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UMD Team Again Wins National Affordable Housing Design Competition

Contacts:

Maria Day-Marshall 301-405-6795, Lee Tune 301-405-4679

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – For the second year in a row, a team of graduate students from the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation has won the Innovation in Affordable Housing Student Design and Planning Competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). UMD teams finished first last year and second in 2016, their only two previous entries in the 6-year-old competition.

This year the University of Maryland team took first place and the $20,000 top prize with its design for Brooklyn Bend, a mixed-use housing and retail development for low- and moderate-income residents located along San Antonio’s Riverwalk. Results were announced Wednesday. Defending champion Maryland beat out more than 70 other teams, including the other three finalists, second place University of California, Berkeley, and runners-up Yale University and Virginia Tech.

Judges cited the team’s well-developed financial package and understanding of the concepts behind the proposal, and commended the project for having the highest population density among the four finalists. The design, which fronts the San Antonio River, emphasizes energy efficiency, water pollution control and promotion of healthy lifestyles.

Instead of a layout that included just one or two large buildings, the team designed a village-like development with a variety of housing unit designs and sizes to meet a wide range of needs, said Kyle Huck (dual master’s degree program in architecture and real estate development).

“All the proposals were unique in their own ways, but I think what set ours apart was that we really tried to use the site to its highest and best use,” he said, “and not just meet the requirements but to use the site as appropriately as possible to create a proposal that was more dense, which results in a greater amount of affordable housing.”

“We have a lot of dual degrees on our team,” said Cassandra Huntington (dual master’s degree program in architecture and real estate development). “The fact that we have the real estate development degree in addition to the architecture degree gives us a leg up on most of the competition, because we have a better understanding of both the design and the finance sides.”

In addition to graduate students Huck and Huntington, other members of the team are: Lauren Stamm (master’s degree program in community planning); Andrew Mazer (master’s degree program in architecture); and Nyasha Mandima (master’s degree program in real estate development). The team’s advisors are Maria Day-Marshall, director of UMD’s Real Estate Development Program. and Rob McClennan, senior project manager, Bonstra | Haresign Architects, AIA, and UMD adjunct professor.

Donald Linebaugh, interim dean of the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, said the Maryland team's design demonstrated the strengths of the school's interdisciplinary approach.

"Their winning submission was a thoughtful and nuanced response to a challenging site along San Antonio's Riverwalk," said Donald Linebaugh, interim dean of the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation. "They drew on their strengths in design, planning, and real estate finance to craft a project that put people and community first, activating the site and delivering a safe, affordable, and beautiful housing solution."

"With 12 dual degree programs in our School," explained Linebaugh, "MAPP+D is a national leader in interdisciplinary graduate education. And the students' innovative winning submission, clearly demonstrates the strengths of our interdisciplinary approach to the built environment."

The San Antonio Housing Authority board, which is looking to redevelop the site, will review the winning proposal in coming months.

According to HUD, “the need for quality, affordable housing has never been greater,” and its affordable housing competition is intended to “advance the design and production of livable and sustainable housing for low- and moderate-income people through research and innovation.”

“When it comes to creating innovative affordable housing, HUD does not do this work alone,” HUD Secretary Ben Carson said in a statement. “Congratulations to the University of Maryland and all of our finalists, for their consciousness stream of good ideas that increases housing opportunity for Americans with modest incomes.”

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University of Maryland Statement Against Hate and Bias

Contacts:

Katie Lawson, 301-405-4622

Statement Against Hate and Bias

Joel Seligman, AVP for Communications and Marketing - November 5, 2017

UMD sincerely regrets the overwhelming misunderstanding resulting in the #UMDNotAHome social media conversation. The statements on social media connected to this hashtag do not reflect the positions of the university or our leaders' mutual commitment to diversity and inclusion on campus and across our nation.

To put it plainly, the UMD administration stands against hate and bias in all of its forms and wants every Terp to feel welcome, safe and at home at the University of Maryland.

