The new series from Nature celebrates leaders of inclusion in science
A Conversation With Freeman Hrabowski About Science Education, Education and Workforce Development in the 21st Century: The Impact of Race in Science, Technology, and Engineering
Even though he officially retired from a 30-year career as president of the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) in 2022, Freeman Hrabowski’s calendar is still packed with invitations to share his wisdom on science education and workforce development with leading US university, government and business leaders. It’s something for which Hrabowski has a long and storied track record that they all want to know.
In October 2022, Nature published a special issue on the urgent need to tackle racism in science (see go.nature.com/3uxidgb). The journal has returned to the topic repeatedly in response to racism’s continuing and pervasive effect on many scientists’ working lives.
Growing up in Alabama during the civil rights movement in the 1960s, Hrabowski says he drew on those experiences when he created the Meyerhoff Scholars Program at UMBC in 1988, which became a leading model for increasing the diversity of university students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines. In 1990 a small amount of US science and engineering PhDs were awarded to black scholars. Since 1993, more than 1,500 students have graduated through the Meyerhoff programme; 448 went on to earn PhDs, including 78 who gained MD/PhDs. The programme has been replicated at numerous US universities, most recently at Stony Brook in New York, with a US$56.6 million investment in 2022 from the Simons Foundation.
When I was growing up in Alabama, I was sitting in the back of church when I first heard a man named Martin Luther King Jr speak. (I also spent a week in jail after taking part at the age of 12 in the children’s march in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1963 — a peaceful protest against racial segregation.) King posed this question to the group: what will it take to open the eyes and hearts of people to allow our children to go to better schools?
The first thing I did when I arrived at UMBC was look at the data. Large numbers of students — not just students of colour — were not succeeding in science and engineering. It turned out that many of them did not have a background in mathematics. It was clear that we needed to be asking the right questions about what level of maths background was necessary to succeed in chemistry or physics. We then talked to students.
Some men on my faculty would ask why the programme was needed if they were nice to all students. I said when you are the only one in the room that looks like you, it feels different. I invited several of those men to spend one full day at a historically Black university. They came back with a renewed respect for how isolating it can feel, even when people are nice. I pointed out that they were only there for one day and 50 years old. Imagine being a teenager at school. We’re not trying to do ‘warm and fuzzy’ at UMBC; we’re trying to understand perspective.
The programme has a few key features. The summer bridge programme is important. Students spend a summer before university begins studying maths, English and science, so they build a strong foundation in the basics before taking higher-level courses. Another key component is building community. The importance of peer support and working in groups was emphasized by my research as it showed that the highest-achieving students were not succeeding in science. I say it takes scientists to produce scientists. The sooner that students get involved in labs with real-life science, the more excited they can be.
Too many students think that maths and science are just for a few people. School teachers give children the message early on that they’re either a maths and science student or a history and arts student. I would like people to know that they are able to use both sides of their brains. Creativity is so important to connect disciplines to figure out the best questions to ask. The numbers are only one aspect of math. It’s about the whole Universe. It’s about patterns. It is about how we think. The best, most effective scientists are those who ask good questions.
What Have We Learned About Higher Education? A Conversation with Freeman Hrabowski, Changemaker at the First University of Maryland Baltimore County
I believe we should get away from the word Woke because it immediately divides people and nobody really knows what it means. The word that I use now is inclusion. And that includes white males, especially because the US demographic group that has had the greatest decline in participation in higher education is white, working-class males.
I did not decide to study another language, French, until I was around 65 years old. Students sometimes say, “Don’t you think you’re old?” I have been studying for over seven years and I have always had time to speak French with others.
People are pushing back against discrimination to make a difference. The series will feature their stories and achievements.
Our inaugural Changemaker, Freeman Hrabowski, exemplifies the spirit of the series. Hrabowski is a mathematician and former president of the University of Maryland Baltimore County (UMBC) in Catonsville. UMBC has an important place in the history of US higher education. The first public university in Maryland to be open to people from all races was founded in 1966.
When injustice becomes uncomfortable, why do we should care about it? An introduction to the Kaluza-Klein bestselling author, Samitar Choudhury, M. S. Kostke, J. A.
Such accounts of facing injustice and then constantly having to fight it will feature repeatedly in the series. They are not comfortable to read. It is not enough to highlight these experiences just yet, they need to be highlighted when they become history.
