Weekly Wisdom | UMBC President Freeman Hrabowski

Bridget Burns: Hi, good morning, and welcome to another Start the Week with Wisdom. I’m your host, Bridget Burns, CEO of University Innovation Alliance. Really getting me.

Doug Lederman: I’m Doug Lederman. What do I do again? I’m editor and co-founder of Inside Higher Ed.

Bridget Burns: Each week, Doug and I remember what our job titles are, and we have a conversation with a leader whose title is very clear. This week, it’s a college president to try and inspire you on a Monday morning with hopeful and insightful perspective to kick off the week and help you be starting things on a boost. That’s why we call it Start the Week with Wisdom.

Doug Lederman: And with this person, we should call it Start the Week with energy and inspiration and passion because the number of conferences where he’s brought in to like kick things off and kick people’s butts and get them moving is legion. It’s Dr. Freeman Hrabowski, president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Soon, not to be that, for the first time in more years than most of us can count. Welcome, Freeman. Good to see you.

Freeman Hrabowski: Thank you, Doug and Bridget. Yep, yep. After 30 years, as of June, I will no longer be president of UMBC. Exactly.

Bridget Burns: And how do you feel about that right now?

Freeman Hrabowski: I have never been more excited for two reasons. One, the university is doing really well. Students are performing. We’re doing more to help them. Faculty are doing well. The legislature is being supportive of us right now. The governing legislature, they’re bringing in the money, right. And people are looking at the model. So I’m excited. And I’m excited about the next chapter because I’ll get a chance to talk about that secret sauce at UMBC. So I am more thrilled than ever and more passionate about the significance of higher education than ever before.

Bridget Burns: Well, and you’ve left an indelible imprint. And I think while many folks will point to what you’ve done as president, for me, what really stands out is the role you’ve played as a leader who has taught other leaders, who has been a coach and a supporter. Doug, you’ll appreciate that my first interaction with President Hrabowski was he was legendary in the ACE Fellows program for being kind of the ultimate mentor. But in particular, it was because part of it was he was an incredible mentor, but also that he’s someone who really fits you in. And so I met his fellow and his fellow that year, when he showed up for the first day to meet with Freeman, Freeman’s like, Great, I’ll see you at like 9 p.m. at my house. We’re going to meet and we’re going to do P90X, bring your workout stuff. And that was how they got time together was doing P90X throughout the year. And so when I met his fellow at the end of his year, he was super buff. And he told me that he had had to improve his cardio so that he could keep up and ask questions of President Hrabowski throughout his time. And that was, you know, the first time I met him, the first advice he gave was around taking care of yourself in order to be a leader. So I wanted to share that story because I don’t know that any other leader in higher ed has that kind of a legendary history and presence and impact on people’s lives.

Doug Lederman: Well, I can tell, I will not share it today, but I will at some point I can share the story about Dr. Hrabowski and my son, which just has a parallel there. He agreed to talk to my son when he was in high school as a math major. And I said, would you be willing to talk to me? He said, sure, have a meet, meet, let’s meet at the tennis court. So my son and this man played, my son was 17 at the time. So anyway, and gave him a run for his money.

Freeman Hrabowski: You guys have amazing stories, but please, we know each other so well. Call me Freeman. I’m just Freeman. Okay, go right ahead.

Bridget Burns: Well, Freeman, I guess we’ll kick off by asking you: what has surprised you about your leadership journey as president? Or what has been the most surprising thing about your career?

Freeman Hrabowski: Two things. Number one, that the challenges of humankind are always there. You think as I get older, I won’t have to deal with these problems. No, they’re always there. And you have the same feelings that you had when you were 25 or 30. You can question for a moment, will I be okay? And all of that. But the other part is the wonderful experience of drawing on life and what you’ve gone through in life to help you get through the next period. And most important, that the few words we give to people of encouragement can make a big difference. I’ve seen that over and over again. And that’s what we talk about here a lot. How do we support each other as we go through these challenging times? That has been just amazing to me how often a student can say something to me and elevate my spirit. And I’ll say, you have no idea what that means to you. And the student will say, oh, Doc, you say that to everybody. No, I’m telling you, your just saying that to me this morning made a difference, right? So, I mean, it’s that idea that we connect to other people and we either elevate them or we bring them down. That’s the message of this experience of mine in higher education.

