Hi, I’m Bob Infantino, associate dean for
undergraduate education in the College of
Computer, Mathematical, and Natural Sciences 
at the University of Maryland.
Like you, I’m staying at home to help flatten
the curve, as I help our faculty members and
students transition to online teaching and
learning for the rest of this semester.
I know you are dealing with lots of changes
and challenges in your lives as well.
One big challenge is deciding where to go
to college this Fall – which is really hard
when you can’t come to visit our beautiful
campus!
To help you out, I’ll be your virtual host
today as we explore the amazing things our
college has to offer.
You’ll also hear directly from our students
about their individual experiences.
So let’s get started!
The University of Maryland is a STEM university, 
where students studying science and engineering
fields comprise nearly 
half of the student body.
Computer Science and Biological Sciences 
are the two most popular majors on the entire
campus and we have 
a very diverse student population.
We have more women in our computer science major than any other university in the country.
9% of our students are 
first-generation college students.
We are a national leader in graduating 
African-American undergraduates in STEM disciplines.
Our ten departments offer more than 
23 different majors and specializations in 
math, computer
science, the biological sciences, and the
physical sciences.
In addition, we offer 16 minors.
Together, more than 7,500 undergraduates 
are pursuing majors and minors in the College.
Our students are taught and mentored 
by more than 450 faculty members.
We are a very student-focused college.
Your journey will be guided by advisors to
help with your academic and career planning.
We are excited that this Fall we will welcome
 the first freshmen in our new Neuroscience major,
building on the University’s existing strengths in neuroscience research and graduate
education.
Our faculty members continue to explore new and exciting ways in which our academic programs
can evolve to meet new opportunities.
A multidisciplinary major in Immersive Media Design 
will open to freshmen in Fall 2021.
And a new college-wide major in 
data science is currently under development.
Our students learn and study in some beautiful spaces.
Last spring, we opened the Brendan Iribe Center for Computer Science and Engineering
at the front door of our campus.
For those of you planning to major in
 computer science, you will be
inspired by this amazing learning space!
We also make extensive use of the Edward St. John Learning and Teaching Center, which opened
three years ago – and is home to brand-new 
chemistry laboratories and state-of-the-art classrooms.
We want you to take full advantage of the
value added of studying at a research university.
Our students use science to help 
understand and solve big problems.
They are working on issues like 
climate change, human disease and cybersecurity.
And they are working with emerging technologies at the forefront of disciplines like
genomics and health informatics, bioimaging, 
quantum computing, and virtual and augmented reality.
Our students pursue research and 
internship opportunities that are unparalleled,
seizing on the unfair advantage of our location.
Students pursue their interests at the 
National Institutes of Health, NASA Goddard,
the National Institute of Standards and Technology, the
Food and Drug Administration,
the National Security Agency, the Smithsonian, and in non-governmental organizations in health care,
science advocacy, conservation, and many other fields, as well as local companies.
Student activities beyond the classroom are 
abundant –within the college and across the campus.
I’ll share a few highlights.
We welcomed thousands of students from across the nation to our campus this year for
four hackathons, including Technica--
the largest female hackathon in the world.
Students in Atmospheric and Ocean Science 
launched and maintain weather.umd.edu
to broadcast Maryland weather 
on the web, Facebook and Twitter.
Last fall, we offered our first broadcast
meteorology course
taught by a local on-air television meteorologist.
Our math students placed 14th out of 488 teams in the 2019 Putnam Mathematical Competition.
Among the more than 4,600 students who participated, senior Erik Metz ranked 51st.
This past summer, a rocket carried an experiment designed by five CMNS undergraduates
to the International Space Station.
Their project tested bacterial growth under
different microgravity conditions.
Since 2016, a large multidisciplinary team
of students have designed, built and competed in the
SpaceX Hyperloop competition to build prototypes transport pods capable of high-speed human transport.
This year’s team is shooting for speeds
greater than 300 miles per hour.
Our outstanding students are achievers in
national and international contexts.
In 2019, all four UMD nominees for the 
National Goldwater Scholarship were winners.
Over the last decade, UMD’s nominations
have yielded 33 scholarships—the most in the nation,
followed by Stanford with 29.