In recent months, there have been instances of intentional provocation by hateful, far-right groups spreading targeted messages that the administration finds despicable. These outside agitators want to divide our campus community into factions that are in conflict with one another from within UMD, rather than see our campus stand together in opposition to the broader forces of hate, white supremacy, anti-immigrant xenophobia, homophobia, transphobia and anti-semitism.

It is understandable that some members of our community are also disturbed by remarks by university officials, even when the comments are quoted entirely out of context and in a manner that misrepresents the meaning. UMD has seen an example of one of our longtime colleagues unfairly criticized for her efforts to provide legal advice to the University Senate Campus Affairs Committee literally at the same time she is working to advance the cause of inclusion.

The administration encourages all members of our community to work together—students, faculty, staff, administrators and alumni—to increase respect, inclusiveness, and cohesiveness on our campus. A comprehensive list of efforts underway by UMD administration is available at umd.edu/umdreflects

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UMD Named a 2017 Best College by MONEY Magazine

Contacts:

Jennifer Burroughs, 301-405-4621

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – The University of Maryland ranked No. 11 among public universities according to MONEY Magazine’s 2017 list of Best Colleges. UMD ranked No. 20 overall among U.S. institutions.

To calculate rankings, MONEY assessed more than 700 colleges in the U.S. based on three equally-weighted categories, including educational quality, affordability and alumni success. MONEY measured 27 factors within these categories covering areas such as instructor quality, measuring the study-to-faculty ratio, affordability for low-income students and value-added earnings, which measures if the school is launching students to better paying jobs.

Earlier this year, UMD was also ranked a Best Value College by Forbes, Princeton Review and Kiplinger’s Personal Finance.

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UMD Capitol Hill Forum Addresses Health Disparities Research & Action for Equity

Contacts:

Contacts: Elise Carbonaro, 301-405-6501

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – The University of Maryland, in collaboration with Rep. John P. Sarbanes and the Big Ten Academic Alliance, recently convened more than 100 people for a Research on the Hill forum focused on strategies to achieve health equity at the Rayburn House Office Building in Washington, D.C. Moderated by Stephen B. Thomas, Ph.D., professor and director of the Maryland Center for Health Equity in the UMD School of Public Health, the panel discussion engaged experts from academia, federal health agencies and the private business sector in a candid conversation about how to eliminate racial and ethnic health disparities among vulnerable populations.

“Our exploratory research holds the solutions to many of the most challenging problems of our day,” said UMD Vice President and Chief Research Officer Patrick G. O’Shea, Ph.D. “As a university, it is our mission to create and understand knowledge to develop better ways to house and heal and fuel and feed our people in advanced societies that are just, secure, and free. Achieving health equity touches on the ‘heal’ aspect of that mission.”

The topics ranged from the progress that has been made in access to medical care as a result of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) to challenges that still remain in improving quality of care and in making the medical care system incorporate public health and address the social determinants of health that prevent people from acting health promotion and disease prevention recommendations.

“The state of Maryland has embraced the ACA and there is clear evidence that the new incentives are indeed moving hospital systems away from a fee-for-service business model to one that rewards quality care and positive health outcomes over the volume of procedures,” said Thomas. “While the transition is not perfect, our state is a national leader for what the future of health care will look like.”

Panel members shared examples of effective and innovative community-based health interventions and public-private partnerships that are making a difference through culturally-tailored health promotion and disease prevention services, and highlighted the emergence of social determinants of health such as poverty, discrimination and residential segregation as factors that must be overcome.

“I’m convinced that if you address racial and ethnic disparities with respect to the delivery of health care and health care coverage in this country, you will build the best health care system we can possibly have because diversity is our country’s hallmark,” said Congressman Sarbanes, who, as a member of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, has been a tireless advocate for improving healthcare quality and addressing health disparities.

