The Three Decade University President

In higher education, the true success stories are often buried from public view. But at the University of Maryland, Baltimore county, known as umbc, a success has been unfolding in plain sight for three decades.

That's right, Jeff. And those three decades have marked one of the most successful, successful tenures of perhaps any president in higher education. Freeman Hrabowski, who is retiring after 30 years at the helm of UMBC. He's the main event today on an episode unlike any other we've done at Future. You.

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I'm Michael Horne.

And I'm Jeff Salingo. UMBC opened in 1966. It was chartered three years earlier by the Maryland legislature as the first integrated campus in Maryland at a time when much of American higher education was segregated. In terms of American higher ed history, UMBC is a baby. Just over 55 years old. It enrolled a little more than 700 students that first year.

And on that day in September when UMBC opened its doors, Jeff, it had a total of 3 buildings and 337 faculty members. Naturally, they offered only freshman level courses initially. And get this, tuition was $142 per semester, not per credit hour. It's safe to say they've expanded a lot since then, as we saw on a recent tour of the campus with the president of umbc.

Okay, so some of you, it's the first time, if you look out, you see downtown Baltimore.

That's Freeman Hrabowski. He's retiring as president of UMBC at the end of this academic year. After 30 years at the helm. That's over half the life of the institution. Now, let's say this up front. 30 plus years as President of a major higher education institution means we probably could do an entire season of episodes about this one man and this one university. There's so much more to know about Freeman than we're ever going to get to today. Like how as a ninth grader in his native Birmingham, Alabama, he was arrested and jailed for helping lead a civil rights demonstration. That experience was described in Spike Lee's 1997 documentary, Four Little Girls, which depicted the 1963 Birmingham church bombing that killed four young black girls, one of whom Freeman knew well. Or like how his signature program, the highly successful Meyerhoff Scholarship program, which has paid the tuition and fees for hundreds of black students in science and engineering and provided wraparound services as well, means that more black students at UMBC go on to get PhDs than any other institution in the country. Indeed, the first black woman to create any vaccine, in this case for COVID 19, is a UMBC alum. We won't get to all of that today, since you can read volumes on it elsewhere. What we're hoping to do is give you a glimpse of Freeman on campus to illustrate how he's led one institution for 30 plus years and specifically with an eye toward what does this mean for the future of higher education itself. In the clip you just heard of Freeman, Michael and I were trying to do a run walk to keep up with Freeman as he took us up to the rooftop of the administration building at UMBC to look out over the campus that he has watched literally grow up with him. It now has 70 buildings. Throughout this episode, you'll hear some clips of us hustling to keep up with Freeman as he takes us on a tour of umbc, as well as some clips of when we sat down with him in a studio. And one thing to know is that UMBC isn't a small campus. The university, for example, has dramatically expanded the number of buildings dedicated to scientific research, generally to the benefit of the surrounding community and region.

And so, and they said, we don't know what those scientists will be doing. I said, you know, I said, how long have you lived in this area? They said, 10 years, 20 years. I said, if my freshmen haven't blown you up in the chemistry labs, you're okay. So the American response was, let's get

rid of that chemistry. Seriously, let's get rid of that.

But as you know, Jeff, this isn't just a story about buildings. Far from it. This is really a story about investing in students and their success. UMBC isn't a flagship campus. It's, it accepts roughly 70% of students. It's a minority serving institution where nearly a quarter of its students are Asian, a fifth are black, a bit under a tenth are Hispanic. And while students come primarily from Maryland, just under 5% are international students and 25% receive Pell grants. Over the last 10 years, the university increased its six year graduation rate for full time first year students from 56% to, to 69%. That's an incredible jump. That's taken UMBC from basically performing like the average higher education institution to one that's performing well above the national average graduation rate. And that rise has occurred because of a critical part of UMBC's focus, undergraduates. Freeman takes the success of each student seriously, which is something that we saw when we had an impromptu conversation with a student who just happened to be walking by us on on our campus tour.

Hey, how you doing? Come in a minute.

