Freeman A. Hrabowski, III, president emeritus of UMBC (The University of Maryland, Baltimore County), works with college, university, K-12, government, and business leaders as a consultant, lecturer, and speaker on such topics as leadership, STEM education, workforce development, and civic engagement.

Dr.  Hrabowski’s research and publications focus on science and math education, with special emphasis on minority participation and performance. He chaired the National Academies’ committee that produced the report, Expanding Underrepresented Minority Participation: America’s Science and Technology Talent at the Crossroads. President Obama named him chair of the President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for African Americans in 2012.  His widely viewed TED talk highlights the Four Pillars of College Success in Science.

With philanthropist Robert Meyerhoff, he co-founded the Meyerhoff Scholars Program in 1988. The program is open to high-achieving students committed to pursuing graduate and professional degrees and research careers in STEM and advancing underrepresented minorities in these fields. The program is recognized as a national model.  Based on program outcomes, Dr. Hrabowski has authored numerous articles and co-authored five books. Beating the Odds and Overcoming the Odds (Oxford University Press), focus on parenting and high-achieving African American males and females in science. Holding Fast to Dreams: Empowering Youth from the Civil Rights Crusade to STEM Achievement (Beacon Press), describes the events and experiences that played a central role in his development as an educator and leader. The Empowered University: Shared Leadership, Culture Change, and Academic Success (Johns Hopkins University Press), written with two colleagues, examines how university communities support academic success by cultivating an empowering institutional culture. His latest book, The Resilient University: How Purpose and Inclusion Drive Success (Johns Hopkins University Press), written with three UMBC colleagues, focuses on how leaders can use the qualities of openness, resilience, courage, passion, and hope to drive student success, even in challenging times.

 In 2022, Dr. Hrabowski was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, and he was also named the inaugural Centennial Fellow by the American Council on Education. In addition, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) launched the Freeman Hrabowski Scholars Program in 2022 with a commitment of $1.5 billion to help build a scientific workforce that more fully reflects our increasingly diverse country. In October 2022, he was named the inaugural Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Commemorative Lecture Speaker by Harvard University. In April 2023, the National Academy of Sciences awarded him the Public Welfare Medal, the Academy’s most prestigious award, and inducted him as a member of the Academy, for his extraordinary use of science for the public good.

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 for six years (2009-14). For the past nine years (2015-23), U.S. News ranked UMBC in the top ten on a list of the nation’s “most innovative” national universities. U.S. News also consistently ranks UMBC among the nation’s leading institutions for “Best Undergraduate Teaching.” TIME magazine named Dr. Hrabowski 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 received both the TIAA-CREF Theodore M. Hesburgh Award for Leadership Excellence and the Carnegie Corporation of New York’s Academic Leadership Award, recognized by many as the nation’s highest awards among higher education leaders. Also 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. In 2012, he received the Heinz Award for his contributions to improving the human condition and was among the inaugural inductees into the U.S. News & World Report STEM Solutions Leadership Hall of Fame. More recently, he received the American Council on Education’s Lifetime Achievement Award (2018), the University of California, Berkeley’s Clark Kerr Award (2019), the University of California, San Francisco’s UCSF Medal (2020), and the New American Colleges and Universities Ernest L. Boyer Award (2021).

He serves as a consultant to the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the National Academies, and universities and school systems nationally. He has served on the boards of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Marguerite Casey Foundation (Chair), The Urban Institute, The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, T. Rowe Price Group, McCormick & Company, France-Merrick Foundation, The Maryland Humanities Council, and the Baltimore Equitable Society.

Examples of other honors include election to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS), the National Academy of Public Administration, and the American Philosophical Society; receiving the prestigious McGraw Prize in Education, the U.S. Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring, the Columbia University Teachers College Medal for Distinguished Service, the GE African American Forum ICON Lifetime Achievement Award, the American Educational Research Association’s Distinguished Public Service Award, Black Engineer of the Year (BEYA) by the BEYA STEM Global Competitiveness Conference, Educator of the Year by the World Affairs Council of Washington, DC, and Marylander of the Year by the editors of the Baltimore Sun; being listed among Fast Company magazine’s first Fast 50 Champions of Innovation in business and technology, and receiving the Technology Council of Maryland’s Lifetime Achievement Award. He also holds honorary degrees from nearly 50  institutions – including Harvard, Princeton, Duke, the University of Michigan, the University of North Carolina - Chapel Hill, Johns Hopkins University, and Georgetown University.

A child-leader in the Civil Rights Movement, he was prominently featured in Spike Lee’s 1997 documentary, Four Little Girls, on the racially motivated bombing in 1963 of Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.

Born in 1950 in Birmingham, Alabama, Dr. Hrabowski graduated from Hampton Institute with highest honors in mathematics. He received his M.A. (mathematics) and Ph.D. (higher education administration/statistics) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Dr. Hrabowski lives in Baltimore, Maryland with his wife and partner Jacqueline Coleman Hrabowski.