Freeman A. Hrabowski, III: “American Higher Education at the Crossroads: Reflections on Access and Student Success in the Past 60 years”

The Humanities Forum presents the annual Daphne Harrison Lecture, featuring Freeman A. Hrabowski, III, president of UMBC, who will speak on “American Higher Education at the Crossroads: Reflections on Access and Student Success in the Past 60 years.”

Even before the COVID-19 pandemic took hold, rapid and dramatic demographic and technological changes presented our nation’s colleges and universities with enormous challenges in educating students and preparing them for successful careers. In this lecture, President Hrabowski will discuss trends related to access to higher education and the success of students from all backgrounds, and he will emphasize lessons learned over a career in academic leadership, including three decades as UMBC’s President. He will trace his development as an educator to his childhood experiences, including participating as a child leader in the Civil Rights Movement, and he will discuss best practices for creating a culture of inclusive excellence, academic innovation, and shared leadership.

Freeman A. Hrabowski, president of UMBC since 1992, is a consultant on science and math education to national agencies, universities, and school systems. In 2012, he was named by President Obama to chair the President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for African Americans. He leads a university that has been recognized as a model for inclusive excellence by such publications as U.S. News, which the past 10 years has recognized UMBC as a national leader in academic innovation and undergraduate teaching. In 2012, he was named one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World by TIME, and more recently he received the American Council on Education’s Lifetime Achievement Award (2018), the University of California, Berkeley’s Clark Kerr Award (2019), and the University of California, San Francisco’s UCSF Medal (2020). His most recent book, The Empowered University, examines how university communities support academic success by cultivating an empowering institutional culture.

Limited in person seating will be available at the Fine Arts Recital Hall. Please visit here to reserve free tickets. This event will be also streamed online via YouTube.

UMBC is committed to creating an accessible and inclusive environment for all faculty, staff, students, and visitors. Live-captioning will be provided at all online events. To request additional accessibility accommodations, please contact us at dreshercenter@umbc.edu.

The Humanities Forum is organized by the Dresher Center for the Humanities. This event is co-sponsored by the Office of the President; College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences; and the Department of Africana Studies.