To achieve health equity, researchers, policymakers, and industry leaders must address broader issues beyond the traditional biomedical model and build trust between those who control health care delivery system and those who have lost hope in the system, said members of the panel.

The panelists recommended that health equity be incorporated into all public policies, not just those related to health care, to reduce and ultimately eliminate health disparities.

Panel members included:

Margo Edmunds, Ph.D., Vice President, Evidence Generation and Translation at Academy Health;

J. Nadine Gracia, M.D., M.S.C.E., Deputy Assistant Secretary for Minority Health and Director of the Office of Minority Health within the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services;

Julia Huggins, President of Cigna Mid-Atlantic;

Kolawole Okuyemi, M.D., MPH, Professor of the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health, Director of the Program in Health Disparities Research and Inaugural Endowed Chair for Health Equity at the University of Minnesota; and

Eliseo Pérez-Stable, M.D., Director of the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities at the National Institutes of Health.

House Democratic Whip Steny H. Hoyer, who represents Maryland’s 5th Congressional District and is a distinguished UMD alumnus, also joined the event and emphasized that as an interconnected community, we should all care about health disparities.

“It is unacceptable that in the United States, where all are created equal in the words of our Declaration of Independence, that one’s access to healthcare may be higher or lower as a result of race, gender, or income,” said Congressman Hoyer. “Everybody being healthy is of concern to each and every one of us.”

He discussed how we must continue to defend the patient protections that Americans are benefiting from thanks to the ACA, such as the no-cost access to preventive services like mammograms and immunizations, as well as remind people of the dramatic increase in the number of people, particularly people of color, who now have health coverage as a result.

The event was held as part of the University of Maryland’s Research on the Hill series, which is aimed at raising awareness of research with great societal significance.

View the conversation at: https://youtu.be/HPedKr0jZLQ

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UMD Study Finds Connecting Uninsured Patients to Primary Care Could Reduce ER Use

Contacts:

Kelly Blake 301-405-9418
Hillery Tsumba 301-628-3425

Montgomery County, Md. Initiative Could Improve Health, Reduce Costs

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – An intervention to connect low-income uninsured and Medicaid patients to a reliable source of primary health care shows promise for reducing avoidable use of hospital emergency departments in Maryland. A University of Maryland School of Public Health study evaluating the results of the intervention was published this week in the May issue of the journal Health Affairs.

For twenty years, use of hospital emergency departments has been on the rise in the United States, particularly among low-income patients who face barriers to accessing health care outside of hospitals, including not having an identifiable primary health care provider. Almost half of emergency room visits are considered “avoidable.” The Emergency Department-Primary Care Connect Initiative of the Primary Care Coalition, which ran from 2009 through 2011, linked low-income uninsured and Medicaid patients to safety-net health clinics.

“Our study found that uninsured patients with chronic health issues – such as those suffering from hypertension, diabetes, asthma, COPD, congestive heart failure, depression or anxiety – relied less on the emergency department after they were linked to a local health clinic for ongoing care,” says Dr. Karoline Mortensen, assistant professor of health services administration at the University of Maryland School of Public Health and senior researcher. “Connecting patients to primary care and expanding the availability of these safety-net clinics could reduce emergency department visits and provide better continuity of care for vulnerable populations.”

Funded by a grant from the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, the initiative engaged all five of the hospitals operating in Montgomery County, Maryland at the time, and four safety-net clinics serving low-income patients. Using “patient navigators,” individuals trained to help patients find the care they need and can afford, these hospitals referred more than 10,000 low-income, uninsured and Medicaid patients who visited emergency departments to four local primary care clinics, with the goal of encouraging them to establish an ongoing relationship with the clinic and reduce their reliance on costly emergency department care.

Two hospitals in Montgomery County who participated in the intervention continued the program after the initial grant period concluded because of the benefits they saw for patients and for reducing emergency department visits and associated costs. These hospitals are currently testing a new version of the intervention specifically deigned to link emergency department patients with behavioral health conditions to appropriate community-based services.

