MSCHE Pillars of Change
MSCHE Pillars of Change
Episode 6 - Dr. Freeman A. Hrabowski, III, President of University of Maryland, Baltimore County
For the past three decades, University of Maryland, Baltimore County has become synonymous with Dr. Freeman A. Hrabowski, III. He is nationally celebrated for his results-driven commitment to inclusive excellence, collaborative approach to leadership, and mentorship that pairs high expectations with strong support. In this episode of the MSCHE Pillars of Change Podcast, Dr. Katherine Conway-Turner, MSCHE Vice-Chair and President of Buffalo State College, explores the impact Dr. Hrabowski has had on his students, faculty, and staff in shaping conversations surrounding diversity, equity, and inclusion issues as well as striving to meet the challenges of society . UMBC's model of distributed leadership brings a variety of voices to the table to help move campus discussions forward by incorporating self-reflection.
Welcome to the Pillars of Change podcasts presented by Middle States Commission on Higher Education. I'm Dr. Kate Conway Turner, president of Buffalo State College, and a member of the MSCHE Executive Committee. I would like to thank you for joining me for the Commission's continuing series of broadcast, focusing on the topics of diversity, equity, and inclusion. I'm especially pleased to take another turn in the interview chair. As I introduced University of Maryland Baltimore County president Dr. Freeman Hrabowski. Before I do that, I want to remind our listeners that Middle States Commission on Higher Education, holds in an important voice and space within the higher education community. This broadcast series spotlights highly effective institutional practices that have made a difference in the lives of our students through diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives. Today, I'd like to welcome. UMBC's Dr. Freeman Hrabowski. For the past three decades, UMBC has become synonymous with Dr. Freeman Hrabowski. He is nationally celebrated for his results driven commitment to include of excellence, collaborative approach to leadership and mentorship that pairs high expectations with strong support. During president Hrabowski's tenure UMBC has ascended to the national rankings. Over the last decade, UMBC has increased it six year graduation rate for full-time freshman from 55.7% percent to 69.2%. And UMBC has become known for welcoming and supporting transfer students, including a large number of first generation college students. And while UMBC made basketball history and 2018 as the first number 16 seat to beat a number one seat in the NCAA men's tournament, I suspect that being the reigning national mock trial champion and winning or time for first pace, 10 times at the Pan-American inter collegiate team chess championship may be celebrated by Dr. Hrabowski a little bit more. What is clear is that as he announces retirement from UMBC effected the end of 2122 academic year, Dr. Hrabowski has made a lasting impact, not just at UMBC, but on higher education. And it's been wonderful to experience from afar the arc of your leadership at UMBC. Welcome Dr. Freeman Hrabowski,
Freeman Hrabowski:Thank so much. And I I'm old enough that I tell people often unless use first names, Kate and I'm Freeman, of course, and of course, Freeman, of course. And I wan to start by congratulating you in your career. I I've observed you from afar for some time, know that you are Marylander in and for a while, as provost have had a success seven years there in Buffalo, and these days when you can talk about making it through seven years as a president, it's a big deal. It really is.<laugh>, we're trying to show that stability, you know what I mean, in leadership, in different places. So thank you delighted to be here.
Katherine Conway-Turner:Well, thank you so much for saying that. And, and certainly I can remember meeting you many years ago and following your career and connecting with you many times. So it's great to have this conversation. So let's let us get started. Yes. Um, DEI has taken on a new level of importance in our country after the racial unrest in the US and globally after the murder of George Floyd and the massive demonstations protesting p olice brutality against black Americans and condemning the systemic racism we've been working against for s o, so many decades. Sure. So we c ould begin by, you know, what is your sense of race, diversity, a nd inclusion before the acts of brutality were widely covered during the spring and summer of 2 020? And as we sit in 2022, what is your sense of race, d iversity, a nd inclusion, and has it shifted?
