Athletes who excelled at their sport while students at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore – and in some instances at the professional level – belong to an exclusive team of Hawks, the Hall of Fame. Athletics and intercollegiate competition have played a significant role in the history of the institution dating back to the…Read more Hall of Fame
More than the curriculum changed in the late 1930s, when the Academy in Princess Anne began transitioning to a four-year institution of higher education. Expanded academic offerings at Princess Anne College attracted more students. Those changes created the need for a more stimulating campus environment, which in turn met students’ academic, cultural and social needs. …Read more Student Government
Faith was the uncomplicated cornerstone of the school that evolved into today’s University of Maryland Eastern Shore. It remains part of the institution’s foundation – although not in as demonstrably visible a role as during the late 19th century, when Methodist Episcopal Church leaders founded the institution. The nine Blacks who enrolled at the new Delaware Conference…Read more Faith
Years before the university’s grounds grew to the hundreds of acres it is today, the Academic Oval was the center of campus and served as the hub of college life – particularly during the Maryland State College era (1947-1970). The historic Oval was where students lived, dined, studied and engaged in social activities. At the…Read more Dorm Life
Murphy Hall on the Academic Oval holds uniquely historic and strategic roles in the evolution of modern-day University of Maryland Eastern Shore. The dormitory is named in honor of John Henry Murphy Sr., founding publisher of the Baltimore-based Afro-American newspaper. A former slave and Civil War veteran who died in 1922, Murphy was a respected civic leader who…Read more Murphy Hall
As the University of Maryland Eastern Shore celebrates the 125th anniversary of its founding, students are exchanging news using hand-held electronic devices to transmit “texts,” “tweets” and messages to Facebook, a wildly popular phenomenon in 2011 known as a “social network.” There was a time when the written word was committed only to paper — and…Read more The Fourth Estate
Q. What do these years have in common? 1894, 1904, 1911, 1917, 1938, 1939, 1950, 1951 1975, 1976, 1984, 1994, 1999 and 2005 A. Each represents the year a member of the Hayman family graduated from UMES. Hayman – one of Somerset County, Md.’s oldest African-American family names – is indelibly etched in the annals of…Read more The Hayman family
The founders of the Delaware Conference Academy could hardly have imagined 125 years after its doors first opened in September 1886 that 4,500 students would walk the grounds of a campus that began modestly with one building and three faculty members. Like many of their counterparts today, the Academy’s first students tended to be from Maryland. Most were the first…Read more Students and Alumni
9Number of students who enrolled in the Delaware Conference Academy Sept. 13, 1886 4,509Number of students enrolled in the University of Maryland Eastern Shore — Sept. 23, 2011 11,000Number of living UMES alumni 3Number of instructors who taught at the Academy the first year it was open 195Full-time faculty who taught at UMES during the 2010-11 school year 16In acres, the…Read more Go Figure!
May we be a tad presumptuousfor focusing on an oculus?Let us not be ambiguous;just look up from your syllabus. Since the 1940s, students who have strolled the University of Maryland Eastern Shore’s historic Academic Oval have done so under the watchful eyes of oculi. Also known as “oeil-de-bouef” – French for bull’s eye – an oculus is a small,…Read more Watchful Eyes
