26 L I B E R A L ED U C A T I O N SP R I N G 2004

MY EXPERIENCE as an undergraduate at Hamp-ton University filled me with a sense of ex-citement about learning and shaped many ofmy views. My professors prepared me to liveand lead in a world that would not necessarilyexpect a lot from me. At Hampton, I waspraised for being curious and even sometimes

rebellious. I learnedabout the importance

of putting students first, expecting the most ofthem, giving them the support they need tosucceed, and emphasizing leadership and ser-vice. I know that students grow from beingchallenged intellectually and from receivingsupport, both academic and personal. Thatphilosophy governs my approach as a univer-sity president.

In 1970 when I entered graduate school atthe University of Illinois, I realized for the firsttime just how few African Americans andother minorities could be found in graduateprograms, especially in science and engineer-ing. For the past thirty years, I have spentmuch of my professional career addressing thisissue and supporting minority and other stu-dents. My thinking has been rooted in the ideaof “The Talented Tenth,” expressed a centuryago by W.E.B. DuBois (1903). In his treatise,The Souls of Black Folks, DuBois wrote,

Can the masses of the Negro people be inany possible way more quickly raised than bythe effort and example of this aristocracy oftalent and character?...[I]t is, ever was, and

ever will be from the top downward thatculture filters. The Talented Tenth rises andpulls all that are worth the saving up...Thisis the history of human progress...How thenshall the leaders of a struggling people betrained and the hands of the risen fewstrengthened? There can be but one an-swer: the best and most capable of theiryouth must be schooled in the colleges anduniversities of the land.DuBois was writing, of course, about the im-

portance of liberal education, which is some-thing I emphasize in my convocation addresseach year to new freshmen. In fact, I talkabout the meaning of liberal education—thatthe word liberal comes from the Latin adjectiveliber, meaning free. The word education comesfrom both the Latin verb duco, meaning tolead, and the prefix e, which means out of. De-fined literally, then, liberal education meansthe free act of leading out of. Most often, liberaleducation has been associated with free peo-ple, who, unlike slaves or indentured servants,had time to cultivate the intellect. I talk aboutanother popular interpretation of liberal edu-cation as education for its own sake—muchlike climbing a mountain because the moun-tain is there—and the freedom to think andexplore ideas in any direction.

Intellectual modelsWhile DuBois may have been the firstAfrican American to earn a Ph.D. at Harvardand one of the first to focus the nation’s atten-tion on the issue of blacks, higher education,and the value of liberal education, he was fol-lowing in the footsteps of other black lumi-naries, a few of whom deserve special note.

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FREEMAN A. HRABOWSKI, III, is president of theUniversity of Maryland, Baltimore County. Thearticle is adapted from a talk given at AAC&U’sAnnual Meeting.

Leadership foraNewAge

F R E E M A N A . H R A B OW S K I , I I I

Those of us inhigher education

chose this profession because

we know that education

transforms lives

Higher Education’s Role in Producing

Minority Leaders

Annual Meeting

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well before the Civil War, se-lected liberal arts colleges likeHarvard and Bowdoin admit-ted from time to time an ex-ceptional black. Even fewer know about lead-ers such as Fanny Jackson Coppin, who as ateenage girl had been a servant in a Newport,Rhode Island home. She eventually attendedOberlin College, one of the nation’s few col-leges open to blacks in the mid-nineteenthcentury. After earning her bachelor’s degree in1865, she taught and later became principal atthe Institute for Colored Youth in Philadel-phia, the city’s only high school for black stu-dents and perhaps the nation’s leading schoolof its kind at that time, where she worked forthirty-seven years.

At the Institute, she hired Edward Bouchet,my hero, a physicist, and the first AfricanAmerican to graduate from Yale (1874, PhiBeta Kappa), where he ranked sixth in hisclass of 124. In 1876, he earned his doctoratein geometrical optics and became the firstblack to receive a Ph.D. at an American uni-versity. Unable to find a faculty position,Bouchet joined Fanny Jackson Coppin at theInstitute, where he taught physics and chem-istry for twenty-six years. Both Coppin andBouchet left the Institute in 1902 because itscollege-preparatory program, reflectingDuBois’s philosophy, was discontinued by theschool’s all-white board in favor of Booker T.Washington’s industrial-education approach.The Institute ultimately became a vocationaland teacher-preparatory school and moved toCheney, Pennsylvania, where it was renamedCheney State College. Before his death in1916, Bouchet took several positions at highschools and small black colleges, but neverhad the opportunity to pursue fully his passionfor physics. What a waste of talent. In con-trast, Booker Washington was the firstAfrican American leader invited to sit withthe President at the White House.

