Thirty-five years ago, the Centre for Traditional Acupuncture, in Columbia, was a small mom-and-pop business locked in legal battles with the state medical board, which wanted the center shut down, and the county sheriff, who wanted the founder in jail for practicing surgery without a license.

Today, that center, one of the state's first acupuncture clinics and now known as the Tai Sophia Institute, operates out of a spacious, two-story brick building on 12 acres in North Laurel. It has some 175 full- and part-time employees, and hopes within a few years to become the first university based in Howard County -- and the first "wellness university" in the country.

Talk about your long, strange trips.

"This is a very exciting time for us, to see how Howard County is supporting us, to see the range of people coming into our programs now, to realize we're valued," said Tai Sophia co-founder Bob Duggan, who has guided the facility through its 35-year history. "We've been building toward this.

"It is clear to all of us here that the United States needs a wellness university," Duggan added. "There is no such thing now. I believe Maryland has the opportunity to be the model for the nation in this."

Tai Sophia for years has been a model for such alternative medical treatments as acupuncture, massage and craniosacral therapy -- in the case of acupuncture, since the facility opened.

But in recent years, the institute has beefed up its offerings, hoping to take its mission to a new level.

Last year, Tai Sophia began offering graduate certificates in Transformative Leadership, Herbal Studies and Medical Herbalism.

This year, it was certified to offer graduate certificates in health coaching and wellness coaching.

The school also has launched an ambitious fundraising drive, hoping to raise $9 million in the next 18 months. With enrollment growing, officials are talking about adding a second building.

New management team

Tai Sophia also has bolstered its top management team in the past couple of years, adding Frank Vitale, formerly chief operating officer of the National Center on Institutions and Alternatives, a Baltimore nonprofit, as chief executive officer, and Judith Broida, a former associate provost at the University of Maryland and associate dean at Johns Hopkins University, as its provost and vice president for academic affairs.

"We needed expertise beyond what we had in-house," Duggan explained. "We were in need of the next level of leadership to manage our growth and expansion."

This flurry of activity is a prelude to what could be the biggest step yet for Tai Sophia: designation as a university.

School officials say the designation would give the school added credibility, better access to grants, more visibility and more and better research opportunities.

"University status gives us a broader platform from which to build," Vitale said.

Broida said the change also could be a useful marketing tool.

"People don't know what an institute is, it's vague," Broida said.

As a university, Tai Sophia would not change its mission of educating students in the "wellness arts." Students looking to major in engineering or sociology would have to look elsewhere.

"We have no aspirations to be a comprehensive university," Broida said. "Our goal is to be a wellness institution."

Nor will the designation come tomorrow: Both Vitale and Broida estimated it would be about six years before Tai Sophia applied for university status, which is granted by the Maryland Higher Education Commission.

Rocky beginnings

Even without the university tag, Tai Sophia has come a long way.

Duggan and his then-wife, Dianne Connelly, who is Tai Sophia's chancellor, studied acupuncture four decades ago in England. In the early 1970s, they moved to Maryland -- attracted, Duggan said, by Columbia founder James Rouse and his vision of building an open, inclusive community, and by the fact that Maryland had just become one of the first three states in the nation to allow acupuncture.

In 1975, the couple opened one of the first acupuncture clinics in the state, the Centre for Traditional Acupuncture, in Columbia's American City Building on Wincopin Circle, in a space vacated by Rouse when the Rouse Building opened.

Acceptance was not immediate. Despite the new law, the state medical board decided that the clinic could not operate until more regulations were issued, Duggan said. It took a year or so and an estimated $200,000 in legal fees before the clinic got the state to back off.

"Fortunately, we had good lawyers, but we had to spend a small fortune," Duggan recalled. "Nobody understood what the clinic was. ... People thought we were creating some odd sort of medicine."

On top of that, at one point the county sheriff's office showed up one day looking to arrest the couple for medical malpractice.

"The clinic was just Bob and Dianne at first ... and the sheriff thought they were practicing surgery without a license, because they were breaking the skin," said Sherman Cohn, a lawyer called in to help the clinic and now chairman of the Tai Sophia board.

Cohn recalled that he had to explain to the sheriff's office that acupuncture was legal in Maryland, warn them they would be personally liable if they shut down the clinic, and suggested they consult with a lawyer themselves.

"They did and that was the end of it," Cohn recalled.

People 'very suspicious'

Barbara Lawson, former president and CEO of the Columbia Foundation and now a member of Tai Sophia's board of directors, recalled that people were "very suspicious" when the acupuncture clinic opened in the 1970s.

"Back then, people would look at you like you had two heads when you talked about acupuncture," Lawson recalled.

"But the philosophy of wellness is taking root. In the last 30 years, you have watched it go from this hugely peripheral, suspicious activity to something that is totally embraced. And Tai Sophia has helped create this wave, this change in thinking."

Despite the legal problems, both Connelly and Duggan said the response to their new clinic was generally positive. Within the first year, they said, they had a waiting list for acupuncture sessions.

"At first, a lot of people came here as a last resort," Connelly said, explaining that those patients had tried more traditional treatments for their medical problems without success. "We grew by word of mouth. And that was the way we wanted -- to grow like a plant grows."

The center grew in other ways as well. In 1980, the couple began teaching acupuncture, and six years later was accredited to bestow Master of Acupuncture degrees. New clinics were added, enrollment grew and offerings were further expanded to include master's programs in Herbal Medicine and Applied Healing Arts.

In 2000 the clinic was renamed the Tai Sophia Institute. (Tai is the Chinese word for "great" and Sophia the Greek word for "wisdom.") Two years later, Tai Sophia moved into a new, 32,500-square-foot building -- about 15 times the size of their original Columbia clinic -- on a 12-acre lot on Montpelier Road, just off of Route 29, in North Laurel.

Tai Sophia now has its own library, herb dispensary, meditation garden and herb garden. It has 20 treatment rooms for patients seeking acupuncture, massage, nutritional counseling and craniosacral therapy (manipulation of the spine and skull). It has a network of clinics, including locations in Silver Spring and Baltimore, and, like any budding university, financial aid and admissions offices.

'Quite a vision'

Dr. Brian Berman, director of the Center for Intergrative Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, in Baltimore, described on its Web site as a center "for research, patient care, education and training in integrative medicine" (another term for alternative medicine), said Tai Sophia has developed a good reputation in the state and beyond.

"They're very well-known and respected, both locally and nationally," said Berman. "They're known for high-quality teaching and their community outreach programs."

Dr. Peter Beilenson, Howard County's health officer, has worked with Tai Sophia for years, first as head of Baltimore City's Health Department, where he hired Tai Sophia to provide acupuncture at city drug treatment centers, and now in Howard, where he used the institute to train the "health coaches" the county employs in Healthy Howard, a health care program for the uninsured.

"There's no question Tai Sophia is a good thing for Howard County," Beilenson said. "It's a bit of an economic driver, and also a thought leader in the wellness movement. ... It's on the cutting edge of alternative medicine and the wellness movement.

"Bob Duggan has quite a vision, and he's implemented a lot of it," Beilenson added. "I wouldn't be at all surprised if he succeeds with (designation as) a university."

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