Since its founding, St. Mary's has been state-sponsored, publicly funded, administered by an independent Board of Trustees, actively non-sectarian, and devoted to providing an affordable liberal arts education. In 1840, the Maryland legislature authorized a lottery to finance the construction of a "female seminary" (girls' boarding school) in St. Mary's City; the school was incorporated by an act of legislation in 1846. In 1927, St. Mary's became Maryland's first junior college, and a 1964 name change to St. Mary's College of Maryland reflected the school's evolution into a four-year baccalaureate college. The state General Assembly designated the school Maryland's public honors college in 1992; the state also granted the College an institutional status designed to assure stable public funding.