Western Maryland College

McDaniel College

Motto	E Tenebris in Lucem Voco (Latin)
Motto in English	I call you out of darkness into light
Type	Private
Established	1867
Endowment	$115,530,000
President	Roger Casey
Administrative staff	103 Full-Time
Students	1,629
Location	Westminster, Maryland, USA
Campus	Suburban 160 acres (64.7 ha) 70 buildings
Athletics	NCAA Division III Centennial
Colors	Green and Gold
Mascot	Green Terror
Website	www.mcdaniel.edu

McDaniel College is a private four-year liberal arts college in Westminster, Maryland, USA, located 30 miles (50 km) northwest of Baltimore. The college also has a satellite campus, McDaniel College Budapest located in Budapest, Hungary. Established in 1867, it was known as Western Maryland College until 2002 when it was renamed McDaniel College in honor of an alumnus who gave a lifetime of service to the college. McDaniel College is accredited by the Commission on Higher Education of the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools and it is one of 40 colleges profiled in the book Colleges That Change Lives (3rd ed., 2006) by Loren Pope.

The college was founded in 1867 as Western Maryland College, and was named for the Western Maryland Railroad because the college's first Board chairman, John Smith of Wakefield, was also the president of the railroad. (Neither the railroad nor the Methodist Protestant Church contributed funds to facilitate the establishment of the college. Some contributions, however, were received from Methodist Protestant laymen, including John Smith.) It had a voluntary fraternal affiliation with the Methodist Protestant (later United Methodist) Church from 1868 until 1974; the adjacent but separate institution, the Westminster Theological Seminary, was a principal site for training Methodist Protestant (later United Methodist) clergy in the Maryland region. The ties with the United Methodist Church were cut over a court case in which Western Maryland and other religiously affiliated schools in Maryland were being challenged over state funding received by the colleges because of their religious ties. The other schools retained their affiliations and won the case.

The college's first building went up in 1866-1867, with an inaugural class of 37 men and women in September 1867. Western Maryland was the first coeducational institution south of the Mason–Dixon line and was among the first in the nation. The school's original charter read that the school would exist: "For the benefit of students without regard to race, religion, color, sex, national or ethnic origin ... without requiring or enforcing any sectarian, racial or civil test, and without discrimination on the basis of sex, national or ethnic origin, nor shall any prejudice be made in the choice of any officer, teacher, or other employee in the said college on account of these factors." However, Western Maryland College was primarily a school without minority race representation until the 1960s.