Doug Lederman: You are a rarity in having been at one institution for as long as you have. So you, and you’re in some ways a rarity for having been a president as long as you have. What kind of changes, I guess, thinking about what we need to be, what skills and attributes future presidents need to have, do you think that set of skills and attributes has changed over your, or some of the core things still there?

Freeman Hrabowski: Some of the core things are still there. I say to new presidents in the Harvard program and new administrators, authenticity and being honest. That’s always been important and it’s as important today, being honest and owning your mistakes, the idea of clearly of being able to say, I made a mistake and I need your help. So that notion of being confident that you’ll do your best, but humble enough to know we all need help. All those things have always been the case. I think the notion of transparency and honesty are even more important today because our society is going through this period when people question the truth. And so, now more than ever, we must not just be truthful, we must speak up for truth and evidence and the idea that expertise matters matters. And most important, that we can get through this period, having that optimism, that optimism that says we can be realistic on the one hand. Yeah, the problems are hard and difficult, but we can get through this. Those are qualities that are more important today than ever.

Bridget Burns: I am curious about the, so you give, you know, like I said, you were a mentor to many ACE fellows. You’ve also been in teaching at the Harvard, I call it the baby president school, but you call it the new president school, which I call the ACE Fellows program, like baby president school too. So, you have, it makes me think that you have really important advice to give at this formative part of the journey before people start. There seems to be no shortage of advice once people get going and they are presidents, people things people want you to do differently. When you’re at the beginning of your presidency, and since you really do focus emphasis on that time about helping prepare people, I’m curious about: is there anything that you recommend people do and focus on to help them be successful in their career that they really need to start before they’re president or at the beginning rather than it’s something you can correct over time?

Freeman Hrabowski: Great question, Bridget. I talk about one’s health, physical, emotional, mental health. That the jobs are so stressful, the presidencies, but leadership positions in general can be very stressful. Whether you’re co-founder of an incredible higher education institution like Inside Higher Education, or whether you are running Innovation Alliance, or you’re president of a university or provost, whatever the position, we need to, all of us need to focus on our own health to know ourselves well enough to know what it takes to remain healthy. And that means emotional and spiritual, physical, mental health. And now people are getting that more, but I’ve been saying it for years because I’ve seen what has happened to leaders who didn’t take care of themselves. You’d be surprised how many end up in very difficult situations physically or mentally just because of the stress. These jobs are stressful. And that’s not just for new presidents. That’s for journalists and leaders of all kinds at all levels. And we need to take the time to look at everything from nutrition to physical health to having people to talk to about the challenges that affect one’s mental state because we all, and the more secure one is, the more one can say, yeah, I need help. I need help. I don’t know anyone who doesn’t need some support and help in that way, given what we go through.

Bridget Burns: Yeah. That’s great. Sorry.

Doug Lederman: Oops, sorry, Bridget. I was just so curious, because there is that scrutiny, sort of intensified scrutiny that you talked about, I think seems to sometimes can make people excessively cautious. And I’m curious about that acknowledgement of what might be seen as weakness. I don’t think it is, but like I do see people. So how do you, what kind of, how can you give people confidence to be vulnerable and to be curious how you encourage people in that direction?

