UMUC

History

Historical Overview of the Alumni Association
1940s UMUC was founded in 1947 as a college of the University of Maryland.  At that time there were no separate campuses, the college existed in locations in College Park and in professional schools in Baltimore City.  The college was founded to administer the Defense Department contract to provide GI Bill-guaranteed education to soldiers in Europe.
1950s In the early 1950s, University College was also asked to provide the Defense Department guaranteed education in Asia.  Additionally, University College began operating the evening and weekend classes for the University of Maryland.  In 1958 University College purchased 12 acres from the university for a new headquarters building (University College was a self-support unit, so it was required to purchase the land from the university).
1960s In October, 1964 University College opened the Center of Adult Education as its headquarters and a residential conference center (currently known as the Inn and Conference Center).  Holding conferences and institutes in residential short term formats was another non-traditional delivery method.
1970s

In the late 1960s, the State of Maryland began building a campus location just south of Baltimore City that was meant to be an additional site for undergraduate education.  The Board of Regents determined that the University of Maryland had more locations than could be effectively managed by a single administration.  In 1970 they created the University of Maryland System with five campuses.  They were the College Park Campus, University of Maryland Baltimore County Campus; the University of Maryland Baltimore Campus, the University of Maryland Eastern Shore (previously Maryland State, one of the Historically Black institutions), and University of Maryland University College.

In 1976, the University of Maryland System created its first Alumni Association to serve all five campuses.  The organization was incorporated as the Alumni Association–International.
1980s

The legislature in the early 1980s felt that the state had an inefficient Higher Education System.  The Rosenberg Commission was charged with examining the Higher Education System and making recommendations.  The Commission felt that the "state normal schools" (teacher's colleges) and the University of Maryland System should be merged and a single Board of Regents would govern the System (at the time the State Schools had a Board of Trustees), and that the Maryland Higher Education Commission (MHEC) should replace the Maryland Department for Higher Education. The "carrot" to get every campus to agree was to greatly increase the funding to all the schools.  It was also recommended that St. Mary's College, Morgan State and the University of Baltimore join the new system.  St. Mary's and Morgan successfully resisted joining but the University of Baltimore did agree to join.
1988 The new eleven campus system was enacted into law.  Part of the legislation also eliminated the Alumni Association-International (AA-I).  The rationale was that all of the state colleges already had alumni associations, so the former five campuses of the University of Maryland System needed to create their own.  This became problematic because the AA-I had been created by a separate non-profit incorporation and the courts determined that the laws could not abolish  AA-I.  It still serves today as an entity that provides grants as scholarships to the eleven campuses.
1990s

With guidance provided by the Board of Regents each campus was charged with creating their own alumni association.  University College began that process in 1990 and created the association with its own bylaws.  It was an interesting start with many bumps in the road.  At the first annual meeting, the association almost did not get a quorum, which would have meant the new officers could not be installed.  Today's annual meetings attract hundreds of alumni.

University College and the Alumni Association had their greatest challenge early on.  With the recession of the early 1990s, the state began taking away the money it had used to convince the institutions to joint the new system.  Particularly hard hit was the College Park Campus, which had been designated the "flagship" campus of the system in the final negotiations before the law was passed.

University College as a self-support institution was very conservative with its cash and therefore had considerable reserves even in the recession years.  This was noted by a number of influential legislators and they introduced legislation to merge University College with the College Park campus.  It was assumed this would be permanent because the legislative leadership was supporting the bill.  However, University College alumni and friends overwhelmed their legislators by the hundreds with opposition and it became clear the bill would not get out of committee.  As a compromise the legislation was changed to become a bill that organized a study of continuing education in the State of Maryland.

Immediately after the legislative session, University College started the process of building the Student and Faculty Service Center and contributed to the first Education Center at Shady Grove, thus depleting excess available reserves.  This very difficult period galvanized our alumni into the growing support-organization that it is today.

The build up of the association has led to today's level.  Now, the association's major challenge and focus is to build up and strengthen the base of its active alumni.