Freeman Hrabowski:Great question. And I've been talking about this with colleagues, uh, in many places. Let me start by saying that I compare this period, this period of 2015, 16, all the way up to 21, to what we had with George Floyd, to what I experienced as a child in Birmingham, in the sixties, and having a chance to participate in the children's March with Dr. King and going to jail and all of that. And, and one of the points I make to students is that the civil rights movement was highly, uh, visible in the sixties because of the, the, the marches and the march on Washington and the bombing of the church and all of that. And then the legislation and people were saying, oh, for the first time, somehow these things are coming to light. Well, for many of us, well before the 1960s, mm-hmm<affirmative>, we knew we had these challenges all the way back to the 1860s. And we can talk about that, but I say the, that to say this, that this period we're going through right now has light shining on the issues that as you said, have been with us for a long time, the notion of structural racism, we've had reports from the national academy of sciences, talking about criminal justice and structural racism for years. Uh, it's just that when to become very, um, protest oriented and we have people in the streets, then they become breaking news and the media will begin to cover them more. And we in universities and community colleges are microcosms of the larger society. And so they come to the front all of a sudden, because before this last few years, in past few years, uh, you heard a lot of people saying, well, race doesn't really matter that it's all about income. And while we know that we have to work on poor children and low income students, uh, and we know that the largest proportion of poor children are actually white. Quite frankly, we still have to look at the factor of race, uh, as we look at all of the race in which diversity should be considered. And so where do I see us today? I see several things. Number one, yes, it is true that black lives matter. And there's a reason people talk about that. It is that we've had such a difficult way to go in this country for hundreds of years. That's not emotion. That's not an opinion. It is the history of slavery and where we are today and the results of that. And without people appreciating history, it's very hard to understand where we are or where we have to go. At the same time though. I like to use the concept of, of the genius of the, and versus the tyranny of the awe and that I wish I invented the idea it's from Jim Collins in one of his books, but it's the notion that yes, we want to talk about African Americans and we need to talk about the Latinx population. And we need to talk about LGBTQ and people from, uh, a variety of backgrounds and religion and all those things. And so it's really important to look at how we juggle all these things in many ways at one time, because when you put out something about one group others want to say, what about us? What about us? And it's a fair question. It really is. So we are in that position right now, uh, on our campus of determining how we discuss inches of gender title IX of racism, of the challenges of first generation college. And we have to put all of those on the table and have those conversations. I will say this when the protests occur in the streets of our country, campuses spend even more time figuring out what's going on because we are all concerned about the protests that start to happen on our campuses. The challenge we face is to not wait until the next protest, but to make sure we are doing the right things for the right reasons every day. And for my campus for UMBC. And by the way, I can't imagine I've been talking this long, and I haven't said anything about my beloved UMBC<laugh>, you know, we presidents have to talk about our campuses. Absolutely. You know, and, but I will say something that's very controversial. Um, when you see black presidents of universities, people immediately assume they are primarily black. They just do, because they're not accustomed to seeing African American presidents at institutions that are multicultural, large numbers of whites, whatever. And so I'm always having to explain to people that UMBC was founded at a time in the sixties when, um, most people in our state were either going to a, an H B, C U, wonderful Morgan or UMES Maryland State at that time, or Bowie State, uh, or Coppin, or they were going to one of the predominantly white schools like College Park or Towson and others now at Salisbury, Frostburg, all wonderful institutions. Well, we were the first place that said students of all races could come to us. So from the beginning, we had this diversity, though it was predominantly white. Today, we are a minority serving institution. Um, and that may means that. And, but the reason we're minority serving surprises people is because of our Asian population. We are over 25% of Asian backgrounds, heavily Chinese and Indian and others. Um, primarily students whose parents came from those places. 60% of our students have at least one parent from another country. And because of this corridor, the Baltimore, Washington corridor, and kids who come from New York in those places. And, but I tell you that because we've got a very strong black population, we have about 2000 kids. We have 14,000 students in general. And, uh, of that 14,000, uh, approximately 11,000 undergrad, approximately 3000, not quite three are graduate students. And in that population about 40% are white, another percentage will be from other countries. Uh, and, um, literally we are talking about a very diverse place where that looks like the Plaza nations at the UN when you walk across the campus. So, so, and we like to say, we look like what America is becoming, and that, that's the exciting part about that. But now what does that mean? That means that we have to pay special attention to every one of those groups. My Muslim students have challenges we have to deal with. My LGBTQ students. And at the same time, as you would imagine, people want to know how are black students doing when you can. So that's a overview, that's the context in which we are talking today. I'm gonna stop there so that, cause I could, you know, presidents can go on and on, but go ahead and ask this question.