Freeman Hrabowski: Again, a very insightful question. We’re getting ready to have what we call mental health day, and it’s sponsored by the leaders of the campus. And, you know, as I say in my book, Empowered University, it’s not about me, it’s about us. So when I say the leaders of the campus, I’m talking about the shared governance leaders, head of faculty senate, staff senate, the student government leaders said we want to have a mental health day and a period of time when we focus on the challenges we’re facing. And they wanted me, and they’ve got some other leaders doing this too, to do a recorded video on what I’m doing to help myself, to deal with my own challenges. And I’m at a point that I can say I’ve got high blood pressure, for example, that I use the Calm app, that I’m doing acupuncture, Jackie and I do tai chi. I’m walking 10,000, walking a little running 10,000 steps a day. I’m watching what I eat. I’m using the Noom app, you know, and I’m talking about all these things. And they, and one of the questions is, why do you do so many things? I said, because I found the challenges are unbelievable. And I need to counter all of that stress with deliberate actions that will keep balance, that will give me the balance of being mindful. Because, you know, we’re all multitasking. And I’ve come to believe when you’re multitasking, you’re probably doing everything at less than best level because you’re trying to do so many things. And because being mindful means you focus, right? And so for me, it’s in these last years here, being more mindful of how I’m doing things, how I’m appreciating what goes on, but how I’m trying to protect myself from the stress. Now, I say all of that to say my level of security in talking about the fact that I need a lot of help has grown over the years. In the first years, I wanted to act like I was invincible, which was crazy. You know, nobody’s invincible. We all need help. All right. And so I say the first approach is to build healthy relationships with people and to let people see they can trust you. And that only happens when you go through some difficult times and they see you’re still yourself. You’re not trying to hide things. You’re being transparent. And it’s also the notion that you open yourself up to say, look at me as a human being. I am a leader, but I’m just a human being. And I may say something that, quite frankly, is not exactly what I should have said. I look at, I think our president was doing a, did a masterful job in Europe, for example. Everybody’s focused now on those few words that he said. And the White House is dealing with that. But I bring it up to say we’re all human. And we may say things that are not quite what we wanted to say. And the challenge is that people looking at the leader will immediately pounce on that leader and say, oh, how horrible. As opposed to saying, let’s look at the spirit of what the person’s saying. Let’s see if we can, in some ways, give that person the chance to, if it’s clean it up or rethink it or say it in a different way. And but that only happens as we help the public and our campuses to support each other in knowing no leader is perfect. And that’s what I want young leaders to know. You’re going to make mistakes. It’s not the end of the world. And when you’re honest and sincere, people will say just that. The person had the right attitude, the right mindset, was did a great job. Yeah, there may be a few words that we have to think about, but let’s look at the whole picture. And that’s what happens as time goes on. That when I make these mistakes, people will say, yeah, but look at what he’s working to do with all of us. And that makes the difference. So as time goes on, as we develop the trust, that’s the key word, trust, we’re able to embrace our mistakes and learn from them. And that’s what we all want to do.

Bridget Burns: Well, that’s, I feel like you could, that’s a graduation, that’s a commencement address for us to focus on as lead for leaders. I’m curious about your, so you clearly learned so much about leadership. You’ve both observed great leaders, been a great leader, inspired other leaders, taught them, you know, trained them. I’m curious about your own personal leadership growth and evolution and how have you changed throughout your presidency?

Freeman Hrabowski: Yeah, I’ll make you laugh. In my early years as an aunt, I was very similar in my approach to my years as a student. And I was always in many ways immature and grasping something and probably not getting the whole picture, even in math. I would get it, and if I wasn’t careful, I’d lose it. And I’d get goosebumps doing math because I didn’t take the time to savor the experience and to think about what I was learning. And so, in my first years as president in the president’s council, when we were discussing a topic, I wanted to be the student I had been. And so, I was very quick to want to give my opinion and to start thinking about the solving of the problem, as opposed to knowing as the leader, I needed to shut up. I needed to listen actively. This is one of the points in our new book that my colleagues and I are writing right now on this post-COVID period: that leaders must learn how to listen, but it’s to listen with engagement. It’s active listening. And you can’t do that if you’re trying to talk and be the center of attention. You know, and I, well, I didn’t think of myself that way, but if you’re the one to always be out front doing that, you’re not hearing the other people. And that’s of all the things I can say, it was learning to be humble enough to be quiet, to be silent. It’s what you hear in what Burr said to Hamilton, and he didn’t listen to the advice, and he said it for a different reason. And I’ve used this in commencement speeches: smile, smile more, talk less. He said it for a different reason. Unfortunately, Hamilton didn’t listen, but the idea is there, just to listen and reflect rather than quickly to jump in. I needed to learn that, which was not a part of my nature as a student. I was always the obnoxious little kid wanting to give the answer. You know what I mean? It took time for me to get to that point. And there are times now when my colleagues will give me a look, like, shut up.

