Maryland was something of an act of faith. According to a 1968 University document, “The students were ‘academic risks’ from the outset in the sense that they showed promise but were not performing at a level commensurate with their promise” (Unknown, 1968). According to Dr.Adkins, who was Upward Bound’s first director, the program would “exemplify the University’s function of service.” He also wrote: A phrase that is sometimes used for Upward Bound, ‘a war on talent waste,’ indicates to me that an institution which encompasses the entire universe of knowledge and ideas and the widest possible range in its faculty and student body can be immeasurably enriched, thereby making it possible for disadvantaged students to attend…bring[ing] to the University sources of talent which may otherwise be very well overlooked. This is what Upward Bound is all about (Adkins, 1967).
Instructor and students meet for summer session in the early days of Upward Bound (1966).
The University’s decision to participate in the Upward Bound program represented “a turning point for [the University] in the area of higher education as it relates to the ‘disadvantaged’” (Bostic, 1971). The “war on talent waste” was expanded two years later, in 1968, when the Intensive Educational Development program was made possible by transference of funds from the terminated Pre-College Summer Session program. In 1969, both Upward Bound and IED were included among the “Opportunities for Negroes at the University” iterated by University President Wilson H. Elkins:
In connection with our program to help the disadvantaged, extensive work is being done to implement a proposal to enroll thirty (30) full time students under an extension of Upward Bound. The success of this and similar programs must depend greatly upon the wholehearted support of faculty members since it is they who must give extra time and attention to these students. It is significant perhaps that the University of Maryland was one of the Upward Bound pioneers, beginning in 1966 with one hundred (100) students drawn from both Maryland and the District of Columbia. We have just received a grant to continue the program during the coming summer (Elkins, 1968, p. 3). By 1969, Upward Bound and IED were seen as elements in the University’s effort to integrate “high risk” students, as reported in “A Study in Integration by the Committee on Integration, April 1969” (University System of Maryland, 1969, p. 3). In 1972, it would be reported that the Upward Bound program had grown to approximately 300 students from Maryland and the District of Columbia. In addition, it was reported that the “University’s involvement with the program has extended beyond the mere use of facilities and matching of funds: Faculty and students in the College of Education, Physics, Art and History and the Summer School, Housing and Student Aid Offices have taken active roles in the program” (Office of Academic Affairs, 1972). The Upward Bound program would eventually become “a national model that was used by the Department of Education as a training site for other project directors and new Department of Education staff working with TRIO programs” (Lewis, 2008, p. 6). In just a few years, a major shift had occurred in how the University defined its work in the public 6