Goldwater winners have gone on to win other prestigious international scholarships to 
support graduate study.
Senior math and computer science major Tanay Wakhare was one of 15 Churchill Scholarship winners this year.
He will pursue his master’s degree in advanced computer science at the University of Cambridge.
Our 2015 Rhodes Scholar, Fang Cao, completed a masters and Ph.D. at the University of Oxford,
and is now a 2nd year medical student at Harvard.
The University of Maryland ranks 13th in the nation 
for undergraduates receiving 
National Science Foundation fellowships.
Last year’s recipients are enrolled in outstanding 
Ph.D. programs at Harvard, the University of Michigan,
Stanford, Princeton, the University of Texas-Austin, UCLA, Johns Hopkins and here at Maryland.
Three 2019 graduates were named Fulbright Scholars.
A computer science graduate is in Switzerland studying how to secure election systems.
A Biological Sciences/Spanish Language graduate is teaching in the Canary Islands.
And a Biological Sciences graduate is teaching and working on health care education in Vietnam.
We know more than 92% of our 2019 graduates are pursuing further education,
or employed 6 months out after graduation.
31% of our students are continuing their education; 
55% are employed full time, 3% part-time,
3% in volunteer service, 
and the rest haven’t told us.
Many of our students pursue further study
and careers in the health professions.
For medical, dental and graduate school acceptances, the most competitive admission decisions
are made in the spring, 
so that information is beginning to trickle in.
We know that at least 75 of our students 
have been admitted to the 
University of Maryland Medical School in Baltimore,
and our students have been admitted to 
Johns Hopkins, UCLA,
Harvard, University of California San Francisco, Stanford and the other outstanding schools shown on this slide.
For dental school, students have received
acceptances to Harvard, UPenn, Columbia, and
the University of Maryland Baltimore.
Overall, 67% of our students were admitted
to MD programs in 2019,
exceeding the national average by 
26 percentage points.
Our overall admit rate to dental school was 87%, 
exceeding the national average by 37 percentage points.
Students interested in health professions
should visit the link at the end of this talk
to view additional presentations on pre-med, pre-dent and pre-allied health student programs at the University.
Our students work in a wide variety of federal agencies, small businesses, and Fortune 500 companies
in the Maryland-D.C.-Virginia region, 
across the country and around the world.
We are excited that Amazon chose to locate its 
second headquarters nearby in Crystal City, VA.
This location is easily reachable by metro
from our campus,
and will provide new internship and 
employment opportunities for our students.
Anthony Casalena – a 2004 alum, started
the web design/web hosting company 
Squarespace in his dorm room.
It’s most recent valuation was 1.7 billion
dollars.
Clay Siegall, class of 82, was inspired to
find new cancer therapies after his father
was stricken with the disease.
He founded Seattle Genetics, which has 
developed a successful pipeline of 
cancer therapies that are changing lives.
And last, but not least, Brendan Iribe, Michael Antonov and Andrew Reisse.
They met in the dorms here and became 
serial entrepreneurs.
They sold their first gaming company for 
3 million dollars.
They sold their second gaming company to Sony for 
300 million dollars.
Their next venture, which you may have heard of, the virtual reality company Oculus,
was sold to Facebook for 2 billion dollars.
They have shared generously with us by making major investments in our new computer science building,
funding scholarships, and by supporting initiatives in diversity and inclusion in computing.
Our alumni are some of the most dedicated
champions of our current students’ success, and
generously support them through 
mentorship, internship opportunities, 
professional networking, and scholarships.
From the DMV to New York to Silicon Valley
and around the globe,
there are more than 45,000 CMNS Alumni 
who want to help you succeed.
Our students are working to discover new knowledge and to improve the lives of others.
Our students repeatedly tell me – 
MARYLAND TRANSFORMED ME.
But, don’t take my word for it.
Hear it straight from some of our students.
They wish they could meet you in person, 
but since they’re at their homes across the country,
they recorded messages just for you about their experiences here at Maryland.
The decision to go to UMD was a pretty easy one for me.
It made sense geographically both for the
future and as a general stem major.
