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So I'll be talking about the success of my campus,

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the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, UMBC,

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in educating students of all types,

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across the arts and humanities and the science and engineering areas.

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What makes our story especially important

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is that we have learned so much from a group of students

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who are typically not at the top of the academic ladder --

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students of color, students underrepresented in selected areas.

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And what makes the story especially unique

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is that we have learned how to help African-American students, Latino students,

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students from low-income backgrounds,

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to become some of the best in the world in science and engineering.

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And so I begin with a story about my childhood.

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We all are products of our childhood experiences.

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It's hard for me to believe that it's been 50 years

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since I had the experience of being a ninth grade kid in Birmingham, Alabama,

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a kid who loved getting A's,

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a kid who loved math, who loved to read,

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a kid who would say to the teacher --

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when the teacher said, "Here are 10 problems," to the class,

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this little fat kid would say, "Give us 10 more."

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And the whole class would say, "Shut up, Freeman."

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And there was a designated kicker every day.

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And so I was always asking this question:

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"Well how could we get more kids to really love to learn?"

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And amazingly, one week in church,

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when I really didn't want to be there

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and I was in the back of the room being placated by doing math problems,

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I heard this man say this:

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"If we can get the children

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to participate in this peaceful demonstration here in Birmingham,

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we can show America that even children know the difference between right and wrong

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and that children really do want to get the best possible education."

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And I looked up and said, "Who is that man?"

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And they said his name was Dr. Martin Luther King.

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And I said to my parents, "I've got to go.

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I want to go. I want to be a part of this."

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And they said, "Absolutely not."

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(Laughter)

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And we had a rough go of it.

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And at that time, quite frankly, you really did not talk back to your parents.

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And somehow I said, "You know, you guys are hypocrites.

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You make me go to this. You make me listen.

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The man wants me to go, and now you say no."

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And they thought about it all night.

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And they came into my room the next morning.

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They had not slept.

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They had been literally crying and praying and thinking,

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"Will we let our 12-year-old

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participate in this march and probably have to go to jail?"

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And they decided to do it.

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And when they came in to tell me,

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I was at first elated.

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And then all of a sudden I began thinking about the dogs and the fire hoses,

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and I got really scared, I really did.

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And one of the points I make to people all the time

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is that sometimes when people do things that are courageous,

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it doesn't really mean that they're that courageous.

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It simply means that they believe it's important to do it.

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I wanted a better education.

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I did not want to have to have hand-me-down books.

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I wanted to know that the school I attended

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not only had good teachers, but the resources we needed.

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And as a result of that experience,

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in the middle of the week, while I was there in jail,

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Dr. King came and said with our parents,

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"What you children do this day

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will have an impact on children who have not been born."

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I recently realized that two-thirds of Americans today

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had not been born at the time of 1963.

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And so for them, when they hear about the Children's Crusade in Birmingham,

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in many ways, if they see it on TV,

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it's like our looking at the 1863 "Lincoln" movie:

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It's history.

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And the real question is, what lessons did we learn?

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Well amazingly, the most important for me was this:

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That children can be empowered to take ownership of their education.

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They can be taught to be passionate

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about wanting to learn and to love the idea of asking questions.

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And so it is especially significant

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that the university I now lead,

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the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, UMBC,

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was founded the very year I went to jail with Dr. King, in 1963.

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And what made that institutional founding especially important

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is that Maryland is the South, as you know,

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and, quite frankly, it was the first university in our state

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founded at a time when students of all races could go there.

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And so we had black and white students and others who began to attend.

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And it has been for 50 years an experiment.

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The experiment is this:

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Is it possible to have institutions in our country, universities,

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where people from all backgrounds can come and learn

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and learn to work together and learn to become leaders

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and to support each other in that experience?

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Now what is especially important about that experience for me is this:

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We found that we could do a lot in the arts and humanities and social sciences.

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And so we began to work on that, for years in the '60s.

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And we produced a number of people in law, all the way to the humanities.

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We produced great artists. Beckett is our muse.

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A lot of our students get into theater.

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It's great work.

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The problem that we faced was the same problem America continues to face --

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that students in the sciences and engineering,

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black students were not succeeding.

