100 Years of Mastering (and Doctoring) the Universe

The Graduate School Celebrates its Centennial, From Ag to VR

By Colleen Crowley M.Jour. ’19 May 14, 2019

Courtesy of University Archives

It’s March 14, 1919, and the Maryland State Board of Agriculture and the Board of Regents are looking at a barnburner of a meeting. On the agenda: quarterly statements, federal land purchases and the import and inspection of horses, mules and asses (the four-legged kind).

While we no longer see donkeys roaming the campus, the combined board took another action that’s still kicking and shaping the education of tens of thousands of Terps: approving the organization and creation of what is now UMD’s Graduate School.

A century later, more than 10,000 students are pursuing master’s and doctoral degrees with the support of the Graduate School, which supports a community of graduate students on campus and raises the prominence of graduate education at Maryland.

From the humorous to the humbling, read on to discover the history of the Graduate School.

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1913: Number of students who enroll in the Graduate School’s founding class: 13 Courtesy of University Archives

1931: Daisy Inez Purdy is the first woman to earn a Ph.D., with the dissertation “A Study of the Bacteriological Changes Produced During the Aging of Cured Hams.” Courtesy of University Archives

1941: First Ph.D. recipient Charles Sando (1920) preserves bugs, ears of corn and butterflies in resin at a U.S. Department of Commerce exhibit on plastics. Courtesy of EverythingInsects.com

1950: Parren J. Mitchellis the first full-time, on-campus African-American grad student, finishing a master’s degree in sociology with honors in 1952. He became the first African American elected to Congress from Maryland in 1971. Courtesy of University Archives.

1971: History graduate assistant Jim Auerbach, with the help of Marilynn Terry, Charles Errico and Ross Kimmel, introduces audio-visual aids into the classroom. Credit: Shutterstock

1986: Judith Resnick Ph.D. ’77 dies aboard the space shuttle Challenger. She received her degree in electrical engineering and was the second American woman to orbit the Earth. Courtesy of University Archives

2002: D.J. Patil M.A ’99, Ph.D. ’01 and others build a scientific digital library for Iraq. In 2005, the White House names him the first U.S. chief data scientist. 2003: Doctoral dissertations are submitted digitally rather than on paper. 2018: “Active Attention for Target Detection and Recognition in Robot Vision”— dissertation title.