The Meyerhoff Scholars Program is a program at the

University of Maryland, Baltimore County The University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) is a public research university in Baltimore County, Maryland. It has a fall 2022 enrollment of 13,991 students, 61 undergraduate majors, over 92 graduate programs (38 master, 25 doctoral, ...

(UMBC) designed to prepare minority students for academic careers in the

science Science is a systematic endeavor that Scientific method, builds and organizes knowledge in the form of Testability, testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earli ...

technology Technology is the application of knowledge to reach practical goals in a specifiable and Reproducibility, reproducible way. The word ''technology'' may also mean the product of such an endeavor. The use of technology is widely prevalent in me ...

engineering Engineering is the use of scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad range of more speciali ...

and math ( STEM) 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. In the program's first year, it admitted only male

African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...

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 A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States ...

, and the Millennium Scholars Program at Pennsylvania State University.

Notable alumni

Jerome Adams Jerome Michael Adams (born September 22, 1974) is an American anesthesiologist and a former vice admiral in the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps who served as the 20th surgeon general of the United States from September 5, 2017 un ...

: anesthesiologist and the 20th surgeon general of the United States *

Kizzmekia Corbett Kizzmekia "Kizzy" Shanta Corbett (born January 26, 1986) is an American viral immunologist. She is an Assistant Professor of Immunology and Infectious Diseases at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the Shutzer Assistant Professor a ...

: viral immunologist at the

NIAID The National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID, ) is one of the 27 institutes and centers that make up the National Institutes of Health (NIH), an agency of the United States Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). NIAID' ...

(

NIH The National Institutes of Health, commonly referred to as NIH (with each letter pronounced individually), is the primary agency of the United States government responsible for biomedical and public health research. It was founded in the late ...

) who helped develop one of the COVID-19 vaccines *

Kafui Dzirasa Kafui Dzirasa (born 1978) is an American psychiatrist and Associate Professor at Duke University. He looks to understand the relationship between neural circuit malfunction and mental illness. He was a 2019 AAAS Leshner Fellow and was elected ...

: psychiatrist and professor at Duke University *

Lola Eniola-Adefeso Omolola (Lola) Eniola-Adefeso is a Nigerian-American chemical engineer and the University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor of Chemical Engineering, Biomedical Engineering, and Macromolecular Science and Engineering at the Universi ...

: Chemical Engineer and the University Diversity and Social Transformation Professor at the

University of Michigan College of Engineering The University of Michigan College of Engineering, branded as Michigan Engineering, is the engineering wing of the University of Michigan, a public research university in Ann Arbor, Michigan. With an enrollment of 7,133 undergraduate and 3,537 ...

Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman (born 1996) is a Ghanaian-born American activist and writer. She is a co-founder and former CEO of the Sadie Collective, as well as a co-founder and co-organizer of Black Birders Week. Early life and education Opoku-A ...

: activist, writer, economist, and co-founder and former CEO of the

Sadie Collective The Sadie Collective is the first American non-profit organization which aims to increase the representation of African-American women in economics and related fields. It was founded by Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman and Fanta Traore in August 2018 a ...

* Crystal C. Watkins Johansson: neuroscientist, psychiatrist, and professor at

Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine The Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine (JHUSOM) is the medical school of Johns Hopkins University, a private research university in Baltimore, Maryland. Founded in 1893, the School of Medicine shares a campus with the Johns Hopkins Hospi ...

References

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

History

Education Research

Notable alumni

References

Further reading

External links