Katherine Conway-Turner:OK. Absolutely. Well, you know, I'm, I'm really taken understanding more the, um, diversity within your campus with DC and, and how you have these various sectors of diversity on campus. Yeah. So I'm wondering, how does that frame the conversations on campus? Because it's not just a black, white thing, right? It's not just African American students and white students that you have extremely diverse campus. Yeah. So how does that change or, or modify the discussions that current around issues of race and diversity because it is such a diverse campus.
Freeman Hrabowski:Yeah. I appreciate that. Believe it or not, we have for years believe that every leader on the campus has a certain responsibility, first of all, to deal with DEI situations. Uh, and, and to appreciate the significance of inclusion on our campus. We like to think we are this model of inclusive excellence. I always say, but success is never final. We have a way to go as every campus does. So I'm not here just to say, oh, look at how great we are. Know, we all have a way to go. I will give the faculty on our campus and staff, a lot of credit. As I'm leaving, I can look back and look at it and say, they've really worked on these issues, a great deal. We have our DEI council and a major office of DEI that reports to me through our chief of staff of Candace Dodson-Reed. Uh, and we only had that in the past few years. People say you didn't have one before. Well, we had an office of multicultural affairs. We had all kinds of things on campus, but we've always believed that I've always had the idea that, that our provost, our vice presidents, the faculty leadership, the staff leadership, should be interested in these issues too. And I wanna say something that may sound controversial. Sometimes people will have an office and a couple of people, or a few people there, and they will say, well, diversity is their responsibility. I think that's a real mistake. I really do. It's fine for these offices to help us with these issues and to serve as consultants and facilitating things. But until the campus has a culture that says, no, this is the responsibility of all of us. We need to know our black students and our Latinx students and our first generation students. We won't have the level of success that we want to have. So we, and we only got this unit as we have it now because the faculty asked for it after we had certain title IX challenges and we needed to work on those. And so, but the best news was in the envisioning that the campus did it. And my new book in The Empower University says, shouldn't be about me, the president. No, it's about all of us. It's very important. Um, and, and I say that because it was really faculty leadership and staff and students who came together to say, this is the approach we want to take. And so we have this council that consists of faculty, staff and students it's led by the head of the office. Uh, and Ariana(Arnold) is a, is a well prepared lawyer, um, uh, multicultural lawyer. Uh, and we have, uh, the Dean of Engineering who is a gay man who is very into diversity in all levels at all in always. And they chair this council that has some of our senior faculty and staff and student leaders from student governments on the council. The, the office of OEI, uh, really does this idea of equity and inclusion really does focus on the challenges that women may be having, that a black student may be having in those kinds of challenges. And it looks at record recommendations for other parts of the campus, whether they're talking about looking at curriculum or other kinds of things that we need to do. But I say that to say this, that, uh, from the point of view of the entire university and D and DEI, there are two broad areas that I am always interested in campuses thinking about. Number one is how the student is doing both academically and beyond the classroom, those two big issues. What can we say about their academic performance, their graduation rates, their performance in certain disciplines. One other area of diversity Kate that that may surprise you, that we talk about will be academic disciplines. The perspectives of students in your area in the social sciences will be different from the perspectives in engineering and perspectives of faculty are different. And because we are more than half in science and engineering, the paper of rights about us in those areas, and we are known for this Meyerhoff program in producing the largest number of percent number of African Americans. We get PhDs in STEM. That's what people know us for, but we are also strong in the humanities, in the arts, in the social sciences. And as president I'm out there saying, wait a minute. Yeah, I'm glad we are doing so well in STEM. We have lessons there, but we've worked on these other areas, right? And, and that's another part of the diversity conversation that people often don't get to, but academic performance. And then what will students say about the environment, the culture of the place. That's what we talk about in The Empowered University. Are we willing to look in the mirror at self and see how we may be lacking? In some ways, all are accustomed to talking about what works well and our best students, of course, but what will the average students say, the typical student on the campus, and what will the students say who left about what they experienced at? So all of that is a piece. And what I would say to you that some people may disagree with is that's within the context of diversity, but that's about our students in gen. I have said for years, if you show me a campus that is working hard to care about its students in general, I'll show you a