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But when I looked at the data,

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what I found was that, quite frankly, students in general,

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large numbers were not making it.

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And as a result of that,

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we decided to do something that would help, first of all,

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the group at the bottom, African-American students, and then Hispanic students.

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And Robert and Jane Meyerhoff, philanthropists, said, "We'd like to help."

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Robert Meyerhoff said, "Why is it that everything I see on TV about black boys,

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if it's not about basketball, is not positive?

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I'd like to make a difference, to do something that's positive."

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We married those ideas, and we created this Meyerhoff Scholars program.

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And what is significant about the program

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is that we learned a number of things.

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And the question is this:

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How is it that now we lead the country in producing African-Americans

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who go on to complete Ph.D.'s in science and engineering and M.D./Ph.D.'s?

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That's a big deal. Give me a hand for that. That's a big deal.

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That's a big deal. It really is.

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(Applause)

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You see, most people don't realize

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that it's not just minorities who don't do well in science and engineering.

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Quite frankly, you're talking about Americans.

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If you don't know it, while 20 percent of blacks and Hispanics

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who begin with a major in science and engineering

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will actually graduate in science and engineering,

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only 32 percent of whites who begin with majors in those areas

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actually succeed and graduate in those areas,

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and only 42 percent of Asian-Americans.

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And so, the real question is, what is the challenge?

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Well a part of it, of course, is K-12.

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We need to strengthen K-12.

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But the other part has to do with the culture

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of science and engineering on our campuses.

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Whether you know it or not, large numbers of students with high SAT's

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and large numbers of A.P. credits

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who go to the most prestigious universities in our country

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begin in pre-med or pre-engineering and engineering, and they end up changing their majors.

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And the number one reason, we find, quite frankly,

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is they did not do well in first year science courses.

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In fact, we call first year science and engineering, typically around America,

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weed-out courses or barrier courses.

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How many of you in this audience know somebody

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who started off in pre-med or engineering

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and changed their major within a year or two?

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It's an American challenge. Half of you in the room.

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I know. I know. I know.

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And what is interesting about that

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is that so many students are smart and can do it.

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We need to find ways of making it happen.

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So what are the four things we did to help minority students

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that now are helping students in general?

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Number one: high expectations.

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It takes an understanding of the academic preparation of students --

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their grades, the rigor of the course work,

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their test-taking skills, their attitude,

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the fire in their belly, the passion for the work, to make it.

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And so doing things to help students prepare to be in that position, very important.

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But equally important, it takes an understanding that it's hard work that makes the difference.

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I don't care how smart you are or how smart you think you are.

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Smart simply means you're ready to learn.

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You're excited about learning and you want to ask good questions.

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I. I. Rabi, a Nobel laureate, said that when he was growing up in New York,

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all of his friends' parents would ask them

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"What did you learn in school?" at the end of a day.

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And he said, in contrast, his Jewish mother would say,

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"Izzy, did you ask a good question today?"

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And so high expectations have to do with curiosity

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and encouraging young people to be curious.

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And as a result of those high expectations,

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we began to find students we wanted to work with

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to see what could we do to help them,

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not simply to survive in science and engineering,

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but to become the very best, to excel.

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Interestingly enough, an example:

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One young man who earned a C in the first course and wanted to go on to med school,

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we said, "We need to have you retake the course,

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because you need a strong foundation if you're going to move to the next level."

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Every foundation makes the difference in the next level.

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He retook the course.

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That young man went on to graduate from UMBC,

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to become the first black to get the M.D./Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.

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He now works at Harvard.

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Nice story. Give him a hand for that too.

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(Applause)

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Secondly, it's not about test scores only.

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Test scores are important, but they're not the most important thing.

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One young woman had great grades, but test scores were not as high.

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But she had a factor that was very important.

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She never missed a day of school, K-12.

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There was fire in that belly.

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That young woman went on, and she is today with an M.D./Ph.D. from Hopkins.

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She's on the faculty, tenure track in psychiatry, Ph.D. in neuroscience.

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She and her adviser have a patent on a second use of Viagra for diabetes patients.

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Big hand for her. Big hand for her.

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(Applause)

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And so high expectations, very important.

