team won the NCAA championship over IndianaIndianaIndiana is a state in the Midwestern United States; its capital and largest city is Indianapolis. It was admitted to the Union on December 11, 1816, as the 19th state, and its population in the 2020 census (April 1, 2020) was 6,785,528.Open the full entry, 64–52, and in 2006 the women’s team beat Duke 78–75 in overtime for the NCAA title. In 2010 Wallace D. Loh became the 33rd president and the first of Asian heritage. In 2014 the university left the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) and joined the Big Ten.⁠[1]

On February 12, 2020, the University System of Maryland Board of Regents named Darryll J. Pines the 34th president of the university, effective July 1, 2020; he is its first Black president. Pines joined the faculty as an assistant professor in 1995, chaired the Department of Aerospace Engineering from 2006 to 2009 and became dean of the A. James Clark School of Engineering in 2009, and served as a program manager at DARPA from 2003 to 2006.⁠[4][5][1]

As of November 2026 the university’s Office of the President website presents Pines as president since July 2020. In fall 2026 the university had 32,304 undergraduates, 9,748 graduate students and 6,360 new first-time students; it had 4,516 faculty members in fall 2025 and awarded 12,558 degrees in fiscal year 2026.⁠[5][6]

University of Maryland, College Park: Official website: https://umd.edu/ (opens in a new window).⁠[1]

X: Public account: https://x.com/UofMaryland (opens in a new window).⁠[1]

YouTubeYouTubeYouTube is Google’s video-sharing and creator platform, founded in 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim and acquired by Google in 2006. Built around video uploading, viewing, and creator earnings, the platform has developed Shorts, YouTube Music, Premium, YouTube TV, and products for children, and is headquartered in San Bruno, California, United States.Open the full entry: Public channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/UMD2101 (opens in a new window).⁠[1]