campus that's talked about those who may be different from the majority. And so we, we have to put it in the context of how are students treated. So those are the two big things with students. And then the other with faculty and staff, what, what, what, what, what, what can we say about representation? And we reflecting the country when reflecting our campus about professional staff. And then what can we say about the faculty? I wrote an article with the colleague, some several in the last year, during the midst, in the midst of the protest. And I wrote an article about how higher education should address structural racism. And one of the points I made this was in the Atlantic. And one of the points I make is that, um, we are very good about critiquing the larger society and its issues. We don't as higher education enterprise critique ourselves. And as I've said on my campus, we should all be that we are so poorly represented among the professorate of certain groups. It's hard to find at most campuses in our country, um, the percentage of blacks or Latinx faculty, for example, or to have talked about what we call our out group page. When, when, when L G B T faculty came out publicly, say, let us, let you see who we are so we can help our students there. For example, you know, so I'm suggesting to you that we have a way to go in, pulling into the faculty in producing and growing our own and doing different things to have more faculty in from the different racial groups. And, and often I will say the black faculty representation will be the lowest of all. And there are reasons for that. And, and the worst thing people can say these days, quite frankly, is we can't find any mm-hmm<affirmative> because when we are creative, there are ways of doing it. If you get a chance to people can look at our stride program, S T R I D E focuses on recruiting additional faculty, because we have a way to go. We've done the best in, um, the arts, humanities and social sciences. We're 10 to 12% black faculty, for example. And similarly Latinx, we have our first woman Dean of an academic college. Uh, um, we Dean of the grad school, we have a Dean of the grad school, who's black, uh, but, and who's on the board at, Renselaer actually very proud of her, but, um, we have now, um, uh, the Dean of arts, humanities and social science is interim Dean right now doing a great job. Who's, uh, professor in language literacy, culture, who's African American. And so we are moving there and then the Dean's and the other areas are working on these issues because the first thing we had to do in science and engineering in all these areas is to get a presence in every department. That's the word I use and people who are not in higher ed don't realize many science departments and engineering departments don't have any blacks on the faculty, you know, and, and I say that you, you're what I'm saying, and it's not to point fingers. It is to say, all of us can do it because I mean, it's been a big deal to get the first one or two in biology, or to have one or two in computer science you see, or, or in chemistry, still working on it. You know what I mean? So, so it's, it's, it's something we don't even talk about. And so before we finish it today, I'd love to do some, talking out my own research on the science and engineering piece and diversity for the country. But, but those are the three, the, the, the performance of students academically, how they're experiencing the environment and then the, the literally the representation of faculty and staff, and then how are they, because it's one thing to bring them into the campus, but then what you do to give them support, to make sure they succeed, I'll stop there.
Katherine Conway-Turner:Absolutely. You know, well, I was, uh, really taken with your discussion of the distributed model of leadership, uh, around DEI on campus and how you as the campus president had really ensured that a whole variety of people, you know, walk to the table and are seen as leaders and, and move forward. And I, I think that's a positive lesson, uh, for higher education in general. Uh, you also, it sounds like the biggest challenge that you see moving forward is the representation or self-reflection of campuses. Yeah. And also, you know, um, you know, growing our own across broader institutions. Yes. Yes. Are those the two major challenges? Are there other major challenges you see today? I
Freeman Hrabowski:Appreciate that. I really do the, you know, and as I'm looking at you, as, I mean, think about it 25 years ago, the two of us, well, you know, know, I'm so old, I've been president about 30 years. So let me say 35, 40 years ago, we wouldn't have seen one black president talking to another black president in institutions that were not the serious HBCU. Absolutely. You know what I mean? But I say that for this reason, one campus campuses have to ask them themselves. The question, well, even in looking at the upper administration, is there anybody there call are on block, for example, Latinx, who's not the diversity person, that's a sensitive conversation, but it needs to be had I, I, and, and the diversity broadly, I wanna say that again, because my provost, our provost is from across the pond. He's British. He was a professor in physics, on our campus Dean of science, but, and became provost because of, is quite frankly his passion for not only the research, but in education. And in diversity, you see, uh, the, one of the vice provosts, African American, another one is from, uh, Portugal. So the international diversity, the vice president for research for the campus is German. You see, but as I said, the Dean of the grad school is black. So it's the