While hospital administrators and health policy experts throughout the country are recognizing that access to primary care improves continuity of care for patients and reduces avoidable use of emergency departments, the implications of this project are particularly important for hospitals in Maryland, which are now operating under a unique all-payer model for hospital payments. Within this new payment structure, Maryland hospitals will have to meet ambitious spending, quality of care, and population health goals. Reducing avoidable use of emergency departments can help in reaching these goals.

The project provides promise not only for hospitals in Maryland but throughout the nation to improve health care experiences and outcomes for their patients. Shared learning systems were an integral component of the project so participants were learning from each other and sharing best practices throughout the project and that learning has now been documented and can be replicated in other communities.

“This was an incredibly rewarding project to work on,” says Barbara H. Eldridge, Manager of Quality Improvement at the Primary Care Coalition. “We created a learning system that permits us to sustain improved communication between patients and their providers, between hospital discharge planners and community based clinics, and across five hospitals operating in Montgomery County.” The initiative has proven successful in Montgomery County, Maryland and is being replicated in communities in other parts of the country.

“Linking Uninsured Patients Treated In The Emergency Department To Primary Care Shows Some Promise In Maryland” was written by Theresa Y. Kim, Karoline Mortensen, and Barbara Eldridge and published in the journal Health Affairs.

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University Launches Dynamic, Interactive Information Website UMD Right Now

Contacts:

Crystal Brown 301-405-4618 crystalb@umd.edu

College Park, Md. – Today, the University of Maryland launched a brand-new multimedia news and information portal, UMD Right Now, which provides members of the media and the public with real-time information on the university and its extended community.

UMD Right Now replaces Newsdesk, which previously served as the university’s news hub and central resource for members of the media. The new site is aimed at reaching broader audiences and allows visitors to keep up with the latest Maryland news and events, view photos and videos and connect with the university across all of its social media platforms.

“We designed UMD Right Now to be a comprehensive, vibrant site where visitors can find new and exciting things happening at Maryland,” said Linda Martin, executive director, Web and New Media Strategies. “Through social media, video, photos and news information, we hope to engage visitors and compel the community to explore all that Maryland has to offer.”

The new website, umdrightnow.umd.edu, contains up-to-date news releases and announcements, facts and figures about the university, a searchable database of faculty and staff experts, information highlighting innovation and entrepreneurship at UMD, additional resources for news media and other campus and athletics news.

“UMD RightNow is the place to go to find out all the things happening on and around campus on any given day,” said Crystal Brown, chief communications officer. “This website brings real-time news, events and information right to your fingertips.”

For more information and contact information for the Office of University Communications, please visit umdrightnow.umd.edu.

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Responding to Adenovirus and Mold at the University of Maryland

Overview

We remain deeply saddened by the death of one of our students, Olivia Paregol. Olivia’s death is a tragedy, and our hearts and our thoughts have been with Olivia’s family and friends since her passing.
The university is confident that we exceeded public health practices in the handling of adenovirus on our campus. Our approach to reporting, coordinating with health officials, and communicating with our campus community exceeded Centers for Disease Control (CDC) guidelines.
Vice President for Student Affairs Linda Clement requested an external review of protocols, policies, procedures and responses to adenovirus cases. The findings support the university’s approach.
Among our many actions regarding mold in campus buildings, we consulted with and followed the recommendations of the University of Maryland Department of Environmental Safety, Sustainability and Risk; the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA); and the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) regarding mold remediation practices.
Plans for moisture control include upgrades to our HVAC systems and installing additional dehumidifiers. These actions are underway in an effort to reduce mold in the future.

Click here for more information.