Introduce yourself.

I'm Sam.

Nice to meet you.

Hi, Sam.

How you doing? Always give your full name.

I'm Sam Gilbert.

Nice to meet you. And your major?

I'm a GS major here.

What does GS mean?

Geography and Environmental Systems.

Oh, the talent is there. That's why I'm always a believer. Yes, we need to look at Pre K through 12 and keep working on those issues in innovative ways. And we are doing that here with Baltimore. But we need to look at the undergrad experience. Are we doing as much as we can to inspire students to want to become great professors, to be excited about asking the hard questions in science? You see, And I think we can do a better job. We are accustomed to looking at the highest achievers and they of course will go on and do well. But there's so much talent from our middle class and working classes that never will get that opportunity because we've not taken the time to think through what does it take to help them to not simply be okay and to graduate? We talk about graduation rates. I want to talk about inclusive excellence. This is what UMBC has worked to do. We're taking middle class kids and making them the very best in the world. That's what's important.

And UMBC is dedicated to providing that experience to a mix of undergrads who hail from all kinds of backgrounds in a way that challenges them. It's an intentional part of the experience.

One of the biggest challenges in American society, and I've said it publicly, is that we don't help people learn how to work with people different from themselves. It's okay for people to be with people like themselves sometimes, but if we're not helping them learn how to deal with people who are from different religions and races, different parts of the world, then people leave with the same assumptions that they had when they first came. And I'm afraid that when we look at people coming across the stage, most have never gotten to know, well, people different from themselves. There's ultimate challenge in American higher education and in American society. We can be better than that. We've worked here to make sure we mix it up, to get beyond your comfort zone, because that's what education means. It means getting to become uncomfortable, because growth comes in that space of discomfort.

While on campus, Jeff and I toured UMBC's Academic Success center to see all the initiatives that UMBC has to support students. The hallways of this One Stop Shop for Academic Success were lined with explicit goals and metrics around student outcomes, with services ranging from tutoring to providing peer advocates. The dedication was clear.

People work hard to help students succeed. It's getting beyond what we thought was possible. We thought because of programs we can't have here, for a variety of reasons, we were doing as well as we could do in graduation rates. But what became clear was we could be creative, we could look at what other people are doing. I would be encouraging universities to look around the country because there's some great practices in different kinds of institutions and we can learn from each other. I like being a part of the Innovation alliance because we learn from them, they can learn from us, we learn from them. But I think we need more opportunities.

So a key question Michael and I wondered about was how has the institution been able to get research faculty to continually focus on outcomes for undergraduates? One thing Freeman told us is this UMBC prioritizes active learning over lectures and bringing undergraduates into research labs to make their learning real very early in their experience. Peter Murray, who has served as the Chief Information Officer at UMBC since 2002, offered a bit more insight when we ran into him on our tour. We just have a great group because we've had this stability of leadership, and my colleagues are great. We've been able to just every year, continue to innovate in ways that we don't have this stop and start. You know, it's like compound interest. It makes a difference.

Over 40 years for us, it's been great that I've been able to stay here, and I think about the chemistry between the president and the faculty and other groups, but also think about the extent to which the institution is evolving. We were very young then. We were only 20 years old when I came there. So this place has changed every 5 to 10 years in different ways. Most important, much stronger connections to the larger world. And I've had a chance to grow with it. But every campus is different. Some presidents can stay five to seven years and make a big difference. In other institutions, it takes more time. Most important, though, the question is, if you make changes, will the changes be sustained when you leave? That's the question. Person must Ask.

And so you feel like you want to make changes that are going to be sustainable.

It's not enough to have a lot of fanfare and say, oh, these things will change, these people will change. The question is, what's happening after you leave? That's when you know whether or not you really made.

It's a true legacy.

Yeah, yeah. And the biggest story here is that whatever has been changed has not been simply because of me, but because of a lot of people who believe in those changes. So it's in the DNA of the institution.

This connection between teaching and research didn't happen overnight. It was the result of a lot of work to create partnerships with large local employers and government agencies. And that's fueled the growth of the campus and the success of the students.