Also of note is Patrick Healy, whose namefew people know—although he was the firstAfrican-American president of a predomi-nantly white institution. Healy led George-town University from 1873 to 1881. Born inGeorgia in 1830, he was the son of a formerIrish soldier and a domestic slave, whose mar-riage by a traveling preacher was consideredunlawful in Georgia at the time. His parents

sent him first to Quakerschools in New York and Ver-mont and then to Holy CrossCollege in Massachusetts,where he earned his under-

graduate degree in 1850. He subsequentlystudied at the Catholic University of Louvain,in Belgium, and completed his Ph.D. in 1863.Patrick and his brother, Sherwood, whoearned a doctorate from the North AmericanCollege in Rome in 1860, were the first twoAfrican Americans to receive Ph.D.s, albeitin European universities. At Georgetown,Healy became prefect of studies (chief acade-mic officer) in 1868 and president in 1873.He is recognized for reforming the curriculum,fundraising for a new multi-use building thatbears his name today, strengthening theschool’s medical and law schools, and creatingthe alumni association. Of course, his studentsdid not know he was black.

These luminaries share a powerful bond:their strong liberal education that preparedthem to become leaders. But it would be al-most a century before blacks were legally ad-missible at all-white colleges and universitiesin the South, where most blacks resided. Infact, throughout much of the twentieth cen-tury, the majority of blacks with college de-grees and the majority of black leaders—teachers, lawyers, doctors, and others—hadgraduated from historically black colleges anduniversities.

I frequently tell the story of my mother,who grew up in rural Wetumpka, Alabamaduring the 1920s and ’30s. From age twelvethrough high school, much like Fanny Jack-son Coppin, she worked as a maid in thehome of a wealthy white family, and while shecould not go to a predominantly white univer-sity, she did attend black colleges in Alabama,including Alabama A&M University andTuskegee. Working as a child maid taught hertwo important lessons—this story inspires meevery day: First, she decided she did not wantto be a maid all her life, for obvious reasons;second, she learned the value of reading. Theadvantage of working in this home was thatthe woman of the house allowed her, after shefinished her work, to spend time to read booksin the library. At that time, few homes hadany books besides the Bible, and there was nopublic library for her. Reading allowed mymother to think about her future and to

28 L I B E R A L ED U C A T I O N SP R I N G 2004

The program engenders an expectation

of excellence

dream about the possibilities. Her dream wasto become a teacher of literature. To her therewas no more noble profession. It is a richAmerican story that for over forty years, fromthe mid-1930s to the late ’70s, she was privi-leged to teach thousands of children. As shealways said, “Education transforms lives.” Atthe end of her life, she told me, “Teacherstouch eternity through their students.”

The national contextThis past year, Clemson University conveneda conference to celebrate the fortieth anniver-sary of higher education’s desegregation inSouth Carolina. The conference theme was“Best Practices in Black Student Achieve-ment.” Like Clemson, many colleges and uni-versities began major desegregation efforts inthe 1960s by admitting black students, and to-day more than 80 percent of all black collegestudents are enrolled in predominantly whiteinstitutions, and about three-quarters of allbachelor’s degrees earned by blacks are

awarded by these schools (American Councilon Education 2000). The issue of minoritystudent achievement has become increasinglyimportant because of the growing numbers ofminorities in American society, including notonly African Americans but also NativeAmericans and Latinos, the fastest growingethnic group in the country. In terms of highschool completion, college participation, andcollege graduation rates (ACE 2002), as wellas income levels and health status, all of thesegroups trail significantly behind their whiteand Asian-American counterparts.

Colleges and universities—as well as com-panies, national agencies, and foundations—are regularly sending representatives to visitthe University of Maryland, Baltimore Countybecause of our success in preparing high-achiev-ing minority students over the past decade, including in science and engineering (S&E).Our experience is especially noteworthy giventhe nation’s growing diversity and the recentattention focused on affirmative action.

