State’s Top High School Rolls Out the Orange Carpet for Pines

Baltimore County’s Eastern Technical High School, with its 10 magnet programs, robust arts and athletics programs and a horse mascot named Mace, was recently named Maryland’s top public high school by U.S. News & World Report for the second year in a row. On Tuesday, University of Maryland President Darryll J. Pines saw that horsepower for himself.

He and a group of UMD admission representatives toured the school in Essex to congratulate school and Baltimore County Public Schools officials, meet prospective students just weeks before the Nov. 1 priority application deadline and see some of its academic programs in action. More than 40 Eastern Tech grads are part of this year's freshman class at the university.

Acting Principal Bo Du Val—a 2000 UMD graduate—along with cheerleaders waving sparkly pompoms, student leaders and chorus members greeted the small delegation on an orange carpet as Testudo clowned with the Mavericks’ equine counterpart.

The lively spirit extended into Eastern Tech’s classrooms; Pines, an engineer and proponent of high school engineering education, visited students framing miniature houses in a construction management course, then talked with some designing cars to carry weighted payloads and others who were programming robots, building and testing race cars, and tackling other engineering and design challenges. And in an AP Physics class, he offered an impromptu lesson on friction and Newton's Laws of Motion before heading back to College Park.