This was a farm to a state mental institution, which is beyond the trees that way. And then Pigpen Pond, the pigs were right there in that water right there. But these are all multi tenant buildings. In total, we have about 125 companies. Not just here, but we have another campus that's on the other side of those trees. And, and we're one of the largest concentrations of cybersecurity companies in the country. And one of the reasons is we are very connected to the National Security Agency. We're one of the largest feeders there. We've got about 1200 graduates at NSA. You know, this is BW. You think about the Baltimore Washington Parkway, you're down to exit 1:35, 40 minutes.

Right.

So we use that for thinking about and the connection to the national infrastructure and science. NIH, NASA, NSA, NIST, all those places. So we are in the top 20 in funding from NASA in the country. That's a part of the future. Northrop Grumman has worked really closely with us. Lockheed Martin too. But Northrop, in doing several things. One, hiring our students, hundreds and hundreds. Two, helping us look at curriculum, and three, actually giving us funding to help some of these young companies to build their business. They want to see how young companies will do it.

All of this work is really a system where the research, teaching and growth all build on each other and produce more and more success. Friedman views this all as a bigger part of the innovation and evolution that will occur in higher education. And it will impact the credentials that institutions award over time and the tools colleges use in teaching and learning.

So after 18 months you can get a job. 65, $70,000. Okay. Now some of them will eventually move over and take a credit degree, credit program. But I'm saying the future of higher education will involve a blurring of those lines between the traditional program and training programs and looking at the curriculum and looking at the skills, and most important, partnering with major employers.

The work in supporting students, moving many Black students into PhDs and having greater research success for women in underrepresented minorities should also have an important impact on creating more diverse leaders in higher education in the long run. A topic that is very much on Freeman's mind.

We are the number one producer of African Americans who are going to get PhDs in natural sciences and engineering. And we're not an HBCU, and I think we should. It's the genius of the and versus the tyranny of the or. That's Jim Collins, not me. The fact is we have to think about how kinds of institutions like ours, which is a minority serving institution, can make a difference in this world. Now, interestingly, we're at MSI minority serving not because of our black population, but because of our Asian population. So understanding the different kinds of universities and what role they can play in producing more leaders, Though we do need universities thinking about producing leaders, whether they're leaders who will go to the professoriate, or leaders who will be in our society doing the work that needs to be done. But the question is, do people understand how deep and complex the issues are? And how do we use the experts on our campuses and others to take the conversations to the next level? What should it mean in terms of policy development? What should it mean in terms of getting people ready to vote and to think through all the options that they have? How do we do this without it looking like it's Instagram, that it's just a matter of a few sentences. It will take deep, substantive conversations across and actions.

Right. So how do you ensure that this is not just a bunch of DEI plans or PR or things like that? Do you think your fellow presidents get it? That this is a moment and that this is the beginning of a very long conversation to have, and that the various stakeholders on campus, whether those are boards, whether those are. It seems like the students get it. But do the faculty do the boards? And do the more important, do the presidents really get it?

I think that presidents really want to make a difference. My colleagues want to make a difference. We need time to understand what making a difference will mean. And that's whether in universities or in the corporate world, it's an American societal issue that we have to grapple with. And a part of that will mean our listening carefully to different perspectives, our understanding the role that history plays in all of this. And this is why the humanities, social sciences are more important now than ever, because we have not done a good enough job. Clearly, we talk about people being liberally educated. Well, how are you going to be liberally educated if you don't understand what this country has been through over the past few hundred years and where we are now and how what we have as challenges right now really is a result of things, of problems that have not been solved since before the Civil War. And that's a part of this deeper issue that we and then so when talking about D and I, it's yeah, it's one thing to talk about whether students are having a good experience on the campus, but there are deeper issues even than that. When we think about poverty in our society, when we think about disproportionate health disparities. I mean, helping our students and ourselves to understand what can be done to make a difference. And quite frankly, how do we build the professoriate? And that's a big piece of it. I say that in a piece in the Atlantic that we can often talk about what's happening in our society, but we're not looking inward to say, wait a minute, we still are not producing enough people who are, who become a part of the faculty, who will make the faculty more representative of the students to understand those different perspectives. We need people to say, yes, this is the problem. What are the steps we can take? As a mathematician, I'm always saying to solve a problem, you have to be able to look at it from different angles and then take your time in thinking it through.