international diversity we talk about. And the, the domestic diversity, I think it's important to talk about both. And then to talk with specificity. One more point, black is not black is not black and Latinx is not Latinx. What do, I mean, my black students who are from DC Washington or New York, um, are different from my black students who come from the islands. Mm-hmm,<affirmative>, you know, my Caribbean Student Association is very different from my Caribbean American Student Association. You see, they have different perspectives. And so one of our challenges in mindset, as we talk about talking about the challenges is how do we get us all of us to rethink our definitions of even of race and of how we categorize people? Mm-hmm<affirmative> because my black students, whose parents are professors are very different from my black students who are first generation college. Similarly, my white students who are first generation colleges from the Eastern shore will be different from the person whose dad is a lawyer. Who's my, is a doctor. So, so we, we are gonna have to bring more specificity to our understanding of these students. That's just one that lay on all on all of us, but I would say this, that, I mean, there are campuses that are doing a fine job with having a diversity office and a, maybe a VP or whatever the title is for that. Uh, and who may not have other people of color. The question then becomes, if you don't then are you convinced that the people in the positions have this issue as a major priority, this issue of diversity as a major priority, because sometimes it's not possible with certain people in place already to be fair to people. You know what I mean? But is it the question is, is it a priority of the president's council, of the provost group to talk about performance for us? It's, it's a very big deal we have because of the, the challenges of so many students not doing well in science and engineering, we really needed to work on that. And my first years there, and what we learned was the things we could do to help the black students could help all students. And that became a part of again, of the DNA of our campus. But those are the challenges as you say. Yes,
Katherine Conway-Turner:Absolutely. Well, thank you. Thank you so much for that. Um, so, you know, we start out our conversation talking about the, the moment we're in right now in the last few years and how so many issues have been highlighted that have been around for hundreds of years around, uh, systemic racism and so forth. Are there any lessons that you think we're learning in higher education, given the profile on, uh, Black Lives Matter, even the pandemic that we're living through and the differential effect of the, the pandemic, uh, the storming of the capitol about a year ago? I mean, are there things that you could reflect on that we are learning from the moment that we're in or these last years?
Freeman Hrabowski:Excellent question. And I'm gonna ask people to also, I'm gonna talk from several articles, my colleagues and I have been writing, um, concerning, uh, these issues. One of the things we say is that, uh, in issues in science and technology, and some other articles in the last two years, that these, these challenges of the pandemic, of social justice issues, of economic disparities, and the health disparities all come together. And, um, and we've been learning on my campus. And as I talk with campuses using the book around the country, the question is, how do we look at what's working to give us the resilience that we need to keep going? The line that I use with my fellow presidents and the Universe System of Maryland, we are very fortunate to have very, very strong collaboration across the campuses with our chancellor and the presidents together, more than ever. It's been very positive and learning from each other. And so there are several lessons that involve our USM University System of Maryland, but also involve our campus at UMBC. And one would be, um, this notion of where teaching and learning, where should teaching and learning come into this. You know, people are not always accustomed to presidents talking about that side of things from when we were the, on the academic side, I'd like to think the whole campus is the academic side. So we spent a lot of time talking about teaching and learning. We have a pivot program that was important in learning how we can use more effectively, both in, um, the online experience, but also in the classroom and in the hybrid experiences since more and more of our teaching and learning will be hybrid and we'll use it. And there are many strategies. And so faculty development office on our campus is very important working with people across the disciplines, from the sciences to the youth amenities. Uh, but even back to Freddie Gray before George Floyd, Freddie Gray in Baltimore, you know that from the Maryland years, the, um, we spent time listening to faculty in some disciplines saying we don't know how to talk about these issues in our classrooms, whether they were in the social sciences or in technical areas, they said, and people are coming in and they just watched the protests, or they know it's happening and they want to know what do we think, how should we think about this? What should be our role in this? And so we have spent time on our campus, uh, led by the scholars in the humanities and social sciences and the arts, um, in dealing with these issues, the, the, um, the, the, the wonderful initiative imagining America is one of those that we actually had the conference here in the Baltimore area, and with collaborating with other campuses, and we've written big grants from, to the Mellon