Qualla: University of Maryland

University of Maryland: Introduction

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Blacktupelo, CC BY-SA 4.0. Charles Benedict Calvert was a great-great-grandson of the first Lord Baltimore, a member of Congress, and a true believer in scientific farming. In 1858 he bought 420 acres of his family's Riversdale estate near what is now College Park and used the land to launch the Maryland Agricultural College, which had been chartered two years earlier. The first 34 students arrived on October 5, 1859. Calvert served briefly as acting president. The Civil War nearly destroyed the school - declining enrollment, sold-off land, bankruptcy, and a brief stint as a boys' preparatory academy - before it found steadier footing as a federal land-grant college after 1864. From those 420 acres the campus has grown to about 1,250, with a McKeldin Mall down its spine that is, by acreage, the largest academic mall in the United States.

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Image: Blacktupelo | CC BY-SA 4.0

University of Maryland: Calvert's College

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Bgervais, CC BY-SA 3.0. The agricultural college Calvert founded wasn't quite his idea alone - the federal Morrill Act of 1862 made land-grant universities a national project, providing federal land or money to states that established colleges teaching agriculture, mechanic arts, and military tactics. M...

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Image: Bgervais | CC BY-SA 3.0

University of Maryland: The Queen's Game and the Mall

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Radhika Kshirsagar, CC BY-SA 4.0. On October 19, 1957, Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom watched her first and only American college football game at Byrd Stadium in College Park. She had asked, during her first U.S. tour, to see a typically American sport. The Terrapins beat the North Carolina Tar Heels 2...

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Image: Radhika Kshirsagar | CC BY-SA 4.0

University of Maryland: The Federal Pipeline

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit The White House from Washington, DC, Public domain. Maryland is forty minutes from downtown Washington in moderate traffic, which has shaped the university's research portfolio in ways few schools can match. Faculty receive funding and institutional support from NIH, NASA, NIST, the FDA, the NSA, and the Department of Homeland Sec...

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Image: The White House from Washington, DC | Public domain

University of Maryland: Trees and Streams

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit NASA Goddard Space Flight Center from USA, Public domain. The campus holds 7,500 documented trees and garden plantings, enough for the American Public Gardens Association to designate it the University of Maryland Arboretum and Botanical Garden in 2008. Nearly 400 acres of urban forest grow on campus land. The Paint Branch stream, a tri...

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Image: NASA Goddard Space Flight Center from USA | Public domain

University of Maryland: Maryland Right Now

Mon, 01 Jun 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Under Armour, CC BY 4.0. Today the university enrolls about 40,000 students across eleven colleges and schools. It competes in NCAA Division I as a Big Ten member; its athletic teams are the Terrapins, named for the diamondback terrapin, the state reptile. The selectivity has risen sharply - the Class of...

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Image: Under Armour | CC BY 4.0