BALTIMORE (WJZ)—The University of Maryland System will soon have a new School of Public Health by joining two campuses.

Mary Bubala has more on the big announcement.

It’s the first visible sign of a new partnership between the University of Maryland, College Park and the University of Maryland, Baltimore.

They’re bringing their public health programs together to share resources.

“Once the process is complete, the University of Maryland School of Public Health will overnight become one of the nation’s leading such schools in terms of the quality of its faculty and students and the volume of its research,” said William Kirwan, University of Maryland chancellor.

With budgetary constraints in mind, Senate President Mike Miller wanted the two campuses to merge, but the Board of Regents approved a partnership instead.

“This is a great first step,” Miller said. “The next step has to be engineering and medicine, computer science and professional schools, public policy and the professional schools. We are making progress, but we have a long way to go,” Miller said.

“It’s a relationship that demands teamwork and collaboration with joint efforts championed and supported at the highest levels in our academic structure, and we expect these changes to have a profound effect on our productivity, on the economy, and on the very fabric of higher education in our state,” said Jay Perman, University of Maryland, Baltimore president.

The first class in the joint program is expected to graduate in 2014.