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UMD Researcher Develops Digital Preschool Curriculum to Improve Early Childhood Learning

Contacts:

Audrey Hill 301-405-3468

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – Early childhood is a critical time for brain development, and sets the stage for long-term academic success. A new, robust digital curriculum developed for four-year-olds by the University of Maryland, in collaboration with the Maryland State Department of Education and the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History, is being implemented in hundreds of classrooms across Maryland. The curriculum will ultimately be made available for free to licensed child care programs and public preschool teachers in Maryland, allowing access to high quality early child education regardless of resources.

Developed by University of Maryland researchers, former teachers, and graduate students, the “Children Study Their World” curriculum is based on the principles of project-based inquiry, with lesson plans for eight project topics that are tangible to preschoolers provided as digital books and made available on iPad. Lessons are bolstered by digitized versions of the National Museum of American History’s artifacts, using items like a skeleton marionette and a nurse’s satchel straight from the renowned museum’s collection to enhance learning.

The UMD Center for Early Childhood Education and Intervention leads the curriculum project, which has been rolled out in 61 classrooms this year and will be implemented in 200 Maryland classrooms next school year.

The Children Study Their World curriculum fully aligns with Maryland’s Early Learning Assessment and Early Learning Standards, which means that children receive instruction throughout the year in all content areas outlined in the standards, such as literacy and math.

Brain research demonstrates the importance of providing young children with rich, hands-on learning experiences respectful of their capacity to learn and eagerness to explore, said Center for Early Childhood Education and Intervention Executive Director Christy Tirrell-Corbin, PhD, who is also the principal investigator and director of the curriculum project.

“We chose project topics like ‘My Body’ and ‘All Aboard: Transportation’ for the children to investigate, as 4-year-olds are very concrete in their thinking and benefit from studying the world that surrounds them every single day,” she said. “Through project-based inquiry, the children’s interests help direct the learning on these topics, which also includes small group learning, field trips and classroom visits from experts,” Tirrell-Corbin said.

Each of the interdisciplinary projects include digitized, child-friendly pieces from the Smithsonian collection that serve as the base of an “object investigation”—small group lessons written by Smithsonian staff who worked with the curriculum team.

“Collaborating with CECEI to produce ‘Children Study their World’ is an important part of our museum’s ongoing early learning initiative,” said Carrie C. Kotcho, A. James Clark Director of Education & Impact at the museum. “With this curriculum, our museum educators were able to integrate digitized objects from the National Museum of American History’s collections and share expertise on how to engage children with enjoyable learning experiences that support literacy and school readiness, play and inquiry, and the development of executive function skills.”

“Whether at Wegman’s Wonderplace, our play-based early learning space, in communities, or through digital curriculums like “Children Study their World,” we are dedicated to helping our youngest learners explore, learn and succeed,” said Kotcho.

Available on iPad, the guides enable the digital curriculum to be widely disseminated to licensed child care programs and public preschool teachers in Maryland, provide strategies for students with disabilities and English language learners.

"The most important component to a quality pre-K program is the teacher. The teacher needs to be equipped with the tools to deliver high-quality instruction," said Karen Salmon, Maryland State Superintendent of Schools. "This new integrated curriculum and the training and coaching that accompany it helps to ensure this happens."

In addition to the 200-classroom rollout, Tirrell-Corbin will host a podcast series focused on high-quality instructional practices for early-childhood teachers next year, and Children Study Their World staff will facilitate webinars for teachers and for coaches and program administrators.

“Children Study Their World” is a wonderful tool for teaching young children, said Patricia Aburn, a quality assurance specialist and credentialing liaison of the Maryland State Department of Education, who helps coach teachers to use the curriculum.

“Young children are like sponges their first five years,” Aburn said. “They need to be challenged, stimulated by free play and structured whole group and small group activities. They need to be socially engaged and exposed to language through rich vocabulary and stimulating literacy.”

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Glacial Sediments Greased the Gears of Plate Tectonics

COLLEGE PARK, Md. – Earth’s fractured outer shell is composed of giant plates of solid rock that move —grinding together, sliding past or dipping beneath one another to create the mountain ranges and other major surface features of our planet and generating earthquakes, volcanoes, tsunamis and other powerful events. However, Earth’s surface has not always experienced these “plate tectonics” and questions about when this began and how it has changed through time have been much debated by scientists.

