In 1920, the 19th Amendment granted women in the United States the right to vote. Four years prior, in 1916 the first two women were enrolled at the University of Maryland, College Park, which was 60 years after the institution was established.
Since the acceptance of women in the university, so many amazing women have gone on to not only be Terps, but role models and forces to be reckoned with.
Photo of Connie Chung
One of the most famous women to have graduated from UMD is Connie Chung. Chung graduated from the Philip Merrill College of Journalism at UMD in 1969. Chung has worked for large news organizations such as NBC, CBS, CNN and more.
A significant accomplishment in Chung’s career is her exclusive interview with former President Richard Nixon after the Watergate scandal, which led to his resignation, in the early 1970s.
In 1993, she became the second woman to co-anchor a major news network’s national news weekday broadcast when she hosted CBS Evening News. She went on to anchor CBS Evening News for two years alongside Dan Rather.
Photo of Judith Resnik
Another influential alumnus from the university is Judith Resnik. In 1977 she earned a Ph.D. in electrical engineering, with honors. She was also only 1 of 16 girls to receive a perfect score on the SATs in the United States. Resnik went on to become an astronaut with NASA and was the second American woman to enter space.
Her career with NASA was cut short due to her tragic passing in the 1986 Challenger aircraft explosion. Resnik’s legacy continues to live on, however, through the scholarships and schools named after her.
Photo of Valerie Solanas
Valerie Solanas is another notable woman to have graduated from the University of Maryland. She is most infamously known for her attempt to murder artist Andy Warhol after he didn’t want to produce a play she wrote. She graduated from UMD with a degree in psychology and was the host of a call-in radio show that was geared towards helping women combat men.
Solanas is also well known for her creation of the SCUM Manifesto, which was published in the 1960s. The manifesto argued that men were the cause of all the problems the world faced and women should be tasked with fixing it. Solanas was characterized in the series American Horror Story on FX in 2017.
Solanas views were radical, and she was mocked for her beliefs but, whether you agree with her and her manifesto, she made an imprint on the feminist movement. Solanas wanted to advance women in the world, and her extreme perspective did just that.
Photo of Adele H. Stamp on a trip in 1922 through Europe. Photo: https://umdarchives.wordpress.com/tag/adele-stamp/
Another impactful female graduate is one that most students will recognize. Adele Hagner Stamp, the woman who the student union was named after, not only received a Master’s degree in sociology from the university in 1924, she was also the Dean of Women for almost 40 years.
Stamp accomplished a lot throughout her adult life, including founding numerous foundations. She was a member of the Board of Regents and after World War I she joined the Red Cross.
The women who have attended UMD are influential, bold and at times controversial, but that’s what makes them unique and compelling. These women were living during the 20th century, which was a time where women were not as valued or included in the workforce.
These women paved the way for the generations that followed and were a testament for what a University of Maryland-educated woman can be.