Princess Anne, Maryland · Founded 1886 · Hawks (Harry the Hawk & HH3)
“Hawk Pride from the Shore — a small 1890 land-grant HBCU in Princess Anne that built an NFL pipeline, then a bowling dynasty.”
Behind-the-scenes with the pep band at the 2026 MEAC Basketball Championships in Norfolk, filmed by student band member Janiyah Mickens — the modern face of Hawk Pride on the road.
The school's official recruiting video — campus, programs, faculty and students in one pitch for why Princess Anne is home.
Students debate bringing football back — the emotional core of the 2013 task-force decision that kept the program retired after 1979.
Game footage from the UMES Hawks Athletics channel — the baseball program that produced a two-time NCAA batting champion in Ira Smith.
Groundbreaking coverage for the $91.5 million Engineering & Aviation Science Complex, the first new classroom building in nearly a decade.
Student-led walking tour of the 2025 campus transformation initiative — 254 students, staff and faculty surveyed on what the campus should become.
Tribute to the UMES great — Super Bowl III champion and College Football Hall of Fame class of 2010 — whose NFL career carried the Maryland State name to the pros.
D.C. go-go legends Backyard Band recorded live at UMES in 1996 — a snapshot of the campus concert scene in the go-go era.
A 2024 HBCU Week visit to campus featuring Dr. Heidi Anderson — the school at its 140th-anniversary moment.
Short film by UMES student filmmaker Dillon Austin on what it really feels like to grow up at an HBCU — friends, mentors, finding your voice.
Postgame show after Creighton's 84-45 win over the Hawks — an honest snapshot of UMES basketball's uphill climb on the Division I road.
Class of 1968 — Pro Football Hall of Fame tackle and the first African American head coach in modern NFL history (Oakland Raiders).
Class of 1965 — New York Jets running back 1966-1975, Super Bowl III champion, College Football Hall of Fame class of 2010.
Class of 1960 — NFL defensive lineman for the Detroit Lions and Los Angeles Rams.
Class of 1958 — NFL defensive back, Super Bowl III champion with the Jets.
Class of 1967 — NFL defensive back, Super Bowl III champion with the Jets.
Class of 1967 — NFL defensive back, Super Bowl III champion with the Jets.
Class of 1969 — NFL defensive back for the Denver Broncos.
Class of 1975 — NFL defensive lineman and later an NFL coach.
Attended UMES — the legendary saxophonist of Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band.
Class of 1964 — Olympic long jumper and later a New Jersey State Assemblyman.
Class of 1968 — actress with a long film and television career.
Class of 1990 — the first player to win two NCAA batting titles, leading Division I in batting average in 1989 and 1990.
Class of 1965 — ninth president of Morgan State University, serving 1984-2010.
PhD 2020 — former NASA chief information officer and founder/CEO of Muse Technologies, Inc.
NASA administrator and member of the Senior Executive Service.
Rapper, producer and activist who pursued a master's in education at UMES — reportedly with a 3.9 GPA — before leaving to focus on music full-time.
Class of 2008 — Jamaican middle-distance runner who competed at world cross country championships.
Long before there was a university, a farmhouse known as Olney stood on the land in Princess Anne — built in 1798, in the era of George Washington's presidency. When the Delaware Conference Academy opened nearly a century later, that converted farmhouse on 16 acres became the school's original campus building, welcoming nine students on the very first day. Olney is the physical thread connecting the school's farmhouse origins to the 1,138-acre university campus that stands there today.
The school opened September 13, 1886, as the Delaware Conference Academy, founded through the Delaware Conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church — the work of the Rev. Joseph R. Waters and a white minister, the Rev. John A. B. Wilson. Benjamin and Portia Bird welcomed nine students that first day to the converted farmhouse on 16 acres. It began as a preparatory school for the private Centenary Biblical Institute in Baltimore (later Morgan College), and locals simply called it 'The Academy.' By the end of the first academic year, 37 students were enrolled.
Because of segregation, Black students could not enroll at the Maryland Agricultural College in College Park, which held the state's land-grant program. Congress enacted the Second Morrill Act of 1890, requiring states to establish colleges for African-American students to keep receiving land-grant funds. Maryland formalized a partnership with Morgan College to underwrite land-grant education for Black students on the lower Eastern Shore. The school became widely known as Princess Anne Academy — and, informally, as Morgan's 'industrial branch.'
Fifty years after opening, the school formally passed from church control to state ownership, beginning with the first of four $25,000 installment payments. It became Princess Anne College, a branch of the University of Maryland, with the College Park campus designated as its administrative agency. State government archives from the era also record the name 'Eastern Shore Branch of the Maryland Agricultural College.' The transition marked the school's shift from a church preparatory academy toward a public baccalaureate college.
