Laslo Boyd: Maryland’s legacy of leadership in higher education

The flurry of news stories in the last couple of months about Freeman A. Hrabowski III, the president of the University of Maryland Baltimore County, highlights a critical and often ignored issue in higher education. Leadership matters.

Hrabowski is one of the rarest of all breeds, a transformative leader who has taken UMBC from being a relatively little-known institution to one with national attention and recognition.

A couple of decades ago, the dominant debate on campus was about the anomaly of being the only university in the country with “county” in its name.

Today, Hrabowski is celebrated as one of the most influential people in the world by Time magazine, is sought after as a speaker and in many respects has carried UMBC on his shoulders to being listed by U.S. News & World Report as the top up-and-coming university in the nation.

There is, in fact, much more to the university than its amazing president, but it is unlikely that the Catonsville campus would have made the progress it has in the last 20 years without his leadership.

Other universities are also in the news. Some, like Penn State, are trying to overcome damaging events that seem to demonstrate the absence of effective leadership.

Problems with the lack of oversight of runaway athletic programs are a frequent theme, but represent only one of the potential pitfalls for a university president.

Annual listings of presidential salaries underscore both the high expectations for the position and the increased scrutiny that any incumbent will receive. The pressures to raise money, to win friends and supporters for the university and to lead faculty who are not at all inclined to follow provide a daunting challenge for any president.

Strong leaders, strong results

Since the late 1980s, Maryland has treated public higher education as one of its key assets and top priorities. You could point to the significant strides that a number of the state’s institutions have made during that period in terms of national rankings, linkages to economic development, attractiveness to students and credentials of faculty.

Whichever university you look at, a common factor in its success has been strong and effective leadership.

In addition to Hrabowski, the state’s higher education leader with the highest national profile is the University System Chancellor, Brit Kirwan, who had earlier helped transform the College Park campus.

He has provided strong leadership and incredibly effective advocacy for higher education. As a key example, he deserves much of the credit for persuading elected officials to not follow the example of other states who have balanced their budgets through cuts to higher education.

One of the critical issues for the future is who will succeed Kirwan and Hrabowski, who have both served well beyond the average tenure for people in their positions.

There have already been important transitions at two of the state’s other key educational institutions. Wallace Loh has taken over from Dan Mote at College Park, and Jay Perman holds the presidency at the University of Maryland, Baltimore after David Ramsay’s tenure there.

Challenges ahead

In the Baltimore area, there are two relatively new presidents who have taken over after presidencies that were widely seen as successful. Both have a challenge to maintain the momentum at their institutions while demonstrating their own brand of leadership.

At Morgan State University, David Wilson has the unenviable task of following the very long tenure of Earl Richardson. Wilson’s task is significantly more challenging because Richardson is still a presence on the Morgan campus.

Neither Richardson’s legacy nor the standing of Morgan is easy to evaluate. The university has many more programs and facilities than it did at the start of his presidency but seems to be constantly arguing that it does not have the resources to be as good as it could be.

The current lawsuit against the state is only the most recent example of this tension. Whether Wilson finds a different path or follows in Richardson’s footsteps will be important to watch in the coming years.

Up the road at Towson University, Maravene Loeschke has the similarly challenging task of following Bob Caret’s tenure as presidency. Caret managed to significantly increase the enrollments at Towson, making it the second-largest university in the state, raised its public profile in Annapolis and received national attention for eliminating the achievement gap between whites and African-Americans.

Loeschke comes with a host of campus connections as both a Towson graduate and a former faculty member and dean, but she has never led a university of the size and complexity of Towson. Two key positions — the chief academic officer and the chief financial officer — are being filled on an acting basis, which provides both an opportunity and a major challenge for her.

As with David Wilson, the question for Loeschke is whether she can develop her own vision and style as president.

In other words, can Wilson and Loeschke provide the kind of leadership that is critical for public universities in today’s challenging environment? Can they do what Freeman Hrabowski has done at UMBC?

Laslo Boyd writes a monthly column for The Daily Record. His experience in public policy includes government, higher education and consulting. His email address is [email protected].