Cecil College and The University of Maryland, Baltimore County have formed a collaboration in which UMBC will co-locate on Cecil's campuses and bring baccalaureate level programs to Cecil County around 2011. The official announcement and signing took place May 26 at the Battelle Eastern Science and Technology Center in Aberdeen, Md.
The initial articulation agreements are currently being finalized in the areas of engineering, biological sciences and biotechnology; others may be developed in the future. UMBC will offer upper level courses for juniors and seniors and welcome transfer students from Cecil and other colleges. Cohesive courses of study will be established in which students engage in a "2 + 2" curriculum by taking their first two years of classes at Cecil College and the next two years at UMBC.
Read more about this partnership.
"Of all that we've done, such as growing enrollment, property acquisitions and construction of new buildings, I feel this is the one thing people will look back upon 10 years from now and say it was what drove the county forward in a positive way," said Cecil College President Dr. W. Stephen Pannill. "I have much personal satisfaction about this partnership and think it will lead to a transformation for the region."
Over the last few years, there has been a groundswell in interest and effort to address the lack of baccalaureate and graduate level programs in Cecil County. According to the 2000 Census, only 16 percent of Cecil County residents who were 25 or older held a bachelor's degree, while the statewide percentage at that time was 32 percent.
The Susquehanna Workforce Network and the Northeast Maryland Technology Council both indicated the need for greater higher education opportunities in the region and provided letters of support for this initiative. The Cecil County Economic Development Commission and Cecil College reinforced these needs in their respective strategic plans.
Pannill gained valuable experience working with higher education centers when he was interim president for Harford Community College in Bel Air, Md. and vice president for financial services at Lake Michigan College in Benton Harbor, Mich. Western Michigan University constructed buildings on Lake Michigan's campus and Pannill was heavily involved with bringing collegiate programming to the HEAT Center in Aberdeen, Md.
"Where this is different in a couple of important respects is we're not relying on a generic regional higher education center that has that kind of label and then we build programs and mix and match," said Pannill. "This is a more concerted commitment by our college and also by the co-locating university to this area. UMBC is doing much more; it is joining us to co-locate here."
When it came time to identifying colleges to come to Cecil, it was decided the institution had to be recognized for academic excellence. The university also needed to be highly regarded for the degrees it offered in math, science and engineering. In addition, Cecil College was looking for a university that had expertise in research, technology transfer and business incubation.
UMBC and Drexel University met the required criteria and Pannill and his staff engaged in talks with the two institutions. Both colleges were great to work with and each proved to be a highly viable option. UMBC was favored by Cecil largely because of its connection with Maryland and its favorable tuition and fee structure.
A public research university celebrating its 40th anniversary this fall, UMBC has built a national reputation for academic innovation and excellence. UMBC's 9,406 undergraduate and 2,244 graduate students pursue studies in information technology, engineering, biological and physical sciences, humanities, social sciences and public policy, and visual and performing arts.
UMBC faculty and students work closely with many of the region's top employers, including Black and Decker, Constellation Energy, IBM, Lockheed Martin, NASA, the National Security Agency, Northrop Grumman, the Social Security Administration, T. Rowe Price and other major regional corporations. UMBC's on-campus research park, bwtech@UMBC, and business incubator, techcenter@UMBC, are home to more than 40 established and growing companies in fields ranging from information technology to bioscience.
The Kaplan/Newsweek How to Get Into College guide named UMBC to its select list of "Hot Schools" in 2003. UMBC also ranks 16th nationally in NASA research funding. In 2003, the Princeton Review recognized UMBC as having one of the nation's most diverse student bodies.
"UMBC really had vision and could see the potential of Cecil County," said Pannill. "It could see there is great advantage to locating in an area where major employment development will occur in future years. Cecil County is close to Aberdeen Proving Ground and is also in a location that can serve Delaware and southern New Jersey."
The process was aided by Cecil College's ability to secure a 15-acre college campus site in the northeast area of the Bainbridge Development Site in Port Deposit, Md. Over 1,200 acres of the former Bainbridge Naval Facility will be developed for commercial and residential purposes and Cecil Community College will use its 15 acres to establish a presence at the western edge of the county. The Bainbridge Development Corporation recently committed the land, valued at $787,500, as a gift to the Cecil Community College Foundation, Inc.
Plans are underway to develop a 20,000-gross-square-foot science, math and engineering center at Bainbridge. The center will be built in response to the anticipated growth of health, science and technology-based industry, as well as in reaction to the Base Realignment and Closure initiatives. Cecil is targeting to begin construction in 2008. Beginning in 2008, and continuing through 2014, the U.S. military will relocate almost 5,400 civilian employees in high-tech jobs to Aberdeen Proving Ground. As a result, it is estimated that approximately 10,000 new jobs will be created in the region over the next five to six years. This will create considerable opportunity for Cecil College and UMBC to develop programs and deliver training for technical and laboratory support employment.
"Our trustees and the college offered to share our facilities in Elkton and North East and more particularly at the emerging Bainbridge campus, which makes it more realistic for a university to take that leap," said Pannill. "If they had to buy land and justify constructing buildings at the very start, it would be an extremely expensive and difficult thing to do. It's also being done with a long-term vision to say there could be university buildings, and likely will be, at Bainbridge and then ultimately in North East. It's something that can grow as the needs emerge and evolve."
UMBC will provide some of its existing faculty members and may also hire local instructors to teach courses. Opportunities could exist for Cecil's faculty members to teach UMBC courses as well. There is a plan at the Bainbridge site to use distance education tools to make it more practical to deliver a full program.
On the non-credit side, UMBC has already arrived in Cecil County by expanding its Diagnostic Medical Sonography Program to Cecil College's Elkton Station. Two well-attended information sessions were held in April for the program which is slated to begin in early 2007.
"If you think about community college students, they are living in and anchored to the community either by choice or by circumstances," said Pannill. "To go to a distant university to complete a degree is not realistic for many and a major change for all. We have created a model in which people can continue on through Cecil College, using a two plus two arrangement, and complete a university degree right here in Cecil County. They can live at home, work part or full time if they need to, and complete that degree from a prestigious university. We start with the public schools and build a strong math, science and engineering pipeline through the community college to a university that opens up a world of possibilities for people."