Students who attended Princess Anne College during World War II boosted the morale of their peers in the armed forces with an orchestrated letter-writing campaign. It kept service members abreast of campus comings and goings – some mundane, others special. All reinforce the sense of patriotism the “greatest generation” famously embraced. The correspondence also provides…Read more ‘News from your home front’
Benjamin Oliver Bird, the Delaware Conference Academy’s founding principal, was born in Loudoun County, Va., in the early-to-mid 1850s. He was the youngest son of James A. and Annie E. Bird; his father died when he was one1. His mother remarried, and the family moved to Gettysburg, Pa., where young Benjamin labored on a farm by…Read more Benjamin Oliver Bird
Farming has played a central role at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore since its founding in 1886. Crops and livestock were grown for sustenance in the early years, and more recently for cutting-edge research. In the 21st century, the university looked skyward for a new kind of harvest – harnessing the sun’s energy. UMES and…Read more Turning Sunshine into Electricity
As part of the Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association’s centennial celebration in 2012, the conference named seven University of Maryland Eastern Shore sports legends among its Top 100 Coaches and Athletes. The UMES contingent included four basketball players, two football players and a coach – all from a 26-year period during the era when the institution…Read more An Athletic Legacy Lives On
Aerial photography shows the evolution of a college campus that started as a modest 16-acre farm and grew into 745 acres, 17 of which were devoted in 2011 to the generation of energy collected by solar panels that follow the sun across the sky. If a picture truly is worth a thousand words, as the cliché goes, here are 3,174….Read more A Hawk’s eye view…
Answering a ‘call to action’ in many tongues The Foreign Language Instructional Center (FLIC) at the University of Maryland Eastern Shore was founded in response to a call to action: America needs more citizens who are fluent in other languages. UMES partnered with the U.S. Department of Education in 2008 to create the Title III-funded…Read more Bridging language barriers
Facta non verba A “Journey” can sometimes take you places you never imagined. “Does UMES have a motto?,” someone asked during a meeting of campus leaders at the start of the 2012 spring semester. About as close as anyone could come was: “Hawk Pride. Catch It.” But that’s a slogan. And slogans often change. The question gnawed at Kimberly…Read more Deeds, Not Words
National Alumni Association presidents After World War II, Maryland State College / University of Maryland Eastern Shore began to grow steadily, first under the leadership of President John T. Williams and his successors. Alumni have elected these peers to lead their organization that helps them stay connected to their alma mater. Edward N. Wilkins ’37 1955-1957 Roma Jones…Read more Alumni leaders
Richard H. Thomas was a popular educator who taught in Princess Anne for nearly four decades. His legion of alumni-admirers affectionately called him “Fess” — short for professor and a term of endearment students of that era used sparingly as a sign of respect. “If anyone ever epitomized the term ‘gentleman,’ it would be he,” 1978 alum Horatio William Jones III said. …Read more Richard ‘Fess’ Thomas
If knowledge of the past can help define the future, the university’s first 125 years should provide a framework upon which to build and continue the journey forward. The telling of these 125th anniversary stories during the 2011-12 academic year, and much of the information used to reflect on the university’s colorful past, would not have…Read more W. Augustus Low