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Secondly, the idea of building community among the students.

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You all know that so often in science and engineering

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we tend to think cutthroat.

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Students are not taught to work in groups.

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And that's what we work to do with that group

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to get them to understand each other,

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to build trust among them, to support each other,

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to learn how to ask good questions,

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but also to learn how to explain concepts with clarity.

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As you know, it's one thing to earn an A yourself,

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it's another thing to help someone else do well.

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And so to feel that sense of responsibility makes all the difference in the world.

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So building community among those students, very important.

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Third, the idea of, it takes researchers to produce researchers.

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Whether you're talking about artists producing artists

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or you're talking about people getting into the social sciences,

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whatever the discipline -- and especially in science and engineering, as in art, for example --

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you need scientists to pull the students into the work.

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And so our students are working in labs regularly.

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And one great example that you'll appreciate:

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During a snowstorm in Baltimore several years ago,

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the guy on our campus with this Howard Hughes Medical Institute grant

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literally came back to work in his lab after several days,

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and all these students had refused to leave the lab.

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They had food they had packed out.

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They were in the lab working,

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and they saw the work, not as schoolwork, but as their lives.

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They knew they were working on AIDS research.

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They were looking at this amazing protein design.

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And what was interesting was each one of them focused on that work.

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And he said, "It doesn't get any better than that."

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And then finally, if you've got the community

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and you've got the high expectations and you've got researchers producing researchers,

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you have to have people who are willing as faculty

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to get involved with those students, even in the classroom.

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I'll never forget a faculty member calling the staff and saying,

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"I've got this young man in class, a young black guy,

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and he seems like he's just not excited about the work.

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He's not taking notes. We need to talk to him."

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What was significant was that the faculty member was observing every student

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to understand who was really involved and who was not

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and was saying, "Let me see how I can work with them.

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Let me get the staff to help me out."

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It was that connecting.

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That young man today is actually a faculty member M.D./Ph.D. in neuroengineering at Duke.

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Give him a big hand for that.

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(Applause)

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And so the significance is that we have now developed this model

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that is helping us, not only finally with evaluation, assessing what works.

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And what we learned was that we needed to think about redesigning courses.

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And so we redesigned chemistry, we redesigned physics.

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But now we are looking at redesigning the humanities and social sciences.

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Because so many students are bored in class.

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Do you know that?

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Many students, K-12 and in universities,

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don't want to just sit there and listen to somebody talk.

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They need to be engaged.

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And so we have done -- if you look at our website at the Chemistry Discovery Center,

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you'll see people coming from all over the country

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to look at how we are redesigning courses,

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having an emphasis on collaboration, use of technology,

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using problems out of our biotech companies on our campus,

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and not giving students the theories,

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but having them struggle with those theories.

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And it's working so well that throughout our university system in Maryland,

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more and more courses are being redesigned.

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It's called academic innovation.

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And what does all of that mean?

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It means that now, not just in science and engineering,

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we now have programs in the arts, in the humanities, in the social sciences,

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in teacher education, even particularly for women in I.T.

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If you don't know it, there's been a 79-percent decline

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in the number of women majoring in computer science just since 2000.

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And what I'm saying is that what will make the difference

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will be building community among students,

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telling young women, young minority students and students in general,

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you can do this work.

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And most important, giving them a chance to build that community

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with faculty pulling them into the work

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and our assessing what works and what does not work.

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Most important, if a student has a sense of self,

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it is amazing how the dreams and the values

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can make all the difference in the world.

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When I was a 12-year-old child in the jail in Birmingham,

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I kept thinking, "I wonder what my future could be."

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I had no idea that it was possible for this little black boy in Birmingham

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to one day be president of a university that has students from 150 countries,

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where students are not there just to survive,

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where they love learning, where they enjoy being the best,

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where they will one day change the world.

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Aristotle said, "Excellence is never an accident.

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It is the result of high intention, sincere effort and intelligent execution.

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It represents the wisest option among many alternatives."

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And then he said something that gives me goosebumps.

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He said, "Choice, not chance, determines your destiny."

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Choice, not chance, determines your destiny, dreams and values.

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Thank you all very much.

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(Applause)