The Eastern Shore Branch of the University of Maryland — then alternately known as Princess Anne College — was renamed Maryland State College, a division of the University of Maryland. That same year, Maryland State College and Albright College played one of the first intercollegiate football games ever contested between an historically Black institution and a majority-white institution. The game stands as an early crack in segregated college athletics, played a full generation before the civil rights era.
From 1946 to 1970, Maryland State College was recognized across Black college football as a genuine powerhouse, posting five undefeated seasons between 1947 and 1960. Over that 25-year span the Hawks compiled a 154-38-6 record — a 77.8 winning percentage. The program produced 20 future NFL players, a pipeline that would carry the school's name into the Super Bowl and eventually the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
Over the decades, UMES's spring commencement became a stage for historic figures: Eleanor Roosevelt spoke in 1954, Thurgood Marshall in 1957, the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in 1959, and Jackie Robinson — the man who broke baseball's color line — in 1968. Poet Nikki Giovanni followed in 1974, Andrew Young in 1978, Bishop Desmond Tutu in 2005, and Children's Defense Fund founder Marian Wright Edelman in 2006. For a small school on the Shore, the roll call of commencement speakers reads like a civil rights hall of fame.
The UMES men's outdoor track and field team captured national championships in both the NAIA (Single division, 82-33 over Omaha) and the NCAA Division II meet (98-64 over Fresno State) in 1963. It remains one of the school's oldest national-championship pedigrees, decades before the bowling dynasty arrived. Track would stay a point of pride — in 2011 the Hawks' men's outdoor team ranked third in the Mid-Atlantic Region, the highest-ranked team in the state of Maryland.
In the 1968 game between the New York Jets and the Baltimore Colts — Super Bowl III — UMES was represented by four alumni: Earl Christy (1961–1964), Johnny Sample (1954–1957), Emerson Boozer (1962–1965), and Charlie Stukes (1963–1967). That tied the school with Florida State for the most alumni appearing in a single Super Bowl game. Boozer, a Jets running back from 1966 to 1975, would later enter the College Football Hall of Fame as part of the class of 2010.
On July 1, 1970, Maryland State College became the University of Maryland Eastern Shore, its current name. That same year UMES was one of the founding members of the Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference, breaking away with six other schools from the CIAA. Today it is one of 12 public institutions in the University System of Maryland. The new name and the new conference marked the school's arrival as a full-fledged university.
During the 1973–74 season, UMES men's basketball led the entire nation in scoring at 97.6 points per game, behind future NBA draft picks Rubin Collins, Talvin Skinner, William Gordon and Joe Pace. The Hawks defeated Manhattan College 84–81 in the first round of the 1974 NIT before falling 85–83 to Jacksonville University in the quarterfinals. The school has never played in the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament, making that NIT run the high-water mark of the program.
The costs of operating an NCAA Division I football program, compounded by federal Title IX gender-equity obligations, became too much for the small school, and the team was disbanded after the 1979 season — when enrollment was under 1,000. UMES left the MEAC in 1979 seeking to return to the CIAA, was denied entry because it no longer fielded football, and rejoined the MEAC in 1981, where it has remained ever since. The decision ended a proud football tradition but kept the institution alive through a period when its survival as a four-year college was genuinely in doubt.
The women's bowling team reached the 2007 NCAA National Championship in Orlando, Florida, and fell to Vanderbilt in a 4–3 series — one game from a title. All-Tournament players Marion Singleton and Jessica Worsley led the Hawks. The near-miss set up everything that followed: UMES would not lose a national final again for years.
UMES won the 2008 NCAA Women's Bowling Championship in Omaha, Nebraska, defeating Arkansas State 4–2 in a best-of-seven series, as the seventh seed. All-Tournament players Jessica Worsley — named the tournament MVP — and Maria Rodriguez led the way. With the win, UMES became the first historically Black college or university ever to win a women's NCAA national championship. That summer the team was honored at the White House by President George W. Bush at NCAA Champions Day — only the second bowling team in history to meet a sitting president.
UMES launched its pharmacy program in 2010 — the seed of what would become the School of Pharmacy and Health Professions — and added a graduate school. The same year, alumni noticed that UMES was the lone university among the 11 competing at the MEAC basketball tournament without a pep band. Led by alumni Delphine Lee (Class of '70) and Jesse Williams (Class of '62), the UMES family raised roughly $75,000 toward a $100,000 goal to re-establish the band. The 30-piece Thunderin' Hawks Pep Band debuted at Hawk Hysteria on October 15, 2010, under director Simba Leonard, and led the homecoming parade the following spring.
