Page 32 - 2016-2018 Graduate Catalog (Revised)

HISTORY

Bowie State University is an outgrowth of a school opened in
Baltimore, Md. by the Baltimore Association for the Moral and
Educational Improvement of Colored People. The association was
organized in 1864 to engage in its self-appointed mission of offering
educational opportunities that the state failed to provide for its Black
citizens. Offering courses in the elements of education, the school
opened on January 9, 1865 in the African Baptist Church on the corner
of Calvert and Saratoga streets. Courses in normal education to train
teachers were added at the same location in 1866.

The facility was woefully inadequate to house both schools. In 1867,
with the aid of the Freedmen’s Bureau, the Quakers of England and
others, the Baltimore Association purchased and renovated the Old
Friends Meeting House at the corner of Saratoga and Courtland
streets for the Baltimore Normal School.

On April 8, 1908, at the request of the Baltimore Normal School Board,
the state legislature authorized its Board of Education to assume
control of the school. The same law re-designated the institution as
Normal School No.3. It was relocated on a 187-acre tract in Prince
George’s County in 1911, and by 1914 it was known as the Maryland
Normal and Industrial School at Bowie.

A two-year professional curriculum in teacher education started in
1925 and was later expanded to a three-year program in 1931. In
1935, a four-year program to train elementary school teachers began,
and the school was renamed Maryland State Teachers College at
Bowie. In 1951 the college expanded its program to train teachers for
junior high schools. Ten years later, a teacher-training program for
secondary education was instituted. In 1963, a liberal arts program
was started, and the institution’s name was changed to Bowie State
College.

In 1970, Bowie State College was authorized to grant its first graduate
degree, the Master of Education. A significant milestone in the
development of graduate studies was achieved with the Board of
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