UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski's 2001 Convocation Address

Convocation is an important fall tradition at UMBC–we launch the new academic year, welcome all those new to campus, and reflect on our progress and challenges. Convocation also gives us a chance to think about the purpose of a university and why we are here. What my colleagues know–and what we want our students to appreciate–is that our reason for being is to seek the truth. In fact, all of us are students. Whether one is conducting research, teaching, learning, or supporting these efforts, we are all seeking answers to important questions of the day. Here–UMBC–is a place where the life of the mind is paramount.

This year’s Convocation is particularly significant for two reasons–it marks our 35^th anniversary, and we are focusing special attention on all new students. For the first time, in fact, Convocation comes the day before classes begin. We want to build on the excitement of the new year and focus on all new freshmen, transfers, and graduate students.

I should add that this fall also marks the beginning of my 15^th year at UMBC and my 10^th year as President. I am grateful to each of you for your support; my tenure here has been by far the most fulfilling of my career. In fact, for many of us, working here is a special journey.

Convocation follows another significant UMBC tradition, our annual retreat on the Eastern Shore, where campus leaders gather to discuss the University’s future. This year, we reaffirmed our vision as An Honors University in Maryland” and rededicated our efforts to achieve our dual goals of continuing to rank in the top tier of research universities and continuing to build the quality and size of our student enrollments. Our vision and goals are the product of a rigorous and inclusive planning process over the past three years spearheaded by Provost Johnson and the Planning Leadership Team. This group of campus leaders has fashioned a dynamic process that links planning and budgeting and translates plans into action. The campus appreciates their progress in building consensus about our strategic priorities, especially student life, research, and our identity as an honors university. As a result of their work, we are investing millions of dollars to hire new faculty and staff (including academic advisors), establish additional academic and co-curricular programs, increase scholarship and fellowship support for students, and implement new information systems and business processes. Simultaneously, we have been careful to balance these new initiatives by focusing additional resources on people and programs already here.

Student engagement was the focus of this year’s retreat, and we discussed best practices to ensure that all students benefit from an honors university experience. Participants read Harvard Professor Richard Light’s Making the Most of College, which distilled ten years of students’ responses to the question, What choices can students make, and what can professors and university leaders do to improve more students’ experiences..?” Our discussions reflected the experiences and insights of our student participants, who contributed much to the retreat’s success. With their help, we examined issues ranging from new-student orientation, freshman seminars, undergraduate research, and student internships to faculty mentoring, innovative teaching, and athletics and academics. As part of the planning process this year, we will continue these discussions on campus, and we will address the recommendations of the Honors University Task Force on curricular reform and writing instruction.

The retreat set the tone for today’s Convocation, underscoring the importance of engaging students–particularly new students–and I will have more to say directly to these students in just a few minutes. But first, I want to report to you on the state of the University.

Most obvious is our continuing physical expansion, especially the new University Commons which opens for business in January. This spectacular facility–more than twice the size of our existing student center–will house a main street” for student organizations and retail activity along with the campus bookstore, a food court, restaurant, cabaret, coffee house, meeting rooms, offices, and much more. Other significant projects include the Chemistry Building’s renovation, a new IT-Engineering Building, and the first building in the Research Park. In addition, we will continue to build a new residence hall each year. In fact, 75 percent of our new freshmen this year are living on campus. We also expect that State funds will be released in December to construct the new Public Policy Building. To put all this growth in perspective, we will have spent well over $300 million on capital improvements to the campus since 1990 (excluding the Research Park and Technology Center). As in past years, please join me in thanking our Physical Plant staff for making the campus so attractive–notwithstanding all of the construction activity.

It’s important also that our enrollments are healthy and include the most talented freshman class in our history. In fact, the typical freshman has SATs of 1200 and was a member of the National Honor Society, and hundreds were class valedictorians, salutatorians, and A-students. We also know that many had extraordinary test scores. In addition, more than a third of our 1,500-plus graduates each year go on to many of the best graduate and professional schools nationally, while other graduates accept positions in the workforce, many even before graduation.

Our graduate enrollment is up substantially–especially among domestic, minority, and women students–and we’ve produced over 150 Ph.D.s the past three years, virtually all now with post-doctoral positions across the country or working in bio-tech and information-tech industries, the policy arena, or in colleges and universities. While our doctoral enrollments remain strong, our continuing challenges are, first, to attract many more master’s students in applied programs to meet the growing needs of businesses, school systems, and other employers, and second, to ensure that we award the requisite number of doctorates in designated fields to maintain our Carnegie classification as one of the nation’s Doctoral/Research-Extensive institutions.

Our success this past year was virtually across the board, and faculty, staff, and student achievements were especially impressive. Examples include biology Professor Lasse Lindahl, who received the University System’s Elkins Professorship; our two Regents Award recipients–psychologist Robert Deluty and biologist Suzanne Ostrand-Rosenberg; historian Anne Rubin, who received the first E-Lincoln Prize; English Professor Joan Korenman, who received one of the Top 25 Women on the Web Awards; Fulbright Award-winning economists Tom Gindling and Brad Humphreys; and a number of our junior faculty in the sciences and engineering who received NSF Career Development Grants.

UMBC staff also were very impressive, receiving an unprecedented five of the six Regents’ Staff Awards–Lettie Bratcher and David Langford for service to students, George Vitak and Karen Wensch for their contributions to UMBC’s mission, and Norma Green for public service to both the campus and larger community.

Likewise, our students continued to excel in intellectual and athletic competitions, including another international championship in chess and the coveted Commissioner’s Cup in the Northeast Athletic Conference. And the Shriver Center continues to receive national recognition and increased funding for community-service initiatives involving many of our students, while our career fairs organized by the Career Development and Placement Center hosted a record-number of companies on campus this year.

