‘Still Young Enough to Be Hungry’

Search consultants have long been spurned by Freeman A. Hrabowski III, president of the University of Maryland-Baltimore County.

He is among the most sought-after leaders in higher education, nominated in scores of presidential searches. Yet Mr. Hrabowski has consistently taken a pass, leading some observers to wonder what has kept him at UMBC for 20 years, 15 of them as the university’s president.

Mr. Hrabowski (the H is silent) is the candidate “with the most sustaining visibility” in presidential searches, says R. William Funk, a search consultant who has been asked to contact Mr. Hrabowski as part of every presidential search he has overseen for top institutions in the last three years. “With equal certainty, I know that he’s going to say No.”

During his tenure, Mr. Hrabowski, 56, has guided the transformation of a largely unknown commuter campus into a hot property in a crowded local field that includes the University of Maryland’s flagship campus in College Park and the Johns Hopkins University. UMBC, with an enrollment of 11,800 students, has been widely praised for its science and engineering programs, and for extensive corporate ties, such as a collaborative research agreement with Rohm and Haas, a Philadelphia-based chemical company, and scholarships and research partnerships with Northrop Grumman, a defense-technology corporation.

The lure of Mr. Hrabowski’s résumé, though, goes beyond his accomplishments at UMBC. He is a black man in a position where 86 percent of his peers are white, according to a 2006 study by the American Council on Education. What’s more, he is a mathematician who earned a Ph.D. at 24 and was a child leader in the civil-rights movement, making him a charismatic advocate for one of his favorite subjects: improving science education, especially for minority students.

At a time when the average tenure of a college president is 8.5 years, Mr. Hrabow- ski, who came to his institution as a vice provost in 1987 and has been on the campus for half of its 41-year history, is an example of how a long-term leader can benefit an institution. Mr. Hrabowski has steered programs from birth to maturation, such as the highly successful Meyerhoff Scholarship Program, which has paid the tuition and fees for hundreds of black students in science and engineering.

Mr. Hrabowski’s own reputation as a leader and sought-after speaker has grown in tandem with the university’s development. Still, the University of Maryland-Baltimore County is not Cornell or Brown, two institutions that reportedly contacted Mr. Hrabowski about their presidential openings. (He and some search consultants declined to discuss specific presidential searches.)

“We in education should be less concerned with prestige and more concerned about what difference we can make,” says Mr. Hrabowski when asked why he has passed up opportunities at more-esteemed colleges. He says his university is creating the model for a public institution that is both inclusive and academically rigorous, and that is enough of a challenge to keep him running through his high-energy, 13-hour workdays.

“We’re still young enough to be hungry,” he says. “We can be much better.”

A History of Protests

During his first week at the university, in 1987, Mr. Hrabowski walked into the administration building and found television-news crews and an entire floor occupied by hundreds of protesting black students. A fellow staff member told him not to worry about the demonstration, which was against perceived racism on the campus, saying, “This happens every spring at UMBC.”

It was hardly Mr. Hrabowski’s first experience with a protest over racism. As a ninth grader in his native Birmingham, Ala., Mr. Hrabowski was arrested and jailed for helping lead a civil-rights demonstration. His experience was described in Spike Lee’s 1997 documentary 4 Little Girls, which depicted the 1963 Birmingham church bombing that killed four young black girls, one of whom Mr. Hrabowski knew well.

During the protest in 1987, black students at the university were upset over racist incidents that had occurred in dormitories and, more importantly, Mr. Hrabowski says, the sense of isolation felt by many of them on the campus. The demonstration surprised Mr. Hrabowski, who says he didn’t understand the problems or how ingrained they were.

In addition to its history of racial tension, UMBC in 1987 was a commuter institution with less than half of its freshmen living on the campus. The university, about 10 miles southwest of downtown Baltimore, had few central gathering spots for students, with a widely mocked campus appearance that was heavy on bricks and short on attractive architecture.

With a total budget of $61.5-million that year, the institution was also lacking in graduate programs and research capacity. It awarded only 15 Ph.D.'s in 1987, and received $10-million in research grants and contracts in 1990.