This is a topic that UMBC is working on with two other public institutions in the University System of Maryland, which we'll tell you about along with more more of our day at UMBC after this short break on Future youe.

Support for this podcast is provided by the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation, which is proud to support the work of the Post Secondary Value Commission. Because the question what is college worth? Deserves answers. Learn more at postsecondaryvalue.org.

Welcome back to Future you. If you've listened this far, you know this episode is a bit different from the others we recorded. Michael and I spent the day at the University of Maryland, Baltimore county, with its president, Friedman Hrabowski, who is retiring after 30 years. As we were telling you before the break, UMBC is working with two other universities in the system, the University of Maryland, College park and Morgan State, on representation and leadership at universities. Thanks to a large grant, the three institutions received, led by an all women leadership team. The Breaking the Mold program aims to develop a diverse pipeline of leadership, particularly in the arts and the humanities. It will focus on women faculty as well as black, Hispanic, an American Indian, Alaska Native faculty. And it builds on UMBC's success mentoring a diverse pool of postdoctoral fellows transitioning to faculty positions.

Now, Jeff, there are a lot of issues out there that UMBC clearly could tackle, but Freeman made a point to us about the importance of focus, something all institutions would do well to heed.

We always say focus, focus, focus here. And the reason is you can't get with so many things accomplished. It depends on how much money you have and res, quite frankly, if you're not with billions of dollars in your endowment, you need to focus on those priorities that are most important. For us, it's been certain programs that have been critical and most important, it's been a matter of building consensus among people on campus that this is important to this campus. So issues involving women in technology, big area for us, and we really worked on that. Issues involving strengthening what you do in the liberal arts, broadly with the research, having connections between research and teaching, not just in biochemistry, but in public policy, for example. So that idea of having themes that are critical, that people say, yeah, this is important to us.

Not only that, but Freeman also talked about the importance of a team, not just individuals, in creating change.

It's so important to have people who believe in the university. You know what I'm always saying to people in higher ed is don't go to a place because you want the experience and you want to move on. No, you need to stay the course, believe in that institution, help build that institution. Other opportunities will occur. And so we say to people who have left here, they are still a part of the UMBC family.

Finally, Freeman continues to ask big questions, ones that all higher ed leaders would be wise to ask. And he's setting the groundwork for new leadership for umbc. And he's not being too shy, Michael, about the profile of the person he wants to be the next president of umbc, as you'll hear in this clip.

Oh, yeah, just to be themselves. This person is going to be amazing. And I will tell you, I've been throwing out to the airwaves, this woman is going to be an incredible president. She really is right.

Love it.

I believe in higher education. We need leaders who are passionate about the role of higher education in transforming lives. And most important, advice to presidents, we want to keep building the research, but know those students. It's nothing more rewarding. Than sensing the stories of our students and building on those stories.

JEFF it was a memorable interview and a memorable day on campus for us on Future U. Just to see how much importance the campus and Freeman puts on the individual stories of each student. And each student's success was really an inspiration, no doubt.

MICHAEL it was also hard to keep up with him because he just runs around campus. And what it shows is that it's possible to package the critical pieces together and have them work in concert with each other, research undergraduate education and student success. Institutions don't have to give up on one to get the other. Institutions can, like Freeman has, take more ownership and accountability to change the lives and fortunes of students. And with that, as we close out this special episode of Future youe, we'll give Freeman Hrabowski the last word.

Every student has a story, as you know, as every person does. But I'm constantly saying to people, know the stories, know the stories.

I'm Michael Horn.

And I'm Jeff Salingo. And thanks for joining us on Future youe. We'll see you next time.

Sam.