WASHINGTON — The University of Maryland in College Park will celebrate Maryland Day on Saturday with an open house featuring hundreds of family-friendly interactive events.
From a climbing wall and mock crime scenes to month-old race horses, there’s plenty to see and do.
“This is our chance to show the community why we’re a top-20 research institution in the nation. We’re excelling in all these different fields — we have a variety of different colleges,” said University of Maryland College Park senior communications associate Graham Binder.
The agricultural school was the founding college of the University of Maryland, which is why there’s a farm on campus.
“With all [the] types of animals you can possibly imagine. Cows, horses — we breed horses for racing; a lot of people don’t know that,” Binder said.
There’s also a cow with a hole in its side.
“It’s a fistulated cow, so you can put your fist into the cow and you can feel around inside of the cow’s organs,” Binder said. “It’s for science; it doesn’t hurt the cow.”
Other activities include:
- The criminology tent lays out a crime scene for you to solve by evaluating evidence with criminologists and forensic scientists;
- The cooking stage features meals prepared with produce and meat grown by the agricultural school.
- The Do Good Challenge area allows you to package meals for hungry and underserved members of the community.
- At the farm you can see goats, pigs, chickens, and month-old foals.
- At the Maryland Dairy, you can see cows and buy Terrapin-produced ice cream.
The signature ice cream flavor created to debut at the 2016 Maryland Day honors new football coach D.J. Durkin. “Terpin’ Durkin Crunch” has a Tahitian vanilla bean base with dark chocolate-covered pretzels, shaved bittersweet chocolate and a caramel swirl.
There’s plenty of parking on campus, and activities run from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