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Freeman A.Hrabowski, IIIAnnual Meeting

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Shape of the River (1998), which conveys theessence of these compelling issues, and weknow about the Supreme Court’s recent affir-mative action rulings involving the Univer-sity of Michigan.

The Supreme Court rulings are especiallyrelevant to minority students aspiring to be-come leaders. Justice Sandra Day O’Connorissued a powerful statement on this point:

In order to cultivate a set of leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry, it isnecessary that the path to leadership be visibly open to talented and qualified indi-viduals of every race and ethnicity. But she also expressed the expectation that

“twenty-five years from now, the use of racialpreferences will no longer be necessary”(Grutter v. Bollinger). Anyone who looks care-fully at the reading and mathematics skills ofminority children and the requirements of thenation’s No Child Left Behind Act realizesthat this goal will challenge us all. Even as wecelebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Brown v.Board of Education, far too many black andLatino children attend segregated schools thatare underfunded, underachieving, and unequal.It is a tragedy that the average mathematicsand reading scores of black twelfth graders areslightly below those of white eighth graders(Therstrom and Therstrom 2003). And thesituation for Latinos is equally troublesome.

To place Justice O’Connor’s expectation inperspective, we should ask ourselves severalquestions: How do we strengthen K-12 educa-tion for all of America’s minority students?How can we help the highest achieving mi-nority students become more competitive, onsuch traditional academic measures as grades,standardized test scores, representation ingifted and talented classes, successfully com-peting for college admission, and effectivelypreparing for productive careers? How do wedevelop and implement strategies to increasethe number of minorities at the highest levelsof achievement in society, such as researchscientists and university professors?

Only by creating and supporting a largerpool of high-achieving minority students canwe ultimately increase the number of facultyof color in our colleges and universities andthe number of minorities who become leadingprofessionals, in general. We have made sub-stantial progress over the past thirty years, but

the fact remains that most predominantlywhite colleges and universities have verysmall numbers of minority faculty. Similarly,though we see increased numbers of minori-ties in some areas (e.g., law), the percentagescontinue to be disproportionately low in mostprofessional fields—not just science and engi-neering and architecture, where it’s 1 percent,but also in the social sciences and humanitiesand in recent years among new K-12 teachers.

But the College Board’s study on minorityhigh academic achievement, Reaching the Top(1999), suggests that the greatest disparity inacademic achievement, between underrepre-sented minority students and others is inmathematics and science. This persistentachievement gap, coupled with dramatic de-mographic trends, poses serious challenges forAmerica’s colleges and universities in recruit-ing and educating minority students for thenational workforce, including the academy.

Implementing a vision of minority student achievementWhat I would like to do now is focus on whatwe can do to increase the number of minoritieswho excel in science and engineering and be-come leaders. I offer the experience of mycampus in this area as one example havingimplications for improving minority academicperformance and producing minority leadersin general. As Reaching the Top suggests, perhapsno area in which to make progress has beenmore difficult than science. We can attack thisproblem by focusing not only on improvingretention and graduation rates—the first step—but also on ensuring that minority studentssucceed in course work, that they gain substan-tive research experience, and that they go onto graduate work and to teaching and researchcareers. National agencies have been workingin this area for decades with moderate successat the undergraduate level and relatively littlesuccess at the graduate level. While the per-centage of underrepresented minorities earn-ing bachelor’s degrees in science and engi-neering has increased slightly in recent years(from nearly 10 percent in 1990 to 12 percentnow), minorities in total still account for onlyabout 3 percent of all engineering doctoratesand 4 percent of all science doctorates (U.S.Department of Education 2000).

With approximately 12,000 students,UMBC enjoys a diverse student population

30 L I B E R A L ED U C A T I O N SP R I N G 2004

(about 17 percent Asian, 15percent African American, 3percent Hispanic and NativeAmerican) from more thanninety countries, with morethan half of the undergraduatesand 60 percent of the doctoralstudents pursuing science and engineering(S&E) degrees. In the late 1980s, we foundthat most African Americans were not per-forming well academically, especially in S&E.My colleagues and I were able to secure a ma-jor donation from Baltimore philanthropistsRobert and Jane Meyerhoff, who had a specialinterest in supporting young African Ameri-cans, particularly men. As a result of that gift,the university created the Meyerhoff ScholarsProgram in 1988 for high-achieving minoritystudents in science and engineering. Nowother students are also in the program. Onemeasure of the challenge was that even I, witha background in mathematics, did not knowwhether we would succeed in increasing sub-stantially the number of minority studentswho excelled in these areas. In my research, infact, I had not found a predominantly whiteinstitution that had done so.