The Lady Hawks won the 2011 NCAA Women's Bowling Championship at Skore Lanes in Taylor, Michigan, rebounding from a 2–1 deficit to beat Vanderbilt 4–2, with tournament MVP Kristina Frahm and Maria Rodriguez earning All-Tournament honors. A week later they beat Lindenwood to claim the USBC Intercollegiate Team Championship — becoming the first program in collegiate bowling history to win both national titles in the same year. UMES was also the first HBCU to own two Division I NCAA titles. The same school year, the women's volleyball team won its first MEAC championship in school history, beating Florida A&M to earn the program's first NCAA Tournament berth.
UMES beat Fairleigh Dickinson 4–2 in the championship finals in Wickliffe, Ohio — aired live on ESPNU — to become the first school to win back-to-back NCAA Women's Bowling Championships since 2004/2005. T'nia Falbo was named the tournament's Most Outstanding Performer. The third NCAA title tied UMES with Nebraska for the most in the sport. Head coach Kristina Frahm became the first person ever to win the championship as a player and as a head coach — and UMES the only program to win titles under different head coaches. That spring, sophomore Megan Buja also won the NCAA's Elite 89 Award for the highest GPA of any bowler at the championship — a 4.0 in human ecology and dietetics.
The Hawks won the 2013 USBC Collegiate National Championship, their fifth national title overall and second ITC crown. Off the lanes, a university task force delivered its verdict on the long-simmering question of reinstating football: on February 28, 2013, UMES decided to continue without football, noting the topic 'may be revisited' in five years. President Juliette Bell called the football legacy 'unforgettable' — but the math didn't work.
When the newest academic building in more than a decade opened in fall 2015, it housed the engineering, aviation, computer science and technology programs in 163,350 square feet. The $91.5 million complex was the flagship of a campus building boom — UMES is the only accredited college in the nation offering a four-year professional pilot program. A later $1 million gift from Delmarva Power, then the largest corporate gift in school history, funded the Green Collar Initiative for sustainable-workforce training, announced at the engineering and aviation complex.
Dr. Heidi M. Anderson assumed the presidency in 2018, succeeding Dr. Juliette B. Bell (2012–2018), with Dr. Mortimer Neufville having served as interim president in 2011–2012. Anderson inherited a school on an upward arc — enrollment growth, new programs, and a rising national profile. In 2019 lawmakers greenlit the long-planned School of Pharmacy and Health Professions building, a nearly $90 million project to consolidate pharmacy programs then scattered across six buildings.
In 2020, philanthropist MacKenzie Scott donated $20 million to UMES — among the largest gifts in the school's history to that point. Five years later, in October 2025, she donated another $38 million — the largest single gift in the university's history. The back-to-back windfalls gave the 1890 land-grant school a financial foundation its founders could scarcely have imagined.
Celebrating 140 years since the 1886 founding, UMES earned a historic U.S. News & World Report ranking for 2026–27: 13th overall among 78 HBCUs and among the top six public HBCUs in the nation, nine spots higher than the prior year. And football — gone since 1979 — returned in a new form: UMES announced women's flag football beginning competition in the 2026–27 athletic year, bringing NCAA Division I sponsorship to 16 sports. A student-led campus placemaking initiative the same year set out to remake the spaces where Hawks gather.
Without football, UMES's rivalries play out on the basketball court and the volleyball floor. Delaware State — the nearest MEAC neighbor, just up Delmarva — is the geographic rival; Coppin State and Morgan State complete the Maryland MEAC triangle. The men's basketball series with Coppin State has been lopsided — Coppin led 60-20 as of 2019 — which only sharpens the Hawks' appetite whenever the Eagles come to the Hytche Center. Volleyball added real stakes in the 2010s, when UMES built the nation's longest home winning streak and twice beat Florida A&M for MEAC titles while fending off Delaware State at Hawk Hysteria.
In women's bowling, UMES's rivals are the sport's blue bloods. Vanderbilt beat the Hawks 4-3 in the 2007 national final, then lost to UMES 4-2 in the 2011 final at Skore Lanes in Taylor, Michigan. Nebraska — the only other program to win both an NCAA and a USBC collegiate title — was tied with UMES at three NCAA championships apiece after the Hawks' 2012 back-to-back. And Fairleigh Dickinson fell to UMES 4-2 in the 2012 final in Wickliffe, Ohio, on live ESPNU television. Every one of those programs measures itself against the Lady Hawks.
🥁 Thunderin' Hawks Pep Band · since 2010
UMES has no traditional marching band — with no football team since 1979, the school's musical identity on game day is the Thunderin' Hawks Pep Band. It exists because alumni noticed UMES was the only MEAC school without a pep band at the 2010 conference tournament and raised roughly $75,000 to start one. The band plays basketball games, Hawk Hysteria, homecoming parades and campus rallies, including the 2011 championship rally for the national-title bowling team.
