Hrabowski

A national task force looking at the lack of achievement by top minority students has singled out the University of Maryland, Baltimore County as a success story, in a report released today."

With what was once primarily a commuter school rapidly turning into a residential campus, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County needed more dormitory space quickly.In stepped John C. Erickson, developer of the Charlestown and Oak Crest retirement communities, with an unusual proposal that will provide the school with 250 new dormitory beds by next fall.Under a plan approved by the state Board of Public Works last week, the $14 million building -- which eventually will house 500 students -- will be built by the Erickson Foundation, with the foundation receiving the money students pay to rent the rooms.

When he assumed the president's seat at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County campus in 1992, Freeman A. Hrabowski III faced a double-barreled challenge sure to have given lesser souls the shakes.For one, legislators were in the midst of a series of deep state budget cuts brought on by the recession of the early 1990s. The result: Hrabowski and other presidents in the state system had to stir up ideas for new revenue to make up for a 20 percent reduction in state funding. The other quandary facing Hrabowski was a student body that seemed to him largely ill-prepared for the challenges of the emerging global economy.

Maggie G. Hrabowski, 81, schoolteacherMaggie Geeter Hrabowski, a retired teacher who moved to Maryland from Birmingham, Ala., this year to live with relatives, died of kidney failure Sunday at Levindale Geriatric Center. She was 81.A native of Wetumpka, Ala., Mrs. Hrabowski taught in Birmingham public schools from 1952 to 1978.She graduated from Alabama State University in 1938 and received a master's degree from Tuskegee Institute in 1963. She did graduate work at Peabody's Teachers College in Nashville, Tenn.

CLARIFICATIONSunday's Education Beat left the impression that the Midtown Academy (410-225-3257) accepts only students from Reservoir Hill and Bolton Hill. In fact, admission is open to any Baltimore child in grades kindergarten through third.FREEMAN A. Hrabowski saw his friend Cynthia Wesley after school on Friday, Sept. 13, 1963. Freeman had turned 13 the month before and had just started 10th grade. Cynthia was a year older. They chatted for a time, and Freeman said as they parted, "See you on Monday."

While driving one crisp afternoon, Freeman A. Hrabowski III spotted James T. Brady, the state secretary of economic development, in the lane to his left. Dr. Hrabowski, president of the University of Maryland Baltimore County, waved furiously.He was trying, without success, to catch Mr. Brady's eye. In traffic, and in life, Dr. Hrabowski hungers for recognition: first for his campus, which turns 30 this year, and not entirely coincidentally, for himself.To an extent unrivaled by his peers, Dr. Hrabowski, 45, invests his own identity in his campus and particularly its students.

HOW MANY universities show more interest in their nationally rated chess club than the football team? That's the way it is these days at the University of Maryland Baltimore County, an institution that turned 30 this week, but which already has big ambitions for the next three decades.It didn't start that way. UMBC came into being through a political power play by Baltimore County's lone state senator in those days, James A. Pine, who needed to fortify his support in the west-end. Thus, a campus of the University of Maryland was planted in Catonsville.

Sponsors of the Maryland Entrepreneur of the Year Award are accepting nominations to honor individuals who have created successful and growing businesses.Nominations for the 1996 award program, begun by Ernst & Young LLP, the accounting and consulting firm, must be received by April 5. The winner of the Maryland award will be announced June 26. That person will be eligible for the national award to be announced Nov. 16 in Palm Springs, Calif.Judges for the Maryland awards -- the seventh year they have been given -- are David S. Cordish, chief executive officer of Cordish Co.; Jean C. Halle, vice president and chief financial officer of The Baltimore Sun Co.; Charles O. Heller, director of the Dingman Center for Entrepreneurship at the University of Maryland; Freeman H. Hrabowski III, president, University of Maryland-Baltimore County; Carroll D. Nordhoff, executive vice president, McCormick & Co.; Nancy D. O'Neil, partner, Piper & Marbury, LLP; and Jane M. Shaab, executive director, the Technology Council of the Greater Baltimore Committee.

Havre de Grace. -- It's reassuring for us paranoids here in the outback to know that the University of Maryland Baltimore County isn't threatened with Marxism after all.On January 5, I wrote about a lawsuit brought against that institution by an instructor of German, who asserted that she was denied tenure because her politics were insufficiently Marxist. I didn't take the lawsuit very seriously, but I did use it to poke fun at those campuses where Marxism retains an intellectual stature it has lost everywhere else in the world.

The best friendships sometimes start in strange ways. For UMBC senior Loren Siebert, it began one day last spring when the university's president asked casually, "What are you reading these days?"Freeman A. Hrabowski's question led to an invitation that the 21-year-old computer wizard join him in reading material that might broaden his outlook -- ranging from autobiographies to the stock market analysis to Jane Austen."That was the beginning of a real great friendship and the most profound of mentors," Mr. Siebert said.

