President Freeman Hrabowski sat down with The Retriever Weekly to discuss his recent selection as one of the top 10 university best presidents in the nation and his future aspirations for UMBC to continue to be a model for other universities around the country.

The Retriever Weekly: What was your reaction when you heard that you had been selected as one of the top 10 best university Presidents in the nation?

Freeman Hrabowski: I was honored, I was very honored, I was surprised because one never knows how the process works and I immediately thought about my students and colleagues.

TRW: You have done an excellent job of building up and strengthening the science and math program on campus; what was your reason for focusing mainly on these programs?

FH: What is important for people to know is we have worked to build strength in the arts, humanities, and the social sciences as well as science and engineering and what happens is that the media will tend to focus on science and engineering. If I talk about financial economics, theater, and biochemistry, what we will see in the paper will be biochemistry because people think about economic development and science and engineering not understanding that it's really important to have excellent students and research in social sciences and humanities and arts. So the good news is that the campus really has built strength in all the disciplines. We have first rate faculty across the disciplines, if you look at the books around the wall of the tenth floor, these are all books from the social sciences and humanities and arts. These books represent the work of excellent scholars here. If you talk to people who are Linehan artist scholars, or Sondheim scholars or Humanities scholars or students in general, you get a sense of the quality, the high quality of students. So the fact is that UMBC has been working to strengthen all disciplines and has attracted some of the best faculty across the curriculum and the best students.

TRW: You must be incredibly proud of what you have accomplished with African American students in UMBC. Do you think the state and system is doing enough to encourage minorities?

FH: I would say that unfortunately large numbers of students of color particularly Black and Hispanic, and Native American students are not doing well in the country. What makes UMBC special is that we have students from every race, every ethnicity doing extremely well and that makes us a model, a national model for excellence and inclusiveness and so many campuses come here. Universities will come here, to look at our model, from Cornell to the University of Michigan, to understand how we are able to see so many students of all races excelling in science and in other disciplines.

TRW: Why do you think graduate education is important, particularly for minority students?

FH: There are very few students of color with Ph.Ds., only about two percent of the Ph.Ds., across disciplines, two to three percent whether in the social sciences or sciences will go to blacks and about that same percentage to Hispanics. At the same time we know that one in every two Americans will be of color by 2040 and students and citizens need to see people at the very top from every racial an ethnic background.

TRW: Now what is your vision for the liberal arts programs?

FH: We are very excited about the new arts and humanities building; it's a $150 million project that has been the number one priority for several years now. That building will be a beacon of hope for people who want to see the humanities and social sciences helping to change the world by introducing students to research, tackling the issues of the day and I believe UMBC will be seen as an institution that produces leaders who are making the world better for all of us.

TRW: How do you plan to tackle the tough budget pressures we are facing this year and most probably the next year too?

FH: We have been working very hard to protect the academic program and the people here, our students, faculty, and staff. With the hiring freeze, we have been making sure that we are careful in the spending process, we are using a multi-year approach in stretching out our decision making regarding new resources or how we use the resources we get, we are working to generate additional revenues, and we are partnering with a variety of places to find more jobs for students and more opportunities for faculty and staff to be involved and the partnering and leveraging of our resources can help us get through this period.

TRW: Where do you foresee UMBC being in 5 years?

FH: We have become a national model and will be even better known in five years. We will be a national model for public research universities focused on excellence and inclusiveness with strengths in the social sciences, humanities, arts, sciences, and engineering.

TRW: What would you say is your most significant accomplishment?

FH: I think more about the accomplishments of my colleagues and students than my own. That may sound strange but it is true. Faculty here care about our students, staff care about our students, our students love to learn and they are excited about this environment and it's simply an honor to be a part of this wonderful experiment.

TRW: What is one piece of advice you would like to give to the UMBC community?

FH: We must believe in ourselves and seek and have the vision of our moving to the next level and thinking about what the next level will be for all of us as individuals and as a campus but we must believe in ourselves first.