23 Oct Freeman Hrabowski
Speaker: Freeman Hrabowski
President of the University of Maryland, Baltimore
Speech Topics Include:
- Beating the Odds: Raising Academically Successful African American Males
- Overcoming the Odds: Raising Academically Successful African American Young Women
Keynote speaker Freeman Hrabowski, III, has served as president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, since 1992. Speaker Freeman Hrabowski, research and publications focus on science and math education with special emphasis on minority participation and performance. He chaired the National Academies’ committee that produced the recent report Expanding Underrepresented Minority Participation: America’s Science and Technology Talent at the Crossroads. He was also recently named by President Obama to chair the newly created President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for African Americans.
With philanthropist Robert Meyerhoff, Hrabowski co-founded the Meyerhoff Scholars Program in 1988, which encourages all high-achieving students to pursue advanced degrees and research careers in science and engineering and to advance underrepresented minorities in these fields. Based on the program’s outcomes, speaker Freeman Hrabowskihas authored numerous articles and co-authored two books—Beating the Odds and Overcoming the Odds—which focus on parenting and high-achieving African American males and females in science.
A child leader in the Civil Rights Movement, Speaker Freeman Hrabowski was prominently featured in Spike Lee’s 1997 documentary Four Little Girls on the racially motivated bombing of Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church in 1963. He and UMBC were recently featured on CBS’s 60 Minutes, attracting national attention for the campus’s achievements in innovation and inclusive excellence.
In 2008, he was named one of America’s Best Leaders by U.S. News & World Report, which ranked UMBC the nation’s #1 “Up and Coming” university the past five years (2009-13). During this period, U.S. News also consistently ranked UMBC among the nation’s leading institutions for “Best Undergraduate Teaching” – in 2013, other universities on the list included Duke, Cal-Berkeley, Princeton, and Brown. Time magazine named Hrabowski one of America’s 10 Best College Presidents in 2009 and one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World in 2012.
- Beating the Odds: Raising Academically Successful African American Males
- Overcoming the Odds: Raising Academically Successful African American Young Women
