Albin Owings Kuhn, the son of Howard County farmers who rose to become an official of the University of Maryland, College Park, and later helped plan the university system's Baltimore County campus as a founding chancellor, died Wednesday of pneumonia at his Woodbine farm. He was 94.

"Good gracious, we have so much to thank him for. He was a very special man and a giant, and we're standing on the shoulders of that giant," Freeman A. Hrabowski III, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, said Thursday.

"Dr. Kuhn was an exemplary leader because of his vision. He was able to make substantial progress on campus because he had the ability to relate to all kinds of people, faculty, staff, students and the surrounding community," he said.

"He was never pompous or aloof. He was a down-to-earth supporter of the college and was a wonderful friend and inspiration to me over the years," he said.

"Dr. Kuhn was our biggest cheerleader. He believed in us. He'd call me up and tell me how proud he was of our work, and I'd get tears in my eyes," Dr. Hrabowski said.

Dr. Kuhn, who remained proud of his agrarian roots throughout his life, was born in Woodbine in Carroll County and was raised on a 215-acre dairy and general crop farm in Howard County.

After graduating in 1933 from Lisbon High School, he earned a bachelor's degree in agronomy and vocational agriculture in 1938 from the University of Maryland. He remained at Maryland, where he earned a master's degree the next year in agronomy and botany.

Dr. Kuhn was appointed an instructor in agronomy at College Park in 1940, where he was involved with extension work throughout the state.

In 1944, he left Maryland after being commissioned an ensign in the Navy, where he served in the Pacific, training personnel for amphibious landings, and later aboard the attack transport USS Clinton.

After being discharged in 1946, he returned to College Park, where he resumed his academic career and was appointed chair in 1948 of the department of agronomy. He held that position until 1955, when he was named assistant to Wilson H. Elkins, then the college's president.

In 1948, he earned a doctorate in plant genetics and physiology from Maryland and did additional graduate work at the University of Wisconsin.

Dr. Kuhn became university executive vice president in 1958 and vice president of UM's Baltimore campus in 1965.

During his tenure at College Park, he played an instrumental role in expanding the facilities and personnel that saw the campus expand from 10,000 to more than 20,000 students.

He also led the growth and further development of the Baltimore campus, which grew from 8¿ acres to more than 25 acres, with new buildings for the professional schools and what is now the University of Maryland Medical Center.

Perhaps one of Dr. Kuhn's greatest challenges, which became his lasting legacy, was the transformation in the early 1960s of 476 acres of farmland near Catonsville into what is today's University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

He worked closely with Rogers, Taliaferro, Kostritsky & Lamb - later known as RTKL - and led the team that planned and built UMBC, which opened its doors in 1966.

"UMBC is the only public university in the state that was started totally from scratch," Dr. Kuhn told The Baltimore Sun in 1982 at the time of his retirement as university executive vice president.

"The University of Maryland at College Park started as a private school, the Maryland Agricultural College, and the University of Maryland at Baltimore started as a private medical school. They were brought together in the 1920s as the University of Maryland," he explained.

"Working on the development of UMBC was the chance of a lifetime - from nearly 500 acres of vegetable farm to a full-scale university," recalled Dr. Kuhn.

So that he wouldn't be far from the work at hand, Dr. Kuhn moved his family in 1965 into a small gray farmhouse that became their residence, his office and eventually a welcome refuge for UMBC students and faculty who came to call. At one time, its enclosed porch became the card catalog center for the university's 20,000-volume library.

As development got under way, Dr. Kuhn had to contend with complaints of oceans of mud at the site and pundits on The Diamondback who referred to the new campus in news stories as "Cat State."

"He took claims of excessive mud personally and bristled at that," Larry Wilt, who is director of UMBC's Albin O. Kuhn Library, said with a laugh.

Joseph N. Tatarewicz, a history professor who has been associated with UMBC for nearly 20 years, is an old friend and admirer.

"Gregarious, yet self-effacing, he took to educational administration almost effortlessly, and by the early 1960s he was the perfect person to lead the development of a new campus, sorely needed due to the baby boomers' entering college," he said.

Dr. Tatarewicz recalled the contentious and tumultuous political environment of the 1960s with which Dr. Kuhn had to contend while trying to get UMBC off the drawing board.

"Dr. Kuhn inspired trust and confidence through all these different worlds," and it "takes a special kind of personal and professional competence," Dr. Tatarewicz said. "In some areas of history, we call these unique individuals the 'system builders.' "

From 1967 until 1971, Dr. Kuhn was chancellor of both UMBC and University of Maryland, Baltimore, and for the next decade was chancellor of UMB.

By the time he returned to College Park in 1980 as executive vice president of the University of Maryland for the second time, the campus in Baltimore had expanded to 38 acres, the size of University Hospital had doubled, and new buildings for the law, dental, pharmacy, medical and social works schools had been erected or were in the process of being built.

Enrollment expanded at the urban campus to nearly 5,000 students.

Dr. Kuhn retired in 1982.

"I think that one of the things I'd point to is that he continued to be engaged at UMBC long after he retired and right up until he passed away," said Dr. Wilt.

Dr Wilt said that Dr. Kuhn was particularly interested in the compilation of UMBC's history and oral history collection.

"He was very supportive of the Friends of the Library and even though he was blind and in a wheelchair, he continued to come to meetings," said Dr. Wilt.

He added that the library that was named for Dr. Kuhn in 1982 occupies the site of the little gray farmhouse where he resided during his UMBC years.

"It seems very fitting that the library is here," he said.

Comfortable surrounded by his university peers or sitting on the back of a tractor listening to his herd of beef cattle, Dr. Kuhn spent his retirement years working on his 220-acre farm in Woodbine with a son, Joseph Albin Kuhn, who lives on the farm.

"His hobby was working on the farm. He loved to farm," said his wife of 15 years, the former Eileen Louise Weller.

In 1975, Dr. Kuhn and Joseph Kuhn built the batten board ranch house from timber cut on the farm; he had lived there for the past 35 years.

Dr. Kuhn told a Baltimore Sun reporter in 1982 that he believed in hard work and a good night's sleep, and when working would dictate his thoughts on problems into a Dictaphone while en route to work.

"A thing that fascinates me is how amazing it is that when morning comes, there are solutions to problems that seemed insoluble the night before," Dr. Kuhn said. "I've never understood that phenomenon. What matters is work, honest fatigue and sleep. The secretaries liked that system."

Plans for a memorial service to be held at UMBC were incomplete Thursday.

Also surviving are three other sons, Albin Owings Kuhn II of Ellicott City, Roger C. Kuhn of Bowie and Philip H. Kuhn of Raymond, Miss.; a daughter, Lois Ellen Kuhn Romeo of Woodbine; 12 grandchildren; and 11 great-grandchildren. His wife of 48 years, the former Elizabeth "Libby" Cissel, died in 1986.