Doug Lederman: Well, we, this is a time. This is a time. We want your opinion. We want you to speak the truth as you see it. What are the biggest things you think higher education as an industry, as a sector, as an enterprise, a social enterprise needs to do at sort of at this particular moment?

Freeman Hrabowski: Also, I appreciate it. I appreciate it. This is what we’re working on as I’m working with colleagues to think through responses to that kind of question in this new book. The first would be: we have to do a better job of telling our story. It’s so easy for everybody to say so many people are questioning the value of higher education. And there are many. First of all, most people don’t realize that only about a third of Americans have gotten, have families, have gotten people through the four-year experience to start there. Secondly, too few have had the double-A, the AA community college experience. And so for the majority of American families, no one has had those experiences. And we don’t realize that. We all know people who are educated. And so we assume most people are. That is not the case, number one. Number two, we have to find a way. We need the language that will pull people in rather than language that is off-putting. We can be very condescending in the higher education community without realizing it. As we talk about the value of education, how should we be talking to people who have not experienced it in their families? How do we pull them into that work to say, and for this reason, show me a family who’s seen one or two of the kids go to college who doesn’t want others to have that experience, you see? And so, I’m saying we have more work to do. We should not be satisfied with self. This experience that we give is remarkable. We transform lives, we know that. But at the same time, let me say something that’s controversial. When I’m talking to new presidents, I’m saying everybody wants to criticize Congress, and I respect public officials, but all the members of Congress are, or almost all, 90-plus percent, 95, are graduates of our institutions and liberally educated people. And yet, somehow our leaders are not talking to each other. And I’m not going to go one side or the other. I’m just saying we have not taught those who’ve come through our experience how to figure out how to get people with different points of view, how to come to the table and talk it through. And it’s very easy to say right and wrong. And I get the fact, and I have my own point of view too, but I’m stepping above it for a minute to say we have more work to do on our campuses in helping people to be different when they leave us. I think too often people who come into our institutions of all types, public and private, leave with the same points of view as they had when they came in. And I think we ought to think about what does that mean about what difference we made. That’s one piece. That’s a big piece. Another piece is we say we know our students. I say we have much more to know about our students. It’s not enough to tell me my Black students or my Latino students. They come from very different groups. We’ve got to bring more specificity to the work. All right. I was talking with my colleagues who are working with the Innovation Alliance, and they are so excited about the work we’re doing with the Finish Line. We’ve been doing this Finish Line work for years, but Innovation Alliance has taken us to a new level. We’ve got one of the Completion Grants right now, and they are working on something we had not done before. Before, we just said, oh, we feel badly that you’ve not quite graduated. Let us give you some money. Now they’re working on this asset-based or strengths-based approach, which means that we are changing the narrative to help returning students appreciate what they bring to the table, what they bring to us. And that’s a part of it. And there’s a technical team at Innovation Alliance working with our colleagues to craft the narrative in order to rethink that framework of how we are presenting it, right? I’m saying we need to do much more of that. We tend to think, oh, poor people who didn’t graduate. No, these people are bringing life’s experiences and they have so much to offer in the classroom. That’s just one example. The other one I would bring up would be the role we as universities play in thinking about the future of our democracy. I think there’s so much more we can do, whether talking about social justice in this country or what’s going on in Ukraine right now. The question is: what are universities doing to prepare the next set of leaders to help the general public understand how we are connected across the world, across the globe? And it has to be, I think, far more proactive, more intentional in this protection of democracy than we’ve been before. And final point that you’ll appreciate as somebody from the STEM area, we have to help people see connections across the disciplines. That sounds trite, but we tend to think that people are either STEM people or they’re non-STEM people. You know, so the person in English has no connection to the person in technology. We need to be thinking about ways of having people connect the disciplines as we think about solving the problems of humankind. We talk about it, but we’ve got to put more teeth into that work. We’ve got more, we need more substance as we think about curriculum, teaching and learning, the research that we do, the connecting to the larger community.

Bridget Burns: Well, I feel like that’s, you got to several of our questions in there. We wanted to benefit from your advice and your coaching for a sector. So, I guess I would end on two questions. The first, I just want to know what you’re going to miss the most. I don’t think you’re going to go anywhere necessarily. But, you know, people romanticize the presidency. Some people focus on the trappings of the presidency. Don’t really have a full appreciation for the challenge of it. We just talked quite a bit about the challenges associated with it. So, as someone who has a full picture, what is it about this role and this work that you’re going to miss the most?

