Located on 71 acres (0.29 km2) on the west side of downtown Baltimore, it is part of the University System of Maryland.

In 1812, it was rechartered as the University of Maryland and given the authority to establish additional faculties in law, divinity, and arts and sciences.

[3] Founded in 1840 as the Baltimore College of Dental Surgery (BCDS), it was chartered by an act of the Maryland General Assembly.

The new building, located adjacent to the old one on Baltimore Street, offers some of the newest facilities and technologies in the world for education and patient care.

[20] The law school moved to a new building of English Tudor Revival architecture replacing its earlier modernistic structure on the same site at the northwest corner of West Baltimore and North Paca Streets in 2002, adjacent to the site to the north of the old Westminster Presbyterian Church and old Western Burying Grounds facing West Fayette and North Greene Streets (first laid out in 1787, on which the later church was built on top of resting on brick arched piers in 1852), the cemetery where the famous poet and writer Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849) is buried.

The former restored church building, now known as Westminster Hall is used for campus events and lectures and is often requested for wedding and other social ceremonies.

[22] The current Dean of the School of Law is Renée Hutchins, a leading expert on the Fourth Amendment and criminal appellate practice.

[citation needed] The campus includes Davidge Hall, designed by Robert Cary Long, Sr. in the style of the Pantheon in Rome, which was built in 1812 at the northeast corner of West Lombard and South Greene Streets, on the west side of downtown Baltimore, and is the oldest building in continuous use for medical education in the Hemisphere.

[27] In a 2011 article in Forbes magazine, Steven Salzberg criticized the school's inclusion of pseudoscientific subjects such as homeopathy in the curriculum.

[30] In the 2015 edition of U.S. News & World Report[update] magazine, the University of Maryland School of Nursing was ranked 6th nationally.

The UMSON building, which opened in November 1998, shares an urban 32-acre (130,000 m2) campus on the west side of downtown Baltimore with five nearby professional schools — Dentistry, Law, Medicine, Pharmacy and Social Work — as well as the University of Maryland Medical System (formerly University of Maryland Hospital) and the U.S. Veterans Affairs Medical Center.

To provide clinical programs for students, UMSON maintains affiliations with more than 300 hospitals and health care agencies throughout Maryland.

UMB's Health Sciences & Human Services Library (HS/HSL) was founded in 1813 from the collection of Doctor John Crawford, a former British naval surgeon.

There is relatively little confusion resulting from the shared name because the University of Maryland, College Park, offers largely research-oriented graduate programs and houses fewer professional schools.

By law and tradition, each school is entitled to use the "University of Maryland" name in recognition of their shared history.

This 10-acre (40,000 m2) project, known as BioPark, created ten new buildings containing a total of 1,200,000 square feet (110,000 m2) of classroom, lab, and office space.

[41] In addition, University of Maryland Medical System cleared a downtown site for the construction of a $329 million ambulatory care center.

The Orange Route of the free Charm City Circulator provides service to both the BioPark and through the UMB campus to the Inner Harbor and points east.

The shuttle runs 3 routes from the university to West Baltimore (the BioPark center), Federal Hill, and Mount Vernon.

[50] The department is a leader in homeless outreach and crisis intervention, working with the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD) to redirect low-level drug offenders into treatment.

[51] In Fall 2021, student interns from the School of Social Work will partner with the UMB Police Department to provide additional resources to vulnerable populations.