An article in today's Washington Post caught my eye. We've been hearing a lot of late about the sorry state of America's educational system. Snake oil vendors like Michelle Rhee puff up their resumes and make claims that are, at best, unbelievable. Then there's Freeman Hrabowski, president of University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC). He's too busy making things happen to prance around in the limelight.
From a distance, it appears the man works magic. Once upon a time I had the privilege to watch the process unfold up close. It's not magic, but it is still awe-inspiring. Follow me over the fold for a cool story about what is RIGHT with education in America.
I think it was 1999, the tech boom was going strong and AOL was in the ascendency. Steve Case was the toast of the town, and he along with several other wealthy tech entrepreneurs from northern Virginia were working on PowerUP, a non-profit designed to breach the "digital divide" as it was known back then.
Probably in pursuit of his help, the development team at UMBC had arranged for him to get an honorary doctoral degree from the college. To showcase the student achievements at the college, the award ceremony and dinner were coordinated with a science and technology fair at the Albin Kuhn Library and Gallery on UMBC's campus.
There were the usual congratulatory speeches and gracious acceptances, none of which left an impression on me. The food was fine and the company pleasant, flush with a sense of self-satisfaction. I, along with a lot of other local players, were invited to fill out the event as a congratulatory audience. All in all, it was nothing to write home about. Most of the attendees didn't really care about the event; it was a good networking opportunity. However, an extraordinary encounter with a sophomore student earlier that afternoon left an indelible imprint and prompted me to seek out Freeman for a direct talk.
I had been wandering through the student exhibits, and stopped by a biology presentation. It was a bit out of place in the hall. As I recall, most of the exhibits were computer-related design, technology, graphics, and math. A young, thin black kid stood in front of the poster. I remember stopping in my tracks because the title of the poster struck me as amazing. "Site Directed Mutagenesis of the CD4 Receptor."
For those who don't know, the CD4 receptor is a marker for a type of cell called the T cell. These are part of the immune system. The loss of these cells is an important part of the pathology of HIV. Now you know why it is called AIDS, Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome. Without going in to the details, let me tell you about this amazing encounter.
The student standing in front of the poster was a young, thin black kid. He came up to me as I was reading the poster and asked if I had any questions. More out of boredom and politeness, I smiled and said, "sure, why don't you walk me through the work and give me the highlights." He then proceeded to give me an extraordinary presentation on the history, context, materials and methods, results, conclusions, and future potential implications for this exciting work at the cutting edge of molecular biology.
"Is this your thesis work?" I asked.
"I'm only a sophomore," he said, with a big grin. "This was my lab rotation last semester."
"I had no idea molecular biology had moved so fast," I exclaimed. "Ten years ago this would have been Nobel Prize nominated work. Five years ago, it would have been an excellent post-doctoral project."
He laughed and said, "You're not the first person to say that."
We talked a bit about the lab he was working in, where he was heading with his career and how he wound up at UMBC. It turned out he was from North Carolina. He was attending UMBC as a Meyerhoff Scholar, one of the prestigious award programs Hrabowski had brought to the campus.
After listening to this, I looked at the kid and said, "You could have gone anywhere. I'm sure you could have gotten in to any Ivy League school you wanted."
He laughed, "Oh yeah, I got accepted at Harvard and everywhere else I applied."
"But you came HERE?" I said with incredulity. "Why?!?!"
"Dr. Hrabowski called my mother. He told her about all the opportunities here, NIH, the Meyerhoff, NASA. And then he promised her, 'We will take care of your boy.' Of all the schools that accepted me, including all the Ivy League schools, he was the only president who called my mother. That really impressed her. She told me Harvard would be there for me in the future, but UMBC is where I needed to be now. So here I am."
Looking at this young man, the work he was doing, and the future that lay before him pregnant with possibility and promise, filled me with a sense of wonder and amazement. The odds against a black kid getting in to college, even then, were steep. The odds a black male would get in to college, steeper still. The odds a black male would major in science, steeper still. The odds of succeeding, steeper still. We're talking single digit odds. Rarity personified. At that moment all the networking, schmoozing, and strategic development that motivated me to attend the soiree disappeared. I knew I had to meet Hrabowski.
I caught up with the president at the pre-dinner reception. I congratulated him on the caliber of his students. Then I relayed the story of my encounter with the kid from North Carolina. He burst out with a hearty laugh. "That's true. I did call his mother."
"How the hell did you convince her to choose you over Harvard?"
"That was easy. She told me her son wanted to be a doctor. I told her Harvard will be there when he is ready for medical school. We will make sure he is ready for Harvard when he leaves here."
I told him no other school had called the family and that his personal involvement had left a significant impression. He smiled and said,
"That's the secret. I recruit science, technology, math and engineering talent the way other schools recruit athletes."
The proof of his success can be seen with even a cursory examination of recent UMBC Awards and Accomplishments.
UMBC is now considered one of the nation's highly selective public universities. The SAT scores for incoming freshmen are consistently above Maryland and national averages; the average score of the top quartile is 1400. The freshman class typically includes approximately 150 valedictorians, salutatorians, and students with 4.0 high-school GPAs, many of whom are attracted by UMBC's merit-based Scholars Programs Artist, Humanities, Public Affairs and Meyerhoff Scholars Programs for high-achieving students.
One-third of UMBC's graduates immediately go on to post-graduate study, most recently ranging from programs at Yale, Harvard, Oxford, the University of Pennsylvania, and Johns Hopkins, to the American Film Institute and the Institute of Archaelogy in University College London.
No wonder UMBC's Chess Team won the Pan American Intercollegiate Team Chess Championship five times in the past six years. Its record includes victories over teams from Harvard, MIT, Stanford and Princeton. But the highlight for them had to be this:
In 1997, the team played host to world-champion Garry Kasparov in a match at UMBC. Kasparov declined to play UMBC's top-ranked player.
So there you have it America.
Freeman Hrabowski is giving away the secret to his success. If anyone is listening and wants to copy his proven formula for success, now you know what to do.