Freeman A. Hrabowski III is one of America's 10 best college presidents, according to the latest issue of Time magazine, adding to the list of national honors received this year by the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. In August, UMBC topped a U.S. News & World Report list of up-and-coming national universities and also finished fourth on the magazine's list of universities committed to undergraduate teaching. Hrabowski said Thursday that applications are up 60 percent compared with this time last year and that prospective students often mention the high-profile rankings when they contact UMBC.

Freeman Hrabowski III is a hard-charging, competitive guy. The president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County plowed past naysayers more than a decade ago to build a research park on campus. He cried publicly last year when the school's basketball team, long overshadowed by campus chess jocks, clinched its first bid to the NCAA tournament. And when UMBC found itself last week deadlocked with another school in one of the most cutthroat competitions in all of academia - U.S. News & World Report's annual college rankings - Hrabowski happily shared the spotlight.

The University of Maryland, Baltimore County will apply for an on-campus Army ROTC unit, officials said yesterday, ending weeks of speculation about an issue that has sparked heated protest on the Catonsville campus. The decision, which was expected to be publicly announced last night, means that the state college could receive an influx of new ROTC scholarships beginning this fall. Officer training on campus would probably begin about 2010. "We believe that there is an important role for universities to play in helping to prepare leaders in all sectors of American society," said UMBC President Freeman A. Hrabowski III. The Army's Cadet Command still has to approve UMBC's application, but Maj. Stephen D. Pomper, the new head of the Johns Hopkins University's ROTC unit - where about 20 UMBC cadets now train - said the public college's "chances are extremely good" because of a nationwide expansion of ROTC programs by a military stretched thin by the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

In a few days, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, President Freeman A. Hrabowski III will decide whether a permanent ROTC site should be established at the Catonsville campus. It's a question that has drawn protests, largely from gay rights activists, but one that he should be free to resolve, without outside interference. Mr. Hrabowski appears likely to decide in favor of providing a home for his school's ROTC students for pragmatic reasons. The ROTC program would pay full tuition and other expenses for a growing number of students who might choose another school or possibly couldn't afford college at all. While UMBC and the ROTC students could certainly gain from the Army's presence on campus, it's hard not to be concerned about where these newly minted young officers might end up if the next administration fails to find an early exit from Iraq.

Dr. Louis J. Cantori, a Middle Eastern scholar, author and former professor of political science who taught at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County for more than three decades, died of heart failure Monday at his Hunting Ridge home. He was 73. Dr. Cantori was born and raised in Haverhill, Mass., and served in the Marine Corps from 1951 to 1955, where he attained the rank of sergeant. He earned a bachelor's degree in international relations from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1961.

As cheers went up and confetti rained down after the biggest basketball victory ever at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, Freeman A. Hrabowski III stood at midcourt smiling, his face glistening with tears. The men's basketball team had just trounced the University of Hartford in the America East Conference tournament final on Saturday, clinching UMBC's first-ever bid to the NCAA men's basketball tournament. The team faces heavily favored Georgetown University tomorrow in Raleigh, N.C., in the opening round of what many consider the premier event in American amateur sports.

A potential candidate for lieutenant governor floated by Montgomery County Executive Douglas M. Duncan's campaign last week said yesterday that he is not interested in the job. Freeman Hrabowski, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, told colleagues in an e-mail yesterday that was obtained by The Sun that he is excited about the work he does at the college. "I have no interest in elected public office," Hrabowski wrote. "As I often say, it is an honor to be president of UMBC."

AUGUST 1950, three years and nine months B.B. (before Brown vs. Board of Education): Freeman A. Hrabowski III is born in the segregated world of Birmingham, Ala. December 1951, two years and five months B.B.: Gregory Kane is born in the just as segregated world of Baltimore, Md. The story of the Supreme Court decision in Brown vs. Board of Education, which will have a 50th-anniversary something - celebration just doesn't seem quite the right word -...

Freeman A. Hrabowski III helped mark many civil rights milestones in education last year - the 40th anniversaries of blacks at Clemson University in South Carolina and in the medical school of Duke University, and the 35th anniversary of the integration of Vanderbilt University medical school. Next month will be the 50th anniversary of Brown vs. Board of Education. Hrabowski, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, started first grade in segregated Birmingham, Ala., schools the year that the Supreme Court ruled segregation unconstitutional.

IT'S A RARE event when a university president comes down from on high to advise the State Board of Education on the quality of the public schools' academic standards. Rarer still when the board warmly embraces the president -- even as he pronounces the standards woefully inadequate. But that's what happened yesterday in downtown Baltimore, when University of Maryland, Baltimore County President Freeman A. Hrabowski III crossed the divide for a chat with the state board. U.S. schools, including those in Maryland, aren't expecting enough, Hrabowski said.