First, we in higher educationunfortunately have tended tofocus more on minority stu-dents’ deficiencies than ontheir strengths, and whilemuch of the discussion in edu-cation is about addressing the

achievement gap, we also need to ensure thatat least some minority students achieve at thehighest of levels. We have focused on creatinga climate that attracts serious minority stu-dents, sets high expectations of them, andthen takes a proactive approach in helpingthem to succeed. Most important, our seniorfaculty have taken ownership of the programand of the students’ education, and the stu-dents, themselves, comprise a community ofyoung scholars who support each other andfocus on the excitement of research. Such ef-forts have produced profound changes in theculture of the campus.

What did we do to create a supportive envi-ronment for minority students? First, we fo-cused on providing effective support for allstudents. We raised basic, though very impor-tant, questions about the general studentbody. We found that large numbers of them,

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Any lessons learned in working

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students in general

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regardless of race, were not doing well in sci-ence and were very discouraged, often leavingscience and sometimes the university.

What were the academic backgrounds ofour S&E students, and how were they doingacademically? What were faculty and stu-dents’ perceptions about coursework andavailable support beyond the classroom? Didstudents feel isolated? Did students knowwhat to do to succeed by such things as studyhabits, tutorial assistance, group study, andcommunicating with faculty?

We held a series of focus groups with stu-dents, faculty, and staff. Based on what we

learned during these discussions, we devel-oped strategies for giving more support to stu-dents, including, for example, strengtheningteaching in first-year courses, providing morefeedback to students earlier in the semester,encouraging group study, and strengtheningthe tutorial centers. We also looked closely atour admission standards for all students to de-termine which applicants could succeed at theuniversity given the level of available support.

Finally, we developed major partnershipswith national agencies and corporations andbegan recruiting more faculty with interest inthese areas, while expanding sponsored pro-grams and physical facilities. We decided tomake this issue a high priority of our fundrais-ing campaign and have raised millions of dol-lars to support these students and meet associ-ated operational expenses.

The Meyerhoff Scholars Program One of the Meyerhoff Scholars Program’s dis-tinguishing features is its assumption thatevery student competitively selected has theability not only to graduate—given appropri-ate opportunities and resources—but also toexcel, because the program engenders an ex-pectation of excellence. Its components in-clude (1) recruiting top minority students inmath and science; (2) a summer bridge pro-gram; (3) comprehensive merit scholarshipsupport; (4) active faculty involvement in re-cruiting, teaching, and students’ research ex-periences; (5) strong programmatic values in-cluding high achievement, study groups,tutoring, and preparing for graduate or profes-sional school; (6) substantive research experi-ences for students; (7) intensive academic ad-vising and personal counseling; (8) activeinvolvement of the entire campus; (9) linkingstudents with mentors; (10) a strong sense ofcommunity among the students; (11) commu-nication with the students’ families; and (12)continuous evaluation and documentation ofprogram outcomes (Maton, et al. 2000).

By all measures, the program is highly suc-cessful, graduating hundreds of students whogo on to graduate and professional schoolsand who are part of a pipeline of minority andfemale Ph.D.s, M.D.s, and M.D./Ph.D.s. Infact, the program has become the leading pro-ducer in the country of African Americansgoing on to science Ph.D.s. According to re-cent data, UMBC ranked first in the nation in

32 L I B E R A L ED U C A T I O N SP R I N G 2004

Excerpt from William Mather Lewis,“Educational Problems: Some Observationson Academic Tree Sitting,” AAC Bulletin,November 1930

The apparent “rage” for tree sitting endurancefeats on campuses in 1930 is used as ametaphor to describe the students, instructors,and environment of sheer and dull dogged-ness.—EDITOR

The academic tree sitter possesses aim-less endurance. The successful studentexhibits purposeful endurance. That the treesitting group is so large is not alone the faultof the individual but the college as well.The students are aimless in many casesbecause the college itself is aimless. Askmany college executives or faculty membersto define the purpose of their institution orof college education in general and you willbe regaled either with meaningless generali-ties or parrot-like repetition. And still if acollege is worth attending, its purpose iscapable of definition and of simple defini-tion as well. And if the student is to be asuccess in college, he must have a welldefined idea of what he is there for and whatthe college has to offer that is worthwhile.

