President of UMBC Addresses Bishop McNamara
Dr. Freeman Hrabowski, President of UMBC (University of Maryland
Baltimore County), enjoyed the gift of a Bishop McNamara sweatshirt
from President/CEO, Marco J. Clark ‘85, after his inspiring talk to the
BMHS community on Thursday, January 17, 2013. Dr. Hrabowski
spoke to members of the faculty, staff, student body, parents and
alumni about his involvement in the Civil Rights Movement and how
civil rights impacts today’s youth. He also spoke on the importance
of higher education for all, including minorities and women. Among
those in attendance were BMHS Social Studies teacher & UMBC grad,
Laura Keller, and UMBC students Meagan Beach ‘09, Dillon DiSalvo
‘10, and Anthony Venida ‘09.
Dr. Hrabowski has served as President of UMBC since 1992. His
research and publications focus on science and math education, with
special emphasis on minority participation and performance. He
was recently named by President Obama to chair the newly created
President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for
African Americans. 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 four years
(2009-12). During this period, U.S. News also consistently
ranked UMBC among the nation’s leading institutions for “Best
Undergraduate Teaching”. TIME magazine named him one of
America’s 10 Best College Presidents in 2009, and one of the
“100 Most Influential People in the World” in 2012. In 2011,
he was named one of seven Top American Leaders by The
Washington Post and the Harvard Kennedy School’s Center for
Public Leadership.
A child-leader in the Civil Rights Movement, Hrabowski was
prominently featured in Spike Lee’s 1997 documentary, Four
Little Girls, about the racially motivated bombing, in 1963, of
Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Born in 1950
in Birmingham, Alabama, Hrabowski graduated at 19 from
Hampton Institute with highest honors in mathematics. At
the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he received
his M.A. (mathematics) and four years later his Ph.D. (higher
educati