University President Dan Mote poses for a photo with students at The Dairy during his last Maryland Day.
It started with a red three-ring binder and 10 people sitting around a table.
The moon bounce, the long line for the wind tunnel, the 50,000 cupcakes and the world’s largest strawberry shortcake, the students showing off custom robots and experiments, the thousands of volunteers showing up for nothing more than a boxed lunch — that all came later.
Before Maryland Day became a reason for tens of thousands of people to descend on the campus each April — the university held its 12th annual Maryland Day on Saturday — it was just a brand-new university president’s idea that no one believed would work.
“The campus was so unenthusiastic,” university President Dan Mote said. “I was the only person on the campus who wanted Maryland Day to happen that I know of.”
For most, Maryland Day is fun and games, but for Mote, who is retiring Aug. 31 after 12 years as president, the event has always been a part of a strategy to link the university to its surrounding community — not just College Park and Prince George’s County, but to the entire state. And the event, which Mote first tasked then-Vice President of Student Affairs Bud Thomas with completing 12 years ago, has grown beyond even Mote’s wildest expectations.
Although Maryland Day is now a 365-day project for some administrators, Mote only gave Thomas a few months to plan the first event in 1999. No one at the university had done anything like it before. Brooke Supple, Vice President for Student Affairs Linda Clement’s chief of staff, was one of those 10 people at the table. At the time, she was serving as an assistant to Thomas.
“It certainly wasn’t part of my job description,” she said. “We didn’t have a lot of planning time.”
Mote chose Thomas, who had served as a vice president for a quarter-century, because he was the kind of person who knew everyone. He had connections throughout the university and its surrounding community. No one else, Supple said, could have brought together the event so quickly. The red three-ring binder was where Thomas kept a list of ideas submitted for the very first Maryland Day’s events.
“It was pretty old-school,” Supple said.
Many of the people who worked at the first Maryland Day — it had about 100 events — thought no one would come. But the weather that day, Supple said, was as perfect as late April can be. About 20,000 people showed up. But Mote was disappointed. He wanted 25,000.
Thomas continued running Maryland Day the next year, until Vice President for University Relations Brodie Remington took over the project. He has overseen it ever since. In its second year, 35,000 people came. The third year, 60,000 showed up.
Since, attendance has plateaued, peaking at about 80,000 — the campus can’t physically hold many more people than that, Remington said — and the number of events has stayed constant at about 400.
Mote said he never thought attendance would top 50,000.
Part of this growth has been spurred by its ever expanding list of sponsors. Even as the university has slashed away at its budget, Remington has recruited partners for the university’s biggest celebration of the year: Cisco Systems, Pepsi and the ABC affiliates in Baltimore and Washington. Not only do these contracts pay the bills for the event — the university’s budget for Maryland Day has only increased once, Remington said — the latter two also ensure free air time in the state’s largest television markets.
And that TV time matters. Maryland Day is symbolic of a bigger push by Mote to connect the university to the communities, businesses, government agencies and state that surround it. Mote said he realized when he arrived that the university had never had an open house, when everyone would be free to simply come and explore what the university had to offer — from the spring football game to the Dairy’s ice cream to the latest cutting-edge research.
“Coming to Maryland is like going to the library,” Mote said. “You go to the library and part of it is going to the library and picking up the book that you came to get, but while you’re picking that book up, like at a book store, you find five other books that are sitting next to it on the shelf that you weren’t looking for to start with. … You may be coming looking for the spring football game, but before you get there to start there and hear what’s going on at the department of poetry or what’s going on at the [agriculture] school.”
Before Mote arrived, the university had Agriculture Day, or “Ag Day” for short, which was hosted by the agriculture college. The 85-year-old event was significantly smaller — about 500 people attended in 1998, the last year it was a stand-alone event. It’s now a part of Maryland Day, and Remington said it’s the most autonomous part of the celebration.
For Mote, Ag Day wasn’t big enough, wasn’t broad enough. As a man who has dubbed the university the “state’s most valuable asset,” he wanted Marylanders to realize what they had.
“The state needs to value its higher education system,” Mote said. “It needs to value its flagship university. It needs to see it’s an extraordinary place, and it contributes to the state in ways that are just not available otherwise.”
But even though Mote isn’t deeply involved in planning the event — that work is left to two committees — his affection for his creation is clear. He can proudly rattle off statistics: The Maryland Day website has received 1.5 million hits; visitors are scheduled to come from every state but Wisconsin and from 83 foreign countries; visitors will have 419 programs to visit.
And amid all the chaos, Maryland Day has rules.
No. 1: No fundraising.
No. 2: Except for food, everything is free.
No. 3: No parking tickets.
No. 4: Everyone leaves Maryland Day happy.
The first three rules are critical to the last. Maryland Day, in Mote’s eyes, aims to create positive feelings about the university.
“People should be able to come here and go home and be happy about their experience,” he said.
As Remington points out, the university’s image can too often focus on rioting and basketball rather than academics and community service.
“I think goodwill in the community is very important,” Remington said. “[Maryland Day] helps to break down the barrier. And that’s important to us as a public university.”
That one day of positive feelings can have a lasting impact. For alumni, it might lead to a future donation. For an unaffiliated state resident, it might ease their apprehensions about the university’s coffers filling up with their tax dollars. And it can create future Terps out of otherwise ambivalent 14-year-old high school students. When he meets students each fall, Mote claims, as many as half of them first came to the university before — on Maryland Day.
Mote is retiring Aug. 31, and a search committee is looking for a successor. Even now, Mote said, holding the event is a year-to-year decision — there are no guarantees his successor will continue it.
“It’s the most important event like it in the state,” he said. “One day a year this place is open. That’s it.
“I hope it continues,” he added, but “you never know.”
robillard@umdbk.com