Foundation, focused on diversity and humanities, for example, um, one in the Mellon Grant, um, that has done really well without humanities people, um, uh, working with other campuses, including HBCUs on some of these issues, and that has gone well. And then our, our Dean in that humanities area has another Mellon Grant on diversifying the faculty and working with Morgan and College Park. And so we are looking at ways of discussing the challenges within our institutions, but also the challenges in our society. Because beyond years ago, I wrote an article called Beyond the Numbers beyond graduation rate and retention rate. The question is when students graduate, who are they? What have they learned? And have they changed since coming to us, or did they come in one way and, and, and lead the same way. I work with new presidents, new college presidents and some of the Harvard programs. And, and one of the things I say that either makes people smile or upset them is, you know, we always complain about Congress. Well, almost all of those people, and they are people and they are alum. They are alumni, they are our graduate, they are institutions. So we, in the liberal arts broadly, we, we may be a research campus, but we take great pride in saying we are the liberal arts. It's very important on our campus that any student, whether in literature or in chemistry becomes broadly educated. All right. And the question is, um, if the liberal arts are supposed to open our minds and get us to examine our values, mm-hmm,<affirmative>, what is it that we still are not doing to help our leaders in the country, understand what we can do to find the common ground. Uh, my friend, Fred Lawrence, um, talked specifically from Phi Beta Kappa, secretary of Phi Beta Kappa talks about this responsibility we have of being able to present our arguments, to teach our students, to present their arguments based on evidence, to listen to the points of view of others and look for the evidence, and then to find ways of reaching that common ground. Somehow, this is the challenge of our society, whether talking about social justice or challenges with the economy, or talking about health disparities of that, that we need, we've gotta find ways of helping our students to get the, to take in all this information more than ever. And to be able to, to turn it into knowledge, to figure out ways of knowing how to seek the truth, to find the truth. And let's say what's truth and what's opinion. What's not backed up by evidence, and it doesn't just automatically happen. We know we should know from the state of the country, that we've helped the country in many ways to move many people from poverty into the middle class. We have done that. We can take great pride in that, but we have a way to go in moving beyond what was said back in the sixties, 1800s and 1900s, that we are a nation divided because we are still very divided in many ways. And I think we as universities, community colleges, the four year institutions, the big research campuses have a greater responsibility to play in looking at those issues and in grappling and grappling with these challenges on our campuses. Very important. Mm-hmm,
Katherine Conway-Turner:<affirmative> absolutely. Well, I can hear in your comments, there are many things you're very proud of that have occurred at UMBC under your leadership, and you certainly have had a long and successful and very laudable, uh, number of years at UMBC. Um, so, you know, really wanna thank you for all that, that you have done not only on your campuses, but how you've touched other campuses, but as you sort of look around the corner, uh, could you reflect on what you see as the future at UMBC? So, so, uh, in this sphere of DEI integration of the I, into all the other major things you're doing, yeah. You know, what do you think, what do you see for the future?
Freeman Hrabowski:You know, it, we are, I'm leaving at, uh, an amazing time for our campus. We are stronger than ever. The, the freshman numbers were up substantially. The grad numbers were up substantially. We're actually at that 70% graduation rate, but we can, we can account for another 15% who have graduated from other institutions because of programs we did not have for example, or other circumstances. So we we'll continue to do that. Um, we don't, we don't talk as much as we can about the research. We are now with enough research to be research one, we have been broadening it across some disciplines. And at some point we'll go for that going from research two to research one, uh, we have not had that as the top priority. Our top priority has been, let's make sure we're doing a great job with these students, and we have that in place. And so this notion of the genius of the and, we have been seen as a research campus that does a great job with, with undergrad and grad students. But it's gonna go to the next level in the sense that the reputation continues to grow. And so you all in this institution should, should evaluate itself on the basis of the success it has in producing, uh, students who become leaders and servers, servants in our community. We can talk a lot about that. Um, right now across my forehead is this name, Dr. Kizzmekia Corbett, I'm very clear about that. Every American should know that name first black woman, to create a vaccine in the country, in the world who recruited her from rural North Carolina, came to us as a 17 year old, went back to after graduating and majored in biology, in sociology. Very important to say that. And we'll say how the social sciences helped her with some of the challenges she's faced in recent years, but led the team with Dr. Barney Graham at NIH in producing the