From cobblestones to red bricks—
Colonel's daughter returns to the American college she began in Germany for UMUC to speak at its 50th commencement

A Munich alumnus created a bronze statue that was dedicated at UMUC headquarters in Adelphi, where it stands today as a tribute to students of MunichCampus.

Not many of us get to deliver the commencement address at a college we were responsible for founding. Claire Schwan visits UMUC's Mannheim campus to do just that.

Imagine being 18 years old and living with your family in Munich, Germany, where your father serves as Southern Area Commander in the U.S. Army. You attend a local university where your studies concentrate almost solely on learning to speak German, as all instruction is offered in that language alone. You are the only American.

Now, consider how you feel when your father, concerned about your educational dilemma, suggests you return to the United States to attend college. What to do?

NOTE TO SELF: APPEAL TO THE GENERAL, YOUR FATHER'S COMMANDING OFFICER, TO BEGIN A COLLEGE IN GERMANY FOR STUDENTS LIKE YOURSELF.

And that's what Claire Swan did.

This year, as "her" college marks its 50th anniversary, Claire Schwan, the daring young co-ed-now grandmother, returns to Germany to speak at its commencement. The UMUC college began in Munich with only 34 students and five faculty members and was intended to last only three years. Once called "the cobblestone campus," efforts are now under way at its relocation in Mannheim to construct a brick courtyard engraved with names of alumni and faculty.

The courtyard and yearlong anniversary celebration will commemorate the college's historic beginning and its success ever since. It is the hope of university administrators that some 18,000 alumni who graduated from the two-year residential campus' locations in Munich, Augsburg, and Mannheim will reconnect with their alma mater. In addition, alumni, students, and faculty will be apprised of the school's first 50 years, and a 50th Anniversary Courtyard of red bricks alumni sponsor will be constructed at the present-day Mannheim campus.

The college has indeed had a somewhat unusual past. It was begun to provide the college-age children of U.S. service members and government employees stationed overseas the opportunity to pursue a college education at an American college without having to return to the United States, so far from their families living abroad. Months earlier, the university had begun a program in Heidelberg to provide college courses to U.S. service members. Since it was being expanded to Munich, the educational program for service members' children would be an extension of that evening program.

In the midst of the Cold War, U.S. citizens abroad - especially those so closely affiliated with the U.S. government - required protection. Schwan recalls that for a time, the McGraw Caserne, where the Munich campus was first located, was surrounded by barbed wire and patrolled by police dogs.

The McGraw Caserne was constructed by the Nazi government as a quartermaster headquarters in the 1930s and subsequently occupied by the U.S. Army. Because of its close affiliation with the U.S. military, the residential campus has always been located in the casernes of U.S. Army bases in Germany. The UMUC campus was relocated twice, first to Augsburg in 1992, then to Mannheim in 1994, during U.S. military drawdowns.

Mary Fiedler, resident dean at the Mannheim campus, says, "Because we have moved campuses and so many of our alumni have not been here [to Mannheim], the brick courtyard will provide our alumni who studied in Munich or Augsburg a physical presence here."

Through the years, the campus provided American students unique opportunities, such as learning to hike and ski in the Bavarian Alps and taking study tours to Paris, London, Berlin, Vienna, and Rome, and their lives were affected by international political events in Europe. But for the most part, students at UMUC's German campus looked and acted like their counterparts at a typical American two-year liberal arts college in the United States.

The college's enrollment, once reaching a record of 600 students, fluctuated over the years with the numbers of U.S. military stationed in Europe. Fewer than 200 students attend the Mannheim campus today, and the student body there now includes government personnel. Graduates with a 3.0 or better grade-point average are eligible for scholarships to attend the UMUC four-year campus at Schwäbisch Gmünd, near Stuttgart, Germany, that is not affiliated with the U.S. military.

The UMUC program for U.S. service members that was the impetus for Claire Schwan's suggestion to her father's general has resulted in the delivery of UMUC courses to U.S. military in 29 countries today. Last year, 47,000 U.S. service members were UMUC students overseas.

After graduating UMUC's Munich college, Claire Schwan continued her education at the University of Munich before returning to the United States in 1953 when her father passed away. Stateside, she transferred credits to the University of Maryland, College Park, and earned a bachelor of science degree there. She married her high school sweetheart, enjoyed a career as an audiology researcher and teacher of deaf children, and had three children of her own. She now resides with her husband, Chuck, in Corona del Mar, Calif., and awaits the birth of her third grandchild.