The band's first director; led the 30-piece group's debut at Hawk Hysteria on October 15, 2010, and the homecoming parade the following spring.
Directed the band at the 2013 American Cancer Society Relay for Life celebration, where the Thunderin' Hawks were acknowledged for their opening performance.
Director of bands and director of music programs; a former U.S. Marine and trombonist who toured with the Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Cab Calloway and Lionel Hampton orchestras. In 2017 he was selected to direct the 369th Experience Band, retracing the WWI-era Harlem Hellfighters band's performances in New York and Paris.
UMES's Greek scene is documented but in flux. The university catalog's Greek organization list names eight NPHC organizations (all but Kappa Alpha Psi), while Kappa Alpha Psi's own chapter directory lists an active Pi Nu chapter established at UMES in 2008 — the successor to the Gamma Xi chapter, chartered April 2, 1949 at Maryland State College, that closed in 1998. The AKA situation is the mirror image: AKA's Alpha Omicron (Second) chapter, chartered 1951, is listed inactive in the sorority's directory. Individual chapter names for the other organizations could not be verified from available sources.
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Built under President Dolores Spikes, the $32 million Student Services Center became the architectural face of the modern campus — its distinctive rotunda dome inspired the university's logo. The campus historic district around it was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2005.
During the Spikes era the state constructed a new campus access road connecting U.S. Route 13 to a reconfigured perimeter road around campus, fixing the way visitors and students actually reach Princess Anne's campus.
On September 16, 2005, the campus historic district — including the Student Services Center area, with buildings in Colonial Revival and Classical Revival styles — was added to the National Register of Historic Places (reference 05001021). The original Olney farmhouse dated to 1798.
One of four major buildings opened during President Thelma Thompson's nine years (2002–2011), giving the land-grant school's food science program a dedicated research home.
Named in honor of Salisbury businessman Richard F. Hazel, this Thompson-era building added academic space during the 2000s expansion.
Built on eight acres near Assateague Island in neighboring Worcester County, extending UMES research onto the coast — fitting for a school whose mission includes stewardship of land and sea.
UMES acquired a 365-acre tract of farmland and forest, pushing total campus holdings past 1,100 acres, with the purchase funded through the USDA land-grant extension program.
The 163,350-square-foot complex — the first new classroom space in a decade — houses aviation, engineering, computer science, mathematics and telecommunications. UMES is the only accredited college in the nation offering a four-year professional pilot program.
A new AgREC facility rose to replace a large commercial greenhouse partially destroyed by fire in November 2011 and rendered unusable, keeping the 385-acre research farm's teaching and laboratory work on modern footing.
The 2019 Maryland General Assembly allocated $10 million to start construction on a three-story building for the School of Pharmacy and Health Professions, consolidating programs then scattered across six buildings onto one site — the demolished greenhouse grounds across from the Engineering & Aviation Science Complex. Gov. Larry Hogan backed the project from 2016 on.
Students and the Office of Student Experience launched a campus transformation initiative using the 'Power of 10' mapping method — 254 students, staff and faculty surveyed — targeting lighting, seating, landscaping and outdoor gathering spaces to make the campus feel alive rather than, as students put it, 'frozen in time.'
Jesse T. Williams Sr. (Class of '62), a 6-foot-8 center on the 1959-60 NAIA tournament team, became the school's most visible athletic benefactor — fundraising for facility upgrades, helping create the Thunderin' Hawks Pep Band, and lending his name to the Homecoming Hawk Award and the dedicated basketball court (2015). Keith Davidson served as athletic director through the championship years.
President since 2018; led the school to its historic 2026-27 U.S. News HBCU ranking and the $38 million MacKenzie Scott gift.
Served as acting provost in 2019 and spearheaded the years-long lobbying effort for the School of Pharmacy & Health Professions building.
Built the dynasty that won the 2008 and 2011 NCAA titles and took the team to the White House; the Sharon D. Brummell Lanes in Princess Anne are named for her.
2011 tournament MVP as a player, then the first person ever to win an NCAA bowling title as both player and head coach (2012).
The all-time winningest coach of the Maryland State–UMES era; his 1959-60 team reached the NAIA National Tournament.
Led the Hawks to their first MEAC championships in 2011 and 2012 and the program's first NCAA Tournament berths; at one point the nation's longest home winning streak.
UMES feels like a small school with an outsized resume: about three thousand students on a rural 1,138-acre campus fifteen miles from the Chesapeake Bay, with a 385-acre working research farm next door. The student body is roughly 78 percent Black with students from three dozen nations, and more than half are low-income — the school's land-grant mission is personal here. Game nights belong to basketball, volleyball and bowling; the Thunderin' Hawks Pep Band, Diamond Dance Team and cheer squads carry the spirit that a football team once did.