Moderna, the, the RNA technology, and with that is associated most closely with the, with the Moderna she's now at, on the Harvard faculty. But I say her name because we've never thought about a, a black woman created a vaccine. You see, none of us had thought about that possibility, but when girls see her regardless of race, mm-hmm,<affirmative> right as a regular person, uh, it makes a difference in terms, and we will be continuing to inspire people just at another graduate to go into the National Academy of Medicine and of Sciences. And, uh, quite frankly, um, Howard Hughes investigator, we are very connected to the Howard Howard Hughes program. Having had an investigator, Mike Summers for years and years, and having that person, um, become a leader, a white male, become a leader in producing black scientists. You see, and that's, so we are a model where students and faculty will come and look at what we are doing. We're replicating our programs on other campuses. The Meyerhoff has been successfully replicated at Chapel Hill and Penn State. There's a science article we wrote together, uh, on that in recent years, but we're now replicating Meyerhoff that notion of, and that, that is all tied to my TED talk, which continues to either inspire people or o ffset people. Let's say that< laugh> c ause I talk about the fact that t hat STEM is still seen as weed o ut in our culture, and we've gotta get beyond that. So look at what C han Zuckerberg is doing to replicate Meyerhoff out at Berkeley a nd San Diego, UMBC will continue to be this model for campuses to come and, and, and spend time understanding how we can help more students succeed in science and engineering. And as I say in the TED talk, we're talking about high expectations, not just of the students though, but also of the faculty and the staff, the whole campus building community, not having cutthroat, uh, realizing it takes scientists to do scientists, but it also takes social scientists to produce social scientists and humanists to produce humanists. So, so the campus will be, and then we have to evaluate, I'll be doing this around the country, working. I do some of it with new presidents at Harvard now, and I'll continue to do that, but I'm working with a number of boards and faculty for myself, but the campus will be a beacon and light in these areas more than ever very proud of that very much so and most important. Um, people will see how these students are excelling in these areas and how faculty of all races are involved on these things. We need groups of faculty from campuses coming to places that are doing it successfully to say, this is how it can be done. Let's work together on these things. That will be what UMBC will be doing. And that's, I'll be going around talking proudly about all the great things they're doing.
Katherine Conway-Turner:Well, one exciting to future for U M B C you lay out. And we certainly look forward to hearing your voice within higher education in all kinds of ways, as a continued mentor, as you have been to many, and just a clear voice on what we are doing, what we can do and looking toward the future, what we must do, uh, as we move ahead. So, so I, I really wanna thank you for being so generous with your time, uh, for this discussion, uh, as always you've provided great insights and thoughtful explorations into your leadership at UMBC, but really also the broader cha challenges of higher education. You know, as we continue to grapple with discrimination, race inequality within our world. And personally, I clearly see how you have moved the dial in many ways at U M B C and that your accomplishments, uh, have not only impacted the work there, but also have touched the rest of higher education. So really wanna thank you for that. Um, your honesty and open has been really wonderful to hear, and I really wish you well on the next chapter, which I know will be a rich and layered chapter. As you decide all the many ways you're gonna continue, uh, to touch our education. So, so thank you again.
Freeman Hrabowski:Thank you Kate. I really appreciate that is for people to look at what we are doing with K through 12, pre K through 12, we should never have a conversation about diversity inclusion without talking about the university, the institution's responsibility to working with teachers and children. We're doing a lot in that pre-K, I should say, and 12, and then what we're doing on the other side of the university, what we're doing with the economy, look at our research part and the work that, but also the work in championing and, and being, um, advocates for our graduates to help them get into professory positions and others. So while we talk today primarily about what's happening within the community, let's not forget in DEI work, what we can be doing to help with the kids before they get to us and teachers. And on the other end, when they leave us, how are we working with companies? Look at our research park and the large numbers of people of color in the research park in those companies. That's, that's my last statement and I'm sticking to it.<laugh>
Katherine Conway-Turner:And I think you've laid out a couple of other wonderful topics for us to talk about in the future. So, absolutely thank so much. Thank you. So thank you again. Dr. Freeman Hrabowski. And to our listeners, thank you for joining us. If you want, uh, the commission to highlight the efforts of your institution in a future podcast, then please visits M S C H E slash Pillars of Change to submit your suggestion. On behalf of Middle States Commission on Higher Education and our guest, Dr. Freeman Hrabowski, I'm Kate Conway Turner saying thank you to you all. And until next time.