County employees unite for in-service

Freeman Hrabowski, Ph.D., provided an opening address and inspirational message for the first combined faculty and staff inservice meeting of Marion School Districts 1, 2 and 7. On Aug. 13, in Marion High School, embers of all three school boards and county board members attended, along with staff, faculty, and administration members.

Hrabowski has served as President of The University of Maryland, Baltimore County, since 1992. His research and publications focus on science and math education, with special emphasis on minority participation and performance. He is a consultant to the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Academies. He serves on the boards of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, Constellation Energy Group, the France-Merrick Foundation, Marguerite Casey Foundation (Chair), McCormick & Co., Inc., and the Urban Institute. Hrabowski was elected to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the American Philosophical Society, receiving the prestigious McGraw Prize in Education, the U.S. Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring, and the Columbia UniversityTeachers College Medal for Distinguished Service.

He is listed among Fast Company magazine’s first “Fast 50 Champions of Innovation” in business and technology and holds a number of honorary degrees, including most recently from Haverford College, Princeton University, Duke University, the University of Illinois, the University of Alabama-Birmingham, Gallaudet University, Goucher College, the Medical University of South Carolina, and Binghamton University. He has co-authored two books, Beating the Odds and Overcoming the Odds (Oxford University Press), focusing on parenting and high-achieving African American males and females in science.

A child-leader in the Civil Rights Movement, Hrabowski was prominently featured in Spike Lee’s 1997 documentary, Four Little Girls, on the racially motivated bombing in 1963 of Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church. Born in 1950 in Birmingham, Hrabowski graduated at 19 from Hampton Institute with highest honors in mathematics. At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he received his master’s of arts degree in math and four years later his Ph.D. in higher education administration and statistics at age 24. A book signing was held after the in-service message and everyone had the opportunity to purchase his books and speak with him regarding issues relevant to the challenges of educating youth in Marion County.