University officials, responding to complaints about students building bonfires on residential streets in College Park following the basketball team's NCAA Final Four loss to Duke, have renewed efforts to foster positive working relationships with residents, police and elected officials in the city that the university calls home.

Linda Clement, the university's vice president for student affairs, says officials are working both on and off campus to help turn the controversy surrounding the March 31 fires into an opportunity for better community relations. Student leaders have been meeting regularly with faculty and administrators to discuss constructive ways to express the joys and frustrations that come with high-stakes athletic events. More than 1,000 students signed a petition denouncing the fires, which damaged utility lines and threatened some residents. Four university students were among those arrested and charged with misdemeanor offenses stemming from the fires.

The university also has drafted a memorandum of agreement with local law enforcement agencies to better coordinate post-game celebrations and other large student events. Clement says the Final Four fires became "a touchstone for discussion" among faculty, staff and students about how to celebrate in a safe and non-disruptive manner. --DC

Calvert Descendants Aid Kiplin Hall

Calvert descendants present new portrait for Kiplin Hall.

The University of Maryland's most beautiful working home, Kiplin Hall in Yorkshire, England, has gained even more architectural splendor thanks to the charitable contributions of two descendents of George Calvert, the first Lord Baltimore and founder of Maryland.

Cornelia Peyton Calvert Fowler of Annapolis commissioned a 7-by-9 foot portrait of Calvert to hang in Kiplin Hall, while Rosalie Eugenie Stier Calvert Ray donated an antique rug valued at $40,000 for the home's expansive library. The gifts should strengthen ties between the university, the Calvert family and the ancestral mansion, says David Fogle, professor emeritus of architecture at the university and former director of the Kiplin Hall study center.

Calvert built Kiplin Hall more than 350 years ago. The rug and the portrait are both on display in the mansion, where they will remain in perpetuity. The university maintains an ongoing educational program at the study center, which is now leased to the Maryland Historical Society. Maryland Honors students also travel to the home to study English history and culture. --JP

King Cattle: Alumnus Raises Prize-winning Livestock

Alumnus Hoff introduced one of his prizewinning and highly individual Holsteins to the camera.

Carroll County dairy farmer Marlin K. Hoff, AGNR '67, sounded flustered when he answered the phone one day last March for a mid-morning interview. He explained he was behind schedule because he awoke late from an early-morning nap. By 10 a.m., Hoff already had milked 600 cows, a task that takes about five hours, before the rest of the world had poured its first cup of coffee.

Hoff logs 18-hour days on his farm in New Windsor, waking at midnight and working until dusk. On days off, he sleeps in until 6 a.m. He milks more than 600 cows twice daily, at midnight and again at noon, generating 5,500 gallons of milk every 24 hours. Hoff keeps records of every cow's milk production to ensure that each makes enough to earn her keep. Hoff, his wife, Kathy, their two sons and a daughter-in-law manage in total 10 farms consisting of 1,600 acres, 1,400 cattle and 20 employees.

Hoff began preparing for his career 40 years ago, when after graduating Westminster High School, he joined the state's 4-H cattle-judging team and met another budding farmer, Jack King. The two boys aspired to become dairy farmers, and King convinced Hoff to attend the University of Maryland, where they enrolled together as freshmen in 1960. "It is because of him that I went to college. Now, he is a lifelong friend," says Hoff.

Hoff studied dairy production in the College of Agriculture but made an hour-and-a-half trek home each weekend for real-life training at the same family farm where he lives and works today. Hoff says studying agriculture at Maryland and especially working on the university's cattle-judging team, was beneficial because it supplemented his real-life experience working on the family farm. "I don't think that anything can prepare you for your future, what you learn after you learn is more valuable," he says.

Hoff, who holds the honorary Distinguished Cattle Breeder title from the National Dairy Shrine and who has been inducted into the National Dairy Hall of Fame, has a solid reputation among his peers nationally and internationally for breeding top cattle. His bulls annually sire thousands of calves around the world through artificial insemination and in vitro fertilization; they graze in places as far away as Taiwan and Saudi Arabia. Hoff's purebred, registered Holstein bulls sell for as much as $10,000 each.

The New Windsor farm has been in the Hoff family for five generations, since 1869, and Hoff can trace his cattle back almost as far. He says he can name all 1,400 of his cattle and knows which are pregnant, their sires, and the expected delivery dates of new calves. "They are just like people," he says. "Some of them may look alike, but they all have their own pedigree. Not one is the same." --Kristyn Peck

TV Reporter Thrives on Big Story

Noreen Turyn's investigative reporting spurs action in Virginia.

As a student at the university in the late '70s, Noreen Turyn, JOUR '80, hoped to become an architect. Fortunately for her, fate took its course and the deejay of Maryland's student radio station discovered her true calling was journalism, just a few weeks before the deadline to declare a major during her junior year.

Now an award-winning journalist, Turyn anchors at WSET-TV, the ABC affiliate in Lynchburg/Roanoke, Va., where she has worked for 11 years. She hosted "Good Morning Virginia" before being promoted to anchor for the 6 and 11 p.m. news. Although Turyn says "anchoring has some challenges," her true passion is reporting. She says she tolerates her demanding schedule, Monday through Friday from 2:30 to 11:30 p.m., because "it's something new and different every day."

Most recently, Turyn produced an award-winning documentary on Virginia state-sanctioned sterilizations of nearly 800 people between 1920 and 1980 who were deemed "feeble-minded." Her series, titled "The Forbidden Family," told the story of sterilizations at the Lynchburg Colony for the Epileptic and Feeble-minded. The effort was based on Eugenicist law, which called for sterilizing "unfit" members of society. Turyn's series revealed that many of the children sterilized at Lynchburg were simply poor and uneducated, considered troublemakers or unwanted by their parents.

Shortly after the series aired in May 2000, a local activist found a lawmaker willing to seek an apology from the state. Turyn says the Virginia General Assembly initially agreed to issue an apology but feared civil lawsuits seeking monetary compensation. On Feb. 14, the assembly issued a resolution of regret for the state's practice.

Turyn received the Scripps Howard Award for Excellence in Journalism, was honored at the National Press Club on April 6 and won a regional Edward R. Murrow award. "It feels great to tell a story that hits home with people," she says.

Turyn plans to continue reporting and hopes to someday move back to Maryland to be close to her family, which lives in Ellicott City.-- Kristyn Peck