1915Ninety Years in Print

the number of undergraduate biochemistrydegrees awarded to African Americans, pro-ducing nearly one-third of the national totalseveral years ago (American Society of Bio-chemistry and Molecular Biology 2000). Oursuccess at the undergraduate level has led tosimilarly successful initiatives in our doctoralprograms.

Most important, our efforts have strength-ened the performance of students in all disci-plines. So, what are some of the most importantlessons we have learned?

Taking ownership of the issue and buildingtrust and confidence to address it are essen-tial. One can tell how important an issue is toa campus by seeing who “the players” are. Towhat extent are the president, chancellor,provost, and appropriate deans, chairs, and se-nior faculty involved? Clearly, these leaderscan play instrumental roles in setting a tonefor high academic achievement among all stu-dents. To succeed, we needed not only to buildtrust, but also to identify allies among leadingfaculty and influential administrators whowould support the initiatives. These allieshelped colleagues to understand the issue andto realize that any lessons learned in workingwith minority students could help students ingeneral; this approach diffused what poten-tially could have been a substantial backlash.

Allocating institutional resources to sup-port diversity obviously is important, espe-cially during the current period of severe bud-get constraints. It is during this period that wesee what is most important to each of ourcampuses. It is important, too, for students tohave exposure to faculty and administratorsfrom diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds.We have been vigilant in recruiting minorityand women S&E tenure-track faculty. Onepoint that has impressed minority candidatesat UMBC is our success with minority stu-dents. Finally, it is important to create a cli-mate that allows people to discuss this issueopenly. We have found that in healthier cam-pus cultures, people talk honestly about diffi-cult issues, without pointing fingers.

Two years ago I was deeply honored to re-ceive Yale University’s Edward A. BouchetLeadership Award in Minority Graduate Edu-cation. Bouchet’s accomplishments, whichcame at the end of Reconstruction and theemergence of Jim Crow, should serve as an in-spiration to us all. We stand on the shoulders

of giants like Edward Bouchet, Fanny JacksonCoppin, and Patrick Healy. Our challenge isto believe that tens of thousands of minoritystudents in our institutions and in our com-munities have the same potential as theseleaders. Too few of them are comfortableshowing how smart they are. They need oursupport. Those of us in higher educationchose this profession because we know thateducation transforms lives. A century ago,DuBois (1903) recognized the special missionof our institutions. He wrote,

A university is a human invention for thetransmission of knowledge and culture fromgeneration to generation, through thetraining of quick minds and pure hearts,and for this work no other human inven-tion will suffice. nnnnn

To respond to this article, e-mail liberaled@aacu.org,with the author’s name on the subject line.

WORKS CITEDAmerican Council on Education. 2002. Minorities in

higher education. Nineteenth annual status report.Washington, DC: American Council on Education.

American Society of Biochemistry and MolecularBiology. 2000. Graduation survey. ASBMS News,January-February.

Bok, Derek and William G. Bowen. 1998. The shapeof the river: Long-term consequences of consideringrace in college and university admissions. Princeton,NJ: Princeton University Press.

College Board. 1999. Reaching the top: A report of thenational task force on minority high achievement. NewYork: College Entrance Examination Board.

DuBois, W. E. B. 1903. The talented tenth. In Thesouls of black folks. Chicago: A. C. McClurg & Co.

Grutter v. Bollinger, et al. U.S. Supreme Court, No.02-241, June 23, 2003.

Maton, K., F. Hrabowski, and C. Schmitt. 2000.African American college student excelling in thesciences: College and postcollege outcomes in theMeyerhoff Scholars Program. Journal of Research inScience Teaching, 37:7, 629-654.

Thernstrom, A. and S. Thernstrom. 2003. No excuses:Closing the racial gap in learning. New York: Simonand Schuster.

U.S. Department of Education, National Center forEducation Statistics. 2000. Research and develop-ment report: Entry and persistence of women and mi-norities in college science and engineering education.Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Education.

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