Most important, our growing success has led to greater confidence in us by the State, Federal agencies, companies, foundations, and individuals. Our current budget of $263 million is 10 percent larger than a year ago, and research-and-training awards this past year soared 25 percent in just a year–to $80 million–largely reflecting flourishing partnerships with national agencies and non-profit groups. In addition, we’re in the final year of our five-year Campaign for UMBC and have surpassed our original $50-million goal, raising $60 million (including major gifts for the arts & humanities, public affairs, science and engineering, and community service). And I am confident that by the completion of the Campaign next summer, we will reach at least $70 million. In fact, our successful fundraising and image-building efforts have attracted national attention and were the focus of a Harvard University case study that Vice President Sheldon Caplis and I helped to present at Harvard’s seminar for sitting college presidents the past two years. We are especially grateful to faculty and staff who have contributed to the Campaign at unprecedented levels, as have parents and alumni.

Our success has led not only to increased investment in the campus, but also growing national visibility–from the New York Times and University Business magazine to NBC’s Today Show and ABC’s 20/20. We also are receiving visitors from universities across the country, and I have been invited to speak on the UMBC experience by a variety of school systems, colleges, and universities–from Harvard and Georgia Tech to Macalaster College and Cal Tech.

Greater investment and heightened attention continue to raise people’s expectations of us, which pose continuing challenges for us–to make sure that our image continues to be based on substantive progress, and to remember that success is never final.

We were especially elated with the recent, positive response by the Middle States Commission to our five-year Periodic Review Report (and I want to recognize Professors Diane Lee and Kathy O’Dell for their outstanding leadership in developing the campus’s report). We also were pleased with our designation as a Center of Academic Excellence in Information Assurance Education by the National Security Agency (one of only 23 such centers in the nation). We have launched a new Flexible” Master’s program in Information Systems in partnership with the U.S. Open University, a Gerontology graduate program, new undergraduate certificates in Women’s Studies and the Human Context of Science & Technology, and we currently are working on other initiatives in environmental science, bioinformatics, and communications engineering.

Our progress and growth are both exciting and challenging, and with each new grant or program come additional responsibilities and obligations. State and Federal audits of our expanded sponsored programs, our budget hearings in Annapolis early next year, and continuing implementation of new PeopleSoft support systems will require us to stay focused on issues of quality, responsiveness, and accountability. Equally important, we must continue linking our planning and budgeting even more closely. By doing so, we can build a lasting foundation of success.

Now, I want to say a few words to all of our new students, particularly our new freshmen and transfer students.

Thirty-five years ago this month, I sat in a convocation with other freshmen at my alma mater, and I had no idea how challenging, frustrating, enriching, and transforming the next four years would be. I also had no idea that I would become a university president. It was during that period that I grew to love learning itself–whether solving a math problem or studying another culture. It was that special experience at Hampton that led me to graduate school and ultimately to an academic career.

At my first convocation, our dean said to us, Look at the student on your left; look at the student on your right; one of you will not graduate.” And unfortunately, a number of my classmates did not. In contrast, I want each new student to look at the student on your left, and look at the student on your right–our goal is to make sure that each of you graduates as a well educated human being with a healthy sense of self. Nothing is more important during your college career.

Achieving this goal should mean developing a hunger for knowledge, wanting to be the best, believing in yourself, and reaching out to others in order to make a positive difference in the world. Reaching out to others is especially important because it defines both who you are as a person and who we are as a community.

I recall my remarks almost ten years ago at my installation as UMBC’s President. I talked then about participating as a child in the Civil Rights Movement in Alabama, growing up in a family of educators, and knowing the power of family and community. And I quoted British author George Bernard Shaw, who said,

My life belongs to the community, and as long as I live, it is my privilege to do for it whatever I can. I want to be thoroughly used up when I die, for the harder I work, the more I live. Life is no brief candle’ to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have for only a moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.

And now, we begin a new and special tradition–the pinning of all new freshmen and transfers–symbolizing the journey that each begins here today. The pinning also symbolizes our strength as a community–a community that’s much more than a collection of buildings, books, and computers. The pinning is our way of saying that you are a part of the UMBC family and that you are special in many ways. I now ask all new students to stand and pin the classmate to your left.

Final advice. Take the time to savor all of your experiences here. The journey you’re beginning can change you for the rest of your life and make you better in many ways. You’re here not to learn everything, but rather to learn how to learn. The only certainty at the beginning of this new century is that there will be dramatic changes in the years ahead. And though we can’t possibly imagine how the world will be 35 years from now, we can make sure you are prepared to adapt to those changes and sometimes to make them happen.

I urge you to be passionate about your education and your life–take the time to think carefully about every course you take and to get to know faculty, staff, and other students, particularly those different from yourself. Keep an open mind and be open to new experiences. When you leave UMBC, you’ll want to know that you can write well and speak publicly with confidence; that you enjoy reading good books and discussing ideas; that you know how to attack problems and work with diverse groups of people; that you can use technology with comfort, and put the technology you use in perspective; that you understand the courses you take are connected in many interesting ways; and that you’ve taken advantage of your coursework and cultural activities in the arts and humanities and understand that they can help you live a much fuller and richer life.

Every experience can teach you something important, and the more you learn, the more you’ll realize there is so much more to know.

Being engaged and passionate about your education also means occasionally making mistakes and being knocked down. These inevitable setbacks aren’t what’s important. What’s important are the lessons we learn from the setbacks, the growth we experience, and the resilience we build by bouncing back and continuing on the journey. Being passionate and resilient will allow you to reach for the truth–for what is good in both yourselves and others–and to advance much further in life than you can possibly imagine right now–indeed to soar. Allow yourselves to be inspired by the journey ahead. Like Tennyson’s Ulysses, let the journey call passionately to you.