Much has changed since then. To view the 500-acre campus, Mr. Hrabowski often takes visitors up a small spiral staircase that leads to the roof of the 10-story administration building that houses his office. He grows animated while describing the many construction projects inside the oval campus ring, much of which can be glimpsed from the roof.

Since 1990, 15 new buildings have gone up, including five residence halls. The university is now much more residential, with 72 percent of freshmen living on the campus. Students pack new public spaces, such as the Commons, a five-year-old, bright and busy student center that features dining and performance spaces. The annual budget has grown to $318-million, with $85-million in sponsored research in the 2006 fiscal year. The university awarded 89 Ph.D.'s in 2006.

According to faculty members and administrators, Mr. Hrabowski has been the driving force behind many of the new programs.

From the roof, he points to a nearby cluster of buildings that constitute the 110-acre Charlestown retirement community. The development is the brainchild of John Erickson, founder and chief executive officer of Erickson Retirement Communities, which built Charlestown in 1983, and now owns several such campuses that are home to 18,000 retirees.

Mr. Hrabowski made sure that Mr. Erickson would be more than just a well-to-do neighbor. He secured a $5-million gift from him, which, after being matched by the state, became the seed money for the new Erickson School at UMBC, which focuses on aging in the context of management and policy.

The Erickson School’s dean, J. Kevin Eckert, says Mr. Hrabowski has been a key recruiter for the new venture, which last fall began offering an undergraduate major in the management of services for the aging. David H. Sachs, the recently hired vice dean and a professor at the Erickson School, was previously executive director of executive education at Harvard University’s business school. He says he was impressed by Mr. Hrabowski’s commitment to the vision for the new school.

“It reminded me of the type of boldness of vision that Harvard can afford to have,” Mr. Sachs says.

Many people on this campus say Mr. Hrabowski lends strength to major projects like the Erickson School. And consistency at the top is more important at UMBC than at other, more-established universities, as the relatively young institution has sought to “forge its identity” says John J. Suess, vice president for information technology and chief information officer, who first arrived at the institution as an undergraduate in 1976.

“It’s clear that we’re a much different university under his tenure,” Mr. Suess says.

Robert L. Bogomolny is president of the University of Baltimore, which, like the other 12 public universities in Maryland, has faced uneven state financial support in recent years. He envies Mr. Hrabowski’s clout during budget negotiations.

“He has developed a network of people who respect and trust him,” Mr. Bogomolny says. “Because he delivers, he starts in a very high place” during budget season.

Graduating Scientists

No partnership project at UMBC has been more important than the Meyerhoff Scholarship Program, which has branded the university as a place where black students can succeed in science and engineering.

In the wake of the 1987 protest, the university found that the isolation black students felt was caused in part by poor academic performance. Black students were lagging behind their white and Asian peers, particularly in science and engineering.

A year later, Mr. Hrabowski met Robert Meyerhoff, a Baltimore philanthropist and civil engineer who wanted to provide financial support for high-achieving black students in mathematics and science. Mr. Hrabowski made a pitch, and Mr. Meyerhoff gave the university $500,000 to start the scholarship.

The endowment now stands at $8-million, which is used to cover the tuition, fees, and room and board of 261 scholarship recipients, who now include women and students of other races. Nearly all of the program’s 411 graduates have pursued advanced degrees. The Meyerhoffs, as the scholarship’s recipients are known on the campus, work in teams, get experience in laboratories, and benefit from an extensive support system.

In 2006 the journal Science published a flattering study of the program, which has been widely praised as a “blueprint” for overhauling science education at other institutions.

The Meyerhoff program in part attracts the type of student that Mr. Hrabowski says the university was built for: “new Americans.” The typical UMBC student is middle class, he says, but 33 percent of them are first-generation college students.

“UMBC transforms lives,” Mr. Hrabowski says. “That notion excites me. We are setting an example of focusing on lots of people who might not have had opportunities to go to college.”

