Students’ wish list for next UMBC president? A Hrabowski clone

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Haley Sayo, a senior psychology major at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, remembers the moment during her tour of UMBC as a high school senior that sold the school to her.

“When I heard (UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski’s) little speech, you know the one that he always does … I was like, ‘oh my goodness, this guy just gave me chills,’” she recalled.

Hrabowski is about as well known among UMBC’s student body for his famous speeches, peppered with inspirational quotes and anecdotes from his childhood, as he is growing the once-sleepy commuter school into the science and technology behemoth it is today.

Perhaps his most frequently-delivered quote — and the one Sayo remembers from that tour — is a proverb attributed to Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu: “Watch your thoughts, they become your words. Watch your words, they become your actions. Watch your actions, they become your habits. Watch your habits, they become your character. Watch your character, it becomes your destiny.”

At the end of this academic year, in a truly full-circle moment, Sayo will get to hear Hrabowski speak one last time during her graduation.

But the moment will also be bittersweet for her, as it will be his 30th and final graduation as the university’s president before he retires the following month. Hrabowski announced his upcoming retirement Wednesday, to the chagrin of many former and current students, and left many wondering who could possibly replace him, considering he has helmed the university for more than half of its existence.

For Sayo, like many students, Hrabowski has been a constant and familiar face throughout her time at the school, smiling and waving as he passes students on campus. His absence on campus is going to be palpable once he leaves.

She believes that the next president, to be as successful as Hrabowski, will have to make the same effort to participate in student life and get to know the student body.

Others agree. Yousuf Ahmad, a political science major who graduated in 2012, remembers his conversations with Hrabowski as a student vividly, including how impressed he was when the president remembered his grade point average a semester after he first told him about it.

“President Hrabowski has this uncanny ability to remember everything about everyone, and it’s such a unique thing to have as a university president or as a human being,” he said.

Hrabowski’s inclination to interact directly with students makes UMBC come across as a uniquely friendly and close-knit campus, where everyone knows — and supports — one another. If the president can remember your major and what classes you’re taking, after all, what excuse does anyone else have?

For the campus of 14,000 to maintain this reputation, Ahmad said, the next president is going to have “to be a man or woman amongst the crowd … they’re not going to just be able to be in the office all day.”

For Mehrshad Fahim Devin, UMBC’s Student Government Association president and a biology major who will be graduating in the fall, Hrabowski’s care and compassion for individual students extends beyond greeting them on campus. It extends into how he leads the university, valuing student voices and opinions to the same extent he values the opinions on faculty, staff and fellow administrators.

Devin says he has witnessed Hrabowski’s appreciation for students’ perspectives firsthand as SGA president, whose job it is to represent the students on a universitywide level.

“(That is) not necessarily something you see at other institutions. I have friends at other institutions that are SGA presidents, and I can confidently say the voice of the UMBC student goes a little bit further than theirs do,” he said. “If the next president doesn’t align with those values, it’s going to be a super hard transition for everyone, because it’s so ingrained in faculty, staff and students to voice our opinions and be accepted when (we) do.”

Another one of Hrabowski’s values is academic achievement — and, specifically, focusing on academics above other things, like sports. He has long resisted establishing a football team on campus due to worries that it would divert resources from academic programs. He has focused instead on building up research at the university and establishing programs, like the well-known Meyerhoff Scholars Program, that promote academic success, especially among minority students.

Kaitlynn Lilly, a senior physics and math major and a Meyerhoff scholar, said that the Meyerhoff program has had a major impact on her academic career. Though she came in as a first-generation student who had struggled to even apply to undergraduate institutions, she now feels more equipped than her peers at other schools to apply to graduate programs, thanks to the support of the Meyerhoff program.

The program, she said, “just (made) sure that every step of the way I was not only supported, but was working to make myself the strongest applicant I could be for grad school.”

Ahmad also appreciated Hrabowski’s focus on academics — and, specifically, how many students at UMBC have access to top-tier research opportunities. The political science research and internship opportunities he had while at UMBC led him to the career he has today as the legislative director for Baltimore’s State’s Attorney’s Office, almost a decade after his graduation.

“I hope the university continues to invest and prioritize those skills and those tools for students,” he said.

But despite students brainstorming ways that the next president can fill Hrabowski’s shoes, few seem worried about the transition. Hrabowski has built such a solid foundation and such a distinct culture of academic success, collaboration and community, they said, that the university will be able to continue growing regardless of who steps into his position.

“The school is such a force now,” Ahmad said. “With or without him.”