The Meyerhoff Scholars Program is a program at the
University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) designed to prepare minority students for academic careers in the
science,
technology,
engineering and
math
Mathematics is an area of knowledge that includes the topics of numbers, formulas and related structures, shapes and the spaces in which they are contained, and quantities and their changes. These topics are represented in modern mathematics ...
(
STEM
Stem or STEM may refer to:
Plant structures
* Plant stem, a plant's aboveground axis, made of vascular tissue, off which leaves and flowers hang
* Stipe (botany), a stalk to support some other structure
* Stipe (mycology), the stem of a mushro ...
) disciplines. The program has served as a model for developing and supporting minority students pursuing academic careers.
History
The program was founded at the UMBC in 1988 with a $500,000 grant from the Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Foundation, under the guidance of future UMBC President
Freeman A. Hrabowski III
Freeman Alphonso Hrabowski III (born August 13, 1950) is an American educator, advocate, and mathematician. In May 1992, he began his term as president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), one of the twelve public universities ...
. In the program's first year, it admitted only male
African American students; female African American students were admitted in the program's second year. In 1997, the program opened to students of all races who were interested in supporting the advancement of minorities in academia, following the 1995 U.S. Supreme Court decision ruling the Benjamin Banneker Scholarship Program, another UMBC scholarship which had been only open to African American students, unconstitutional.
Education Research
The Meyerhoff Scholars Program is noted for its success in increasing the representation of minority students in STEM.
In an attempt to determine whether this model can be replicated at large universities, two scholarships were founded at other universities in 2013: the Chancellor's Science Scholarship at the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the Millennium Scholars Program at
Pennsylvania State University
The Pennsylvania State University (Penn State or PSU) is a Public university, public Commonwealth System of Higher Education, state-related Land-grant university, land-grant research university with campuses and facilities throughout Pennsylvan ...
.
Notable alumni
*
Jerome Adams: anesthesiologist and the 20th
surgeon general of the United States
The surgeon general of the United States is the operational head of the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps (PHSCC) and thus the leading spokesperson on matters of public health in the federal government of the United States. Th ...
*
Kizzmekia Corbett: viral immunologist at the
NIAID (
NIH) who helped develop one of the
COVID-19 vaccines
*
Kafui Dzirasa: psychiatrist and professor at
Duke University
Duke University is a private research university in Durham, North Carolina. Founded by Methodists and Quakers in the present-day city of Trinity in 1838, the school moved to Durham in 1892. In 1924, tobacco and electric power industrialist James ...
*
Lola Eniola-Adefeso: Chemical Engineer and the University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor at the
University of Michigan College of Engineering
*
Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman: activist, writer, economist, and co-founder and former CEO of the
Sadie Collective
*
Crystal C. Watkins Johansson: neuroscientist, psychiatrist, and professor at
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
References
Further reading
*''Beating the Odds: Raising Academically Successful African American Males'' (1998), Freeman A. Hrabowski, Geoffrey L. Greif, Kenneth I. Maton, Publisher: Oxford University Press
*''Overcoming the Odds: Raising Academically Successful African American Young Women'' (2001), Freeman A. Hrabowski, Geoffrey L. Greif, Kenneth I. Maton, Monica L. Greene, Publisher: Oxford University Press
Editorial: Why American College Students Hate Science (The New York Times, May 25, 2006)Paper: Preparing Minority Scientists and Engineers American Association for the Advancement of Science, ''Science'' 31 March 2006)Article: Fulfilling the Expectations of Excellence (American Association for the Advancement of Science, 2005)
External links
The Meyerhoff Scholars Program 30th Anniversary CelebrationChancellor's Science ScholarshipPenn State Millennium Scholars Program
{{UMBC
University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Student financial aid in the United States
Scholarships in the United States