New research by University of Maryland and German geologists indicates that the transition to plate tectonics started around 635 million years ago at the end of Earth’s last period of being all or mostly ice covered. Their work suggests that at this point these giant plates began to move, lubricated by sediments that were scraped by glaciers from the slopes of Earth’s first continents. As these sediments collected along the world’s young coastlines, they helped to accelerate the motion of newly formed subduction faults, where a thinner oceanic plate dips beneath a thicker continental plate.

From Solid Shell to Moving Plates

Early in Earth’s history, the planet was covered by a single shell dotted with volcanoes—much like the surface of Venus today. As Earth cooled, this shell began to fold and crack, eventually creating Earth’s system of plate tectonics.

The new study, published June 6, 2019 in the journal Nature, is the first to suggest a role for sediments in the emergence and evolution of global plate tectonics. Michael Brown, a professor of geology at the University of Maryland, co-authored the research paper with Stephan Sobolev, a professor of geodynamics at the GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam.

The findings suggest that sediment lubrication controls the rate at which Earth’s crust grinds and churns. Sobolev and Brown found that two major periods of worldwide glaciation, which resulted in massive deposits of glacier-scrubbed sediment, each likely caused a subsequent boost in the global rate of plate tectonics.

The most recent such episode followed the “snowball Earth” that ended sometime around 635 million years ago, resulting in Earth’s modern plate tectonic system.

“Earth hasn’t always had plate tectonics and it hasn’t always progressed at the same pace,” Brown said. “It’s gone through at least two periods of acceleration. There’s evidence to suggest that tectonics also slowed to a relative crawl for nearly a billion years. In each case, we found a connection with the relative abundance—or scarcity—of glacial sediments.”

Just as a machine needs grease to keep its parts moving freely, plate tectonics operates more efficiently with lubrication. While it may be hard to confuse the gritty consistency of clay, silt, sand and gravel with a slippery grease, the effect is largely the same at the continental scale, in the ocean trenches where tectonic plates meet.

“The same dynamic exists when drilling Earth’s crust. You have to use mud—a very fine clay mixed with water or oil—because water or oil alone won’t work as well,” Brown said. “The mud particles help reduce friction on the drill bit. Our results suggest that tectonic plates also need this type of lubrication to keep moving.”

Previous research on the western coast of South America was the first to identify a relationship between sediment lubrication and friction along a subduction fault. Off the coast of northern Chile, a relative lack of sediment in the fault trench creates high friction as the oceanic Nazca plate dips beneath the continental South America plate. This friction helped to push the highest peaks of the central Andes Mountains skyward as the continental plate squashed and deformed.

In contrast, further south there is a higher sediment load in the trench, resulting in less friction. This caused less deformation of the continental plate and, consequently, created smaller mountain peaks. But these findings were limited to one geographic area.

For their study, Sobolev and Brown used a geodynamic model of plate tectonics to simulate the effect of sediment lubrication on the rate of subduction. To verify their hypothesis, they checked for correlations between known periods of widespread glaciation and previously published data that indicate the presence of continental sediment in the oceans and trenches. For this step, Sobolev and Brown relied on two primary lines of evidence: the chemical signature of the influence of continental sediments on the chemistry of the oceans and indicators of sediment contamination in subduction-related volcanoes, much like those that make up today’s “ring of fire” around the Pacific Ocean.

According to Sobolev and Brown’s analysis, plate tectonics likely emerged on Earth between 3 and 2.5 billion years ago, around the time when Earth’s first continents began to form. This time frame also coincides with the planet’s first continental glaciation.

A major boost in plate tectonics then occurred between 2.2 to 1.8 billion years ago, following another global ice age that scrubbed massive amounts of sediments into the fault trenches at the edges of the continents.