That quest, says Mr. Hrabowski and many who know him, is what has kept him at UMBC. “It’s not a job,” he says. “Your life is about the institution.”

Mr. Hrabowski is describing UMBC as he strolls around the bustling campus, wearing rimless glasses and a black fedora. He looks younger than 56, and packs some muscle under his dress shirt. He stays fit by playing tennis with students and donors, and has a regular 10:30 p.m. workout session with a personal trainer.

Mr. Hrabowski’s colleagues know to prepare for a slow trip across the campus if they join him for a walk, as he’s bound to stop often to chat with students, and faculty and staff members, about whom he remembers a startling amount of personal information. One engineering student he greets on this afternoon blurts out his 4.0 grade-point average before Mr. Hrabowski can even ask a question.

The president then explains to a listener that he made a bet with the student, challenging him to maintain straight A’s all throughout his time at UMBC, and notes that the student is captain of the rugby team.

During the course of this busy day, Mr. Hrabowski also advises a coach on the course load of a struggling athlete and meets with another student to discuss her career plans.

The young woman, a senior, is being considered for a Fulbright scholarship. While discussing graduate programs and fellowships, Mr. Hrabowski asks for her score on the Graduate Record Examinations, which was 1330. He tells her to sign up for a preparation class and take the exam again.

“The kids from the Ivies have done a lot of prepping,” he says. “All their lives.” As she gets up to leave his office, Mr. Hrabowski says: “You have done superbly here. Superbly. So just feel good about it.”

Breaking Out

Mr. Hrabowski has received many plaudits over his tenure, most notably for the Meyerhoff program. But that well-known story can be limiting, he says.

“I have to constantly say to people that UMBC is a predominantly white institution,” he says, a dilemma he realizes is complicated by the fact that he, as the primary campus cheerleader, is usually viewed first as a black mathematician. “I am often, when I leave campus, the only person who looks like me.”

But Mr. Hrabowski likes challenges, says Donald N. Langenberg, former chancellor of the University System of Maryland, who helped hire him.

“He doesn’t want to be sitting in a president’s office at the helm of a huge, well-reputed, traditionally outstanding university,” Mr. Langenberg says. “He likes to build things.”

Mr. Hrabowski says he wants his institution to break out of any confining boxes. In doing so he is expanding his range as a leader. The walls of the president’s office feature the framed covers of books published by UMBC professors, almost all of them in the humanities. Mr. Hrabowski touts the history department’s success, saying its faculty members have published 50 books over the last decade.

Search consultants generally say the ideal tenure for a public-university president is a decade. Much more than that, and a president is at risk of stagnating. But faculty members and administrators at UMBC say Mr. Hrabowski is far from wearing out his welcome.

Kenneth A. Shaw, chancellor emeritus and a university professor at Syracuse University, says he thinks “it’s very hard for someone to stay as long” as Mr. Hrabowski has, particularly at a public university. However, he says Mr. Hrabowski’s enthusiasm and humility have kept him fresh.

Mr. Hrabowski says he continues to find new challenges. In February he gave a major speech at the annual meeting of the American Council on Education. He called for stronger leadership in increasing access for a broad range of students, including women, first-generation college students, older students, and those from low-income families.

“One of our challenges is to avoid the risk of pitting one group against another,” he said. “It is also important that we appreciate not only the challenges these groups face, but their potential to contribute to the public good.”

Mr. Hrabowski says he is enthusiastic about selling the university’s emerging strengths in the humanities and graduate programs, as well as efforts to encourage women in science and engineering. He is also involved in brokering further corporate partnerships, including discussions with IBM, and is working on ambitious plans for the Erickson School, which is slated to add graduate and executive-education programs.

William E. Kirwan, chancellor of the University System of Maryland, says Mr. Hrabowski realizes that UMBC’s success allows both the university and Mr. Hrabowski to “play a role on a much larger stage,” pointing to the president’s many invitations to speak to corporate and higher-education audiences. “If he goes somewhere else,” Mr. Kirwan says, “he’s starting all over.”

http://chronicle.com Section: Money & Management Volume 53, Issue 32, Page A30