Albin Owings Kuhn
Albin Owings Kuhn was the first chancellor of UMBC. A University of Maryland graduate (B.S., M.S., Ph.D.) he had been professor of agronomy and head of the agronomy department at what is now the University of Maryland, College Park, and executive vice president of the University of Maryland, which included campuses in College Park, downtown Baltimore, and the Eastern Shore.
In 1965, Kuhn was given the responsibility for developing the newest member of the University of Maryland System. He and his family moved on to the campus grounds. Their small gray house became the command center - residence, office, architects' and builders' outpost, student and faculty way station. Its porch was the catalog center for the library's nascent 20,000 volume collection. (The building was later demolished to make way for library construction.)
Kuhn was officially chancellor of both UMBC and UMAB, a position he held from 1967 until the University's second commencement in 1971. At that point, as each campus was acquiring individual leadership, he left UMBC to serve as chancellor of UMAB. As a retrospective in the 25th anniversary commemorative issue of UMBC Review noted, "It is remarkable to think that Kuhn built UMBC, but worked only one half day every day to do it."