The chief executive officer of UMD is Chancellor Dr. Lendley C. Black. Black took over the position on August 1, 2010, after the Chancellor of 15 years, Kathryn A. Martin, retired.

Although the University of Minnesota Duluth didn’t officially make its appearance until 1947, plans to make a strong college in the Duluth area started in the 1800s. The state legislature made blueprints and gathered supplies to build a teaching school for women and in 1895 they announced the starting of the Duluth Normal School. In 1896, the City of Duluth donated 6 acres (24,000 m2) of land to serve as a foundation for the Duluth Normal School, and the state legislature donated an additional $5,000 to build the school. The main building of the Duluth Normal School cost a total of $75,000 but these funds were not available until 1900. In February 1901, a large fire caused extensive damage to the school leaving only a couple of walls and doorways standing. Although money had been lost in the creation of the Duluth Normal School, the legislature decided to rebuild.

After the school had been rebuilt, many new additions were made, including new faculty and a new president. In April 1901, Eugene W. Bohannon was appointed president of the Duluth Normal School. In 1902, the school opened for business. Women came to the school to be trained for a highly sought-after degree in education. By 1903, seven women received their diplomas from Duluth Normal School. In 1906, the first ladies dormitories were established and opened, costing the school around $35,000 to build. Living on campus was much cheaper and much easier for everyone. Throughout the next few years, more dormitories, two new wings, and an auditorium were added to the school. By the time these additions were finished, tuition was increased and requirements, such as having a high school diploma, were put in place in order to apply to the school.

In 1921, the Duluth Normal School was renamed to the Duluth State Teachers College, also known as DSTC. Shortly after the renaming, bachelor’s degrees and four-year degree programs were added to the school. In 1929 men began to come to the DSTC, and along with them, the first sports teams including hockey, football, and basketball. All of these generated money for the school, and attracted many more students to the school over the years. By 1937, people were fighting to make DSTC a University of Minnesota branch to increase funding and the overall reputation of the school. It was not until 1947 the DSTC became part of the University of Minnesota system and was again renamed, this time to the University of Minnesota Duluth, or UMD.

Today, the UMD campus consists of more than 50 buildings on 244 acres (98.7 hectares) overlooking Lake Superior. Most UMD buildings are connected by concourses or hallways. UMD is also home to the Tweed Museum of Art, the Marshall W. Alworth Planetarium, Weber Music Hall, and the Marshall Performing Arts Center. Other UMD facilities include the Research and Field Studies Center, Glensheen Historic Estate, the Lower Campus (Minnesota Sea Grant, the Large Lakes Observatory), and the Natural Resources Research Institute.

UMD has experienced a revamping of student amenities and subsidized research facilities over the past seven years, beginning in 2000 with the completion of a new library. Additional buildings built since 2000 include the Weber Music Hall, Swenson Science Building, Sports and Health Center addition, and the new Labovitz School of Business. With the construction of these new buildings comes a plethora of new art on campus. All new public building projects in Minnesota must comply with the state's “One Percent for Art” law, passed by the State Legislature in 1984, which mandates that all such projects in Minnesota costing over $500,000 must devote at least 1% of their total construction budget towards incorporating public art into these building's public spaces. A little over 1% of the library's $28 million construction costs went toward the purchase and installation of a glass sculpture by Dale Chihuly that hangs from the ceiling of the two-story library lobby. 2005 saw the completion of the Swenson Science Building, a new student dining facility and a revamped UMD themed gift shop as well as the replacement of the famed coffee cart with the Northern Shores Coffee Shop. An 89-foot (27 m) high outdoor sculpture adjacent to the Swenson Science Building makes reference to elements of Duluth's surrounding native American Ojibwe culture. The sculpture was designed by John David Mooney and is called "Wild Ricing Moon," and represents the traditional wild rice harvest. "Wild Ricing Moon" was completed on June 2, 2006.

The University of Minnesota has a graduate program in physics which offers only a Master's degree.

The colleges and schools at the University of Minnesota Duluth are:

The Weber Music hall, built in 2002 and designed by architect César Pelli, is considered the "gem" of UMD. The state of the art hall has amazing acoustics and can seat 350 people.

In the 1920s and early 1930s, George P. Tweed and his wife Alice began collecting European and American paintings from the 19th and early 20th century. After Mr. Tweed's death in 1946, Mrs. Tweed saw the potential educational resource that her husband's collection possessed for the community. In 1958 she helped fund what is today the University of Minnesota Duluth's Tweed Museum of Art. Today the museum holds over 5,000 works of art.