The next billion years, from 1.75 billion to 750 million years ago, saw a global reduction in the rate of plate tectonics. This stage of Earth’s history was so sedate, comparatively speaking, that it earned the nickname “the boring billion” among geologists.

Later, following the global “snowball Earth” glaciation that ended roughly 635 million years ago, the largest surface erosion event in Earth’s history may have scrubbed more than a vertical mile of thickness from the surface of the continents. According to Sobolev and Brown, when these sediments reached the oceans, they kick-started the modern phase of active plate tectonics.

The research paper, “Surface erosion events controlled the evolution of plate tectonics on Earth,” Stephan Sobolev and Michael Brown, was published in the journal Nature on June 6, 2019.

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University of Maryland Partner, College Park Academy, Celebrates First Graduating High School Class

Contacts:

Natifia Mullings 301-405-4076

COLLEGE PARK, Md. - College Park Academy (CPA), a Prince George’s County public charter school offering a rigorous college preparatory education for students in grades 6 to 12, celebrates the graduation of its first senior class this May.

“We are very proud of this first graduating high school class, and see in their success evidence that this innovative model of education works," said University of Maryland President and Board Chair of the College Park Academy Wallace D. Loh. "Thanks to the combined efforts of political leaders, the community, the university, parents, and the students, this public-charter, blended-learning approach is the future of education."

In addition to an impressive selection of course offerings which includes 13 AP courses and 7 foreign languages, CPA students have the added benefit of access to college-level classes and programs, clubs, and events led by University of Maryland professors and students. Two CPA students are graduating high school a year early, and many are graduating with college credits under their belts.

“It is remarkable to reflect on what our school has been able to accomplish over the past six years,” said Dr. Donna Wisemen, former UMD Dean of Education and a key CPA designer and founding Board member. “We launched CPA with the belief that the school could become a top performer in the state. Since then, we have worked diligently with our education partners to provide our students with access to a world-class, college preparatory education. In turn, they have not only met but far exceeded our expectations. We couldn’t be more proud of our graduating seniors.” CPA’s standardized test scores are now among the highest in Maryland.

The Class of 2019’s 86 students walked the stage at the graduation ceremony on May 29th on the University of Maryland campus. Graduates have been offered admission and scholarships to a wide array of colleges and universities, from the University of Maryland, University of Maryland Baltimore County, and Johns Hopkins, to the University of Chicago and Penn State University.

Founded in 2013 by the College Park City-University Partnership as part of its “Vision 2020” to create a top 20 college town, and in partnership with the University of Maryland, College Park Academy is one of the first "bricks and clicks" middle and high schools in the United States. While CPA students attend school every day, their curriculum is entirely online, and a third of their courses are taught by online teachers. The online curriculum and instruction, provided by Pearson Connections Education, utilizes personalized, active learning, allowing students to work at their own pace, catch up when they fall behind, and accelerate when they are ready to move ahead.

This school year, CPA received over 1,500 applications for their 200 openings. “Our success has struck a chord with Prince George’s County families, as evidenced by the large waitlist list of applicants,” said Duane Arbogast, former Chief Academic Officer for Prince George’s County and current Interim Executive Director for College Park Academy. “Parents know we provide the kind of schooling which they, and top colleges, want — a focus on rigorous academics, social skills, and respect for others.”

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About the University of Maryland

The University of Maryland, College Park is the state's flagship university and one of the nation's preeminent public research universities. A global leader in research, entrepreneurship and innovation, the university is home to more than 40,000 students, 10,000 faculty and staff, and 280 academic programs. As one of the nation’s top producers of Fulbright scholars, its faculty includes two Nobel laureates, three Pulitzer Prize winners and 57 members of the national academies. The institution has a $1.9 billion operating budget and secures $514 million annually in external research funding. For more information about the University of Maryland, College Park, visit www.umd.edu.

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