Here is the University's heritage - more than two centuries of striving for a state university... Charles Calvert's success in creating an agricultural college, its struggles during the Civil War, its evolution into a tuition-free people's college, and its growth into a University. This is the story of flamboyant Curley Byrd and football teams that won national championships; the story of scholarly Wilson Elkins who built excellence in the classrooms; and the story of John Toll, Brit Kirwan, and Dan Mote who created an engine of the economy that reached far beyond the campus, and who elevated the University into it present day elite status.