Blog Post 4, June 10, 2020

When I think about leadership, I always think about people who make a difference in a positive way. On the contrary, many people think about successful leaders as people who made a tremendous amount of money with some efforts. I strongly believe that successful leaders are those who struggled and had to fight the obstacles in order to be where they are right now. I do not believe that people who run organizations and companies should be presented as a model of leadership. It’s true that they might be called successful people, but it does not mean that they should be called leaders. Most importantly, in my opinion, leaders are those who make a change in areas that could benefit the community as a whole such as education, economy etc. In this blog, I will be writing about Freeman A. Hrabowski. I chose this person because he has a passion for changing the future of education. And that is what the world needs. Having a good education system produces successful leaders that could make the world a better place.

The name of the person and a brief personal bio

In 1950, Freeman Hrabowski was born in Birmingham, Alabama. Freeman Hrabowski is an American educator, advocate, and mathematician. In 1992 he was the president of the University of Maryland. When he was sixteen years old, he graduated from high school. Freeman Hrabowski earned his B.A in mathematics In 1970. After earning his B.A, he earned his M.A from the University of Illinois in 1971. In 1975, he got his Ph.D. in higher education administration. As a child, Freeman Hrabowski grew up in racially divisive Birmingham, and he was invoiced in the civil rights movement. He was arrested at an early age because he participated in Dr. Martin Luther King’s movement. When he was in school, he was unique because he noticed that his classmates were not as good at math as he was. When he attended college, he was the only black person in his classroom. In his early career, Freeman Hrabowski held several positions and they were as follows: assistant professor and an assistant dean of student services at the University of Illinois, associate dean of graduate studies and an associate professor of statistics at Alabama A&M University, and other positions until he became the president of the University of Maryland.

Evidence that this person is a conscious leader

When Freeman Hrabowski was in school, he was passionate about teaching others, especially people of color. Therefore, he established a tutoring center for African Americans to teach them math and science courses. Hrabowski’s main goal is to empower children to take ownership of their education. He does not want children to dislike the learning process, but rather he wants them to want to learn and to love the journey of education. When Freeman Hrabowski became the leader of the University of Maryland, he noticed that the campus had a lot of students from different backgrounds, and they were successful in areas such as art, humanities, and social sciences. However, he found out that students, especially black people in sciences and engineering were not successful. After noticing that, he created a program called Meyerhoff Scholars program to help students in general but focuses more on black people and Hispanic in areas like sciences and engineering. Freeman Hrabowski noticed that a lot of students change their majors during their first year. Therefore, he considered this a challenge for him and wanted to find ways to make students stay in their major that they chose in the first place. Therefore, Freeman Hrabowski and his colleagues came up with four things that could help minority students and other students in general. First, they needed to understand the academic preparation of students such as their grades, the rigor of the course work so they could understand their students, and prepare them for academic life. Second, at the University of Maryland, they started to teach students in sciences and engineering to work together. They wanted students to understand each other and to build trust among them and to support each other. Third, the idea of “ it takes researchers to produce researchers’ ‘ which means that scientists and professors need to pull students to the labs in order to make them experience what they are learning in classrooms. Fourth. Making faculty members observe students and be involved with them to make the learning process more interesting. In addition to Freeman Hrabowski’s involvement in education, he also advised President Obama on topics such as educational issues and consults for the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, and National Academies. Freeman Hrabowski was one of the world’s most influential people in 2012 by Time magazine. This type of leadership is the one I admire, Freeman Hrabowski dedicates his efforts toward students and the education system which will eventually produce great leaders for the world.