There’s tons of opportunity whether that
be at NASA or another government agency or
any other research agency nearby.
I know that computer science at Maryland is top ten in the nation and so that was a really
big push for me to come here.
And it checked all the boxes I wanted.
It was a big school, it had a great beautiful
campus feel, close to a city, obviously has
a very good stem program and the professors really care about their students.
As an out of state student, I came onto campus not knowing anybody, but I found out it’s
pretty easy to make friends both through living in the dorms my freshman year I made a lot
of friends just by the people I interacted
with everyday.
Simply saying hi to someone opens up so many doors.
In fact, in my first year in college I ended
up meeting so many of my closest friends and
because of them I was introduced to so many great organizations on campus where I met
so many people with such diverse backgrounds.
The school doesn’t really feel impersonal.
Right away you’re living with other people
who are in the exact same boat as you.
It’s not like you’re the only new kid
no one really knows anyone.
I think the best way to make a big school
seem small is to be involved in student orgs
or your department or whatever opportunities you have.
College is really fun.
You learn a lot of different things about
yourself.
You learn how you work in different relationships with your teachers, your friends and things
like that, but for me I think the biggest
thing I learned is how to be independent.
Time management is key to everything, balancing academics, extracurriculars, work things like
that.
You definitely have to learn time management and time management skills.
I learned it through just experience.
For my toughest classes I think the most important thing was to not fall behind on my studying.
So I really tried to stick to a schedule of
like what I was going to study every day and
then actually be proactive about committing to the schedule.
In my experience, professors really are accessible and approachable whether I’m asking content
questions or career advice or sometimes just even to chat, they’re really there for you
and willing to help.
No one likes to admit that they’re doing
bad in a class but CMNS made it so easy.
There’s a list of tutors for these super
hard classes, there are TAs doing it part-time
on the CMNS website because they know how difficult it is and I had a lot of support
and I ended up being very successful.
One of the coolest experiences I’ve had
as a UMD student was being able to lead an
Alternative Breaks experience to Haiti where we engaged in service learning.
So not only are we learning about community development in that case after disaster, but
also being able to serve and we taught English with local community organizations.
The coolest thing I’ve been a part of at
UMD is student-initiated courses or STICs
and I started out in fall of 18 as a student
facilitator for a course that I designed called
mathematics in classical music in the Math Department.
All science majors can study abroad.
I did two winter abroads—one my sophomore year to Sydney, Australia for three weeks
and one in January to Singapore, Malaysia,
Vietnam and Thailand.
There’s a little bit of everything for everyone
here and I found my places at UMD.
I would describe Maryland students as diverse, driven and passionate.
I think that we’re all extremely passionate
about our school and really proud to be able
to say that we’re Terps and this is something that you can feel all the time, whether you’re
at a sporting event or at Maryland Day, everyone’s just so proud to be wearing their red, black
and gold.
I feel like everyone has interests outside
their major and they’re really passionate
about the work they do not only to get their
degree but also their side hobbies as well.
Having a student body that is passionate and driven and doing things outside of class I
think really lit a flame within me to pursue
those kind of things and see those things
are possible.
We are all Terps!
We love going to soccer games, basketball
games, football games, Maryland Day.
There are so many different activities where you can show your pride, and most importantly,
Go Terps!
We want you to have all the information you need to choose the best college for you.
Visit our virtual folder for more information
about each of our majors.
Our Coordinator of Admissions and Recruitment, Eden Garosi, is also available to answer any
questions you might have.
We want you to join our rich and diverse community.
Our College has trained a Nobel Prize winner, two Congressmen, several university presidents,
distinguished leaders in scientific research,
CEOs and entrepreneurs, the founder of Google,
and thousands of physicians, dentists, lawyers and science-literate citizens.
You could be next.
We hope you will join us as a Science Terp
in the Fall!
Go Terps!
Fight, fight, fight for Maryland,
Honor now her name again,
Push up the score, keep on fighting for more,
For Maryland, GO TERPS!
And we will fight, fight, fight for terrapins,
Keep on fighting 'till we win.
So sing out our song as we go marching along,
To victory!!!
