University of Maryland College Park

University of Maryland College Park, public, coeducational institution in College Park, Maryland, and the main campus of the University System of Maryland. The school was founded in 1856 as the Maryland Agricultural College by a group of wealthy tobacco planters. This group included Charles Benedict Calvert, a descendant of Cecilius Calvert, the founder of the Maryland colony in the early 1600s. Charles Benedict Calvert donated much of the land for the new college.

Students of the Maryland Agricultural College studied military tactics, the classics, and agriculture. Most of the students were children of wealthy planters, and during the American Civil War (1861-1865), many left to join the army of the Confederate States of America. For 30 years after the Civil War the college remained small and operated much as it had before the war. Enrollment began to grow in the 1890s as the sons of less prosperous families gained admittance, and during the next two decades the university added programs in the sciences, humanities, and engineering. In 1916 women were admitted for the first time, and in 1920 the school was renamed the University of Maryland. (Prior to 1920 the University of Maryland had been the name of a law school and medical school founded in Baltimore, Maryland, in 1807. Those two professional schools became the Baltimore branch of the University of Maryland in 1920.) In 1957 the university in College Park admitted black students for the first time.

The University of Maryland College Park confers bachelor’s, master’s, professional, and doctoral degrees in the arts and sciences, humanities, architecture, business, engineering, education, and the health professions. Research institutions at the university include the Institute for Plasma Research, the Center for Satellite and Hybrid Communication Networks, and the Center for Environmental and Estuarine Studies.

College Park is 14 km (9 mi) northeast of Washington, D.C. Graduates of the University of Maryland College Park include news correspondent Connie Chung; Herbert Hauptman, winner of the 1985 Nobel Prize for chemistry; and Academy Award-winning actor Dianne Wiest.