History
UMaine was founded in 1862 as a function of the Morrill Act, signed by President Lincoln. Established in 1865 and originally named the Maine College of Agriculture and the Mechanic Arts, the Maine College opened on September 21, 1868, changing its name to the University of Maine in 1897.
By 1871, curricula had been organized in Agriculture, Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, and electives. The Maine Agricultural and Forest Experiment Station was founded as a division of the university in 1887. Gradually the university developed the Colleges of Life Sciences and Agriculture (later to include the School of Forest Resources and the School of Human Development), Engineering and Science, and Arts and Sciences. In 1912 the Maine Cooperative Extension, which offers field educational programs for both adults and youths, was initiated. The School of Education was established in 1930 and received college status in 1958. The School of Business Administration was formed in 1958 and was granted college status in 1965. Women have been admitted into all curricula since 1872. The first master's degree was conferred in 1881; the first doctor's degree in 1960. Since 1923 there has been a separate graduate school.
Near the end of the 19th century, the curriculum was expanded to place greater emphasis on liberal arts. As a function of this shift in focus new faculty hired during the early 20th century included Caroline Colvin, chair of the history department, and the first woman in the nation to head a major university department.
In 1906, The Senior Skull Honor Society was founded to "publicly recognize, formally reward, and continually promote outstanding leadership and scholarship, and exemplary citizenship within the University of Maine community."
On April 16, 1925, 80 women met in Balentine Hall - faculty, alumnae, and undergraduate representatives - to plan a pledging of members to a new honorary organization. This organization was called "The All Maine Women" because only those women closely connected with the University of Maine were elected as members. On April 22, 1925, the new members were inducted into the honor society.
When the University of Maine System was incorporated, the school was renamed by the legislature over the objections of the faculty to the University of Maine at Orono (or UMO). This was changed back to the University of Maine in 1986.
Read more about this topic: University Of Maine
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“All history becomes subjective; in other words there is properly no history, only biography.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“The visual is sorely undervalued in modern scholarship. Art history has attained only a fraction of the conceptual sophistication of literary criticism.... Drunk with self-love, criticism has hugely overestimated the centrality of language to western culture. It has failed to see the electrifying sign language of images.”
—Camille Paglia (b. 1947)
“Modern Western thought will pass into history and be incorporated in it, will have its influence and its place, just as our body will pass into the composition of grass, of sheep, of cutlets, and of men. We do not like that kind of immortality, but what is to be done about it?”
—Alexander Herzen (1812–1870)