Maryland College Park

Maryland universities' graduate and professional programs gained high rankings in U.S. News & World Report's review, an annual rite that offered few surprises.The magazine's March 20 issue rated the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine No. 2 in the nation. That's the third straight year Hopkins has finished second to Harvard University -- but it's heady company."Whenever anyone ranks you in the top cadre of medical schools, you're pleased to be there," said Dr. Michael E. Johns, dean of Hopkins' medical school.

The University of Maryland College Park will become one of 90 public institutions to receive funding under a $24.4 million program from the U.S. Commerce Department to help open the computer network Internet up for all Americans, Commerce Secretary Ronald H. Brown has announced.The $244,496 grant for Maryland will channel data to the Internet from a series of Chesapeake Bay buoys containing observational sensors. A new Internet Resource Center, to be set up at UM, will provide training for teachers at selected public schools in Howard, Montgomery and Wicomico counties.

LAST month the University of Maryland College Park held a contest in which students were asked to rewrite Lincoln's "Gettysburg Address," incorporating contemporary issues. The speeches had to be 272 words (the same number as Lincoln's). This year's winner was Teresa Shirlen, a senior at the University of Maryland College Park. Here is her entry:"The American Address"Tenscore and seventeen years ago, a grand nation was conceived and dedicated to the proposition that all are created equal.

Four presidents at public research universities made a collective $9.2 million in fiscal year 2012, with the top earner of the group making much of his money because he was fired, according to a report released Sunday by the Chronicle of Higher Education. Graham B. Spanier, who was terminated from Pennsylvania State University in late 2011 for his handling of a child-molestation scandal, was paid $2.9 million - $1.2 million of it in severance. This was the first fiscal year that four presidents topped the million mark in compensation.

From health care to hairdos, politics has been rough sport for first lady Hillary Rodham Clinton. But yesterday she urged nearly 5,000 University of Maryland College Park graduates to look beyond the dull and petty in politics."

A 21-year-old man has been charged with robbing a student at knifepoint last week on the University of Maryland College Park campus, but a second suspect remains at large, campus police said Sunday. Isaiah Graham of Riverdale in Prince George's County was being held by Washington, D.C., police on unrelated robbery charges when University of Maryland police found evidence linking him to the attack Thursday evening on the College Park campus, according to a university police news release.

Much of the coverage of the need for a special budget session of the Maryland legislature has focused on the political machinations of its leaders. That's understandable. But we should not ignore the impact on ordinary people if the legislature fails to finalize a budget. Major victims will be thousands of middle-income college students from every community in Maryland. The budget package proposed by Gov.Martin O'Malleyand endorsed by both houses of the legislature caps tuition hikes at 3 percent for this fall at all the public four-year campuses.

A lab at the University of Maryland College Park was damaged by an electrical fire Monday afternoon that was extinguished by firefighters, Prince George's County Fire Department spokesman Mark Brady said. With the Martin Luther King, Jr., holiday, there were a limited number of people in the J.M. Patterson Building on Regents Drive, and they were evacuated safely, he said. No chemicals or hazardous materials were involved, although the Fire Departmentn's Hazardous Materials Team was alerted as a precaution, he said.

Monica Feeser of Taneytown and Melissa Harrison of Day, members of the Maryland 4-H livestock judging team, traveled to Louisville, Ky., for the North American International Livestock Exposition, which began on Nov. 16.The Maryland group placed seventh overall out of 38 teams.Ms. Feeser received 20th place in the individual rankings.The team had won a state fair competition at West Springfield, Mass., on Sept. 18.It won again at the Eastern National Livestock Show in Timonium one week later and placed second at the Keystone International Livestock Exposition in Harrisburg, Pa., on Oct. 2.Ms.

The late Thurgood Marshall was rejected for admission to the University of Maryland School of Law in his hometown of Baltimore, so the oft-told story goes, simply because he was black.The rejection fueled his quest for racial justice and became the stuff of legend, a part of the city's folklore that endures in the nation's history.But increasingly, students of the life of the late U.S. Supreme Court justice are coming to the conclusion that he may not have applied to the Maryland law school.