Freeman Hrabowski: There are two sides of it. And I’m going to be really honest with you. Every day I wake up and look first, before looking at the Times or Post, I look at the Baltimore Sun to make sure UMBC is there in a positive way, not a negative way, because you never know when your university is going to be in the media and you have no control over it, right? And there have been days when I’ve awakened and said, Oh my goodness, what is this? Right. And you don’t want to see that. That’s just being honest. But what I will miss in a wonderful way has been I’ve got such connections with my students. I love, I love my students and they are constantly in my life. Now, the good news is I’ve got thousands of alumni and literally hundreds who write to me regularly, and I will always have that. And of young mentees, not just from this campus, but around. And I will miss walking around my campus feeling like it’s the Plaza of Nations at the UN with people from all over the world and having people speaking French to me or whatever, or giving me some good news or some challenging news. I will miss that because I don’t plan to be on campus. But what I will say is, what I take with me is this spirit of the possibilities. That’s what I love about UMBC. It is all about the possibilities of what people are doing and talking about ideas. And I will continue to with colleagues and students to have those conversations. But just being in the midst of it, I’ll be working with other universities and doing some things at Harvard and with some national agencies, and that will be wonderful work. But this 35 years on this campus, 30 as president, all this period, this period has allowed me to be immersed in this environment of ideas. And it has been fascinating, absolutely fascinating.

Bridget Burns: Well, the last question I would ask then is: last time we asked you about the best advice you’ve received. And if you have more that you’d like to share, that would be valuable. But I am curious about who gave you advice and what was that advice about ending your presidency? Because I know a lot of presidents who are in transition or just have transitioned, and I always try and connect them so they can, you know, I match make them. You need to talk to so-and-so because I’ll give you some good advice. But I’m curious about the advice that has served you as you are wrapping up your last chapter at UMBC.

Freeman Hrabowski: I have enjoyed talking to people who have left the presidency from Drew Faust, watching Shirley and talking to Shirley Tilghman as examples. I mean, wonderful people. But I would say this, and this is about people in this phase of their lives. I told you when Walter, who’s on the Walter Sondheim, the statue on our campus, lived life seriously, don’t take it seriously. What people have said to me is: Freeman, don’t ever think you’re not replaceable. I don’t care who we are. I don’t care who we are. When you leave, other great things happen. Other great people come along. And so I don’t have any concerns or worry about that at all. This is an entire campus. There are so many leaders. And people say, don’t you worry? You’re not there anymore. Oh, no, not at all. No, because what we have as our values are part of our DNA. We’re going to take care of our students. We’re going to support young faculty and staff. So I, and the advice, and laugh and laugh. I’m always saying in higher education, we take ourselves so seriously. The natural look in higher ed is one of cynicism, the analysis. I get that. But no, we need to be able to laugh. That is the human experience. Of course, cry, but laugh. I mean, that’s what I’ve heard. And that’s what I’m taking with me as I’m leaving my colleagues. And when people are looking a little sad, I say, oh, no, even if we might cry a little, because it’s a change, change brings about this moment of bittersweet, but no, laugh because we’re so fortunate to have had this experience. Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. It’s attitude. That’s what I would say. Attitude is so important for everybody, whether you’re still on campus or leaving on campus, having the right attitude of optimism, of hope. This is what makes us leaders who can connect meaningfully to other people.

Bridget Burns: Well, I don’t think that there is anything else that someone could say to better set someone up to have a wonderful week. So we so appreciate you joining us today. We’re very excited about your next chapter and grateful for the contribution that you’ve made to the field. We are all better for you having been in higher education and for the legacy that you leave. But we are also, we’ve seen enough about you to know that you’re about to probably go do other things that are also exciting. And we can’t wait to see what those are because they will likely also positively benefit students in the sector. So we wish you a happy Monday. Doug, as always, good to see you. And for those of you at home, we will see you back here in two weeks. Talk to you soon.

Freeman Hrabowski: Keep hope alive. Keep hope alive.