and
engineers representing Montgomery County's technology and
federal research communities. The
survey revealed a high level of interest in graduate
courses and noncredit programs in computer
science, electrical engineering, public health and
technical management.

Gilchrist and then university President Steven Muller,
who also served on the Montgomery
County Commission on Higher Education in Science and
Technology, and who attended the event, later
worked together to bring about an agreement whereby 36
acres of land, adequate public facilities
(including needed easements and road expansion) and $9.2
million were given to JHU to start the
campus. As part of the agreement, the university would
offer graduate and noncredit programs that
would help meet the needs of students and businesses in
suburban Maryland's biotechnology and
information technology corridor.

The university broke ground on the campus in 1986, and
it officially opened as the JHU
Montgomery County Center in fall 1988 with 892 students
takingclasses in its 49,000-square-foot
building, modeled after the Kossiakoff Center at the
Applied Physics Laboratory. In April 2006, this
building was named Charles W. Gilchrist Hall to honor the
county executive's role in the creation of
the Shady Grove Life Sciences Center, which includes the
Montgomery County Campus.

During Roulhac's part of the "storytelling," he noted
Muller's leadership in recognizing the
importance of an early Johns Hopkins presence and
involvement in a rapidly evolving and expanding
Montgomery County and I-270 high-technology corridor.

A second 49,000-square-foot building opened in 2000.
In summer 2004, the campus welcomed
115,000-square-foot Building III, which, in addition to
providing much-needed classroom and research
space for the growing campus, included space to be leased
to non-JHU tenants — primarily science- and
technology-related companies, agencies or organizations.
Subsequently, the campus has opened the
JHU Microscopy Center for live cell imaging.

MCC today serves 4,500 full- and part-time