2014 Fall Lecture
Freeman A. Hrabowski, III
October 8, 2014
TIME magazine has named Dr. Freeman Hrabowski III one of the “100 Most Influential People in the World.”
The transformational president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), and chair of President Obama’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for African Americans is the next speaker in Salisbury University’s E. Pauline Riall Lecture Series in Education.
A child leader in the Civil Rights Movement, Hrabowski, a native of Birmingham, AL, earned his Ph.D. in higher education administration and statistics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign at age 24.
He came to UMBC as vice provost in 1987, becoming president in 1992. Under his guidance for the past 22 years, the university has become one of the nation’s leading undergraduate and research institutions, lauded by U.S. News & World Report and other publications.
Hrabowski has earned the Heinz Award for his contributions in improving the “human condition.” The Washington Post and Harvard University’s Kennedy School Center for Public Leadership have named him among the seven “Top American Leaders.”
Other honors have included the U.S. Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring, McGraw Prize in Education, General Electric’s African-American Forum ICON Lifetime Achievement Award, and honorary degrees from more than 20 institutions, including Harvard, Princeton and Duke Universities. The Baltimore Sun has named him Marylander of the Year.
In addition to serving as a consultant to the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health and a number of Maryland-based boards and councils, he also has co-authored two books – Beating the Odds and Overcoming the Odds – on parenting and high-achieving African Americans in science.
60 Minutes feature on Dr. Hrabowski that aired on CBS in 2011.
2014 Spring Lecture
Alfie Kohn
April 8, 2014
Alfie Kohn has been described by Time as “perhaps the country’s most outspoken critic of education’s fixation on grades [and] test scores,” he originally spoke at SU in 2001. This year, he discusses “The Standards and Testing Juggernaut: Rescuing Education from ‘School Reform.’”
Kohn writes and speaks widely on human behavior, education and parenting. His 13th book, The Myth of the Spoiled Child: Challenging the Conventional Wisdom About Children and Parenting, is scheduled for publication this spring.
Pervious works include No Contest: The Case Against Competition (1986),Punished by Rewards (1993), The Schools Our Children Deserve (1999) and Unconditional Parenting: Moving from Rewards and Punishments to Love and Reason (2005).
His criticisms of competition and rewards have helped shape the thinking of educators – as well as parents and managers – across the country and abroad. Kohn has been featured on hundreds of TV and radio programs, including Today and The Oprah Winfrey Show. He has been profiled in the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, while his work has been described and debated in many other publications.
His articles on education include a dozen widely reprinted essays in Phi Delta Kappan from 1991-2008. Among them are “Choices for Children: Why and How to Let Students Decide,” “How Not to Teach Values: A Critical Look at Character Education,” “Test Today, Privatize Tomorrow” and “Why Self-Discipline is Overrated.”