 We have the top of the hour. So let's begin. Let me welcome everybody. Let me welcome you to the Future Trends Forum I'm delighted to see you all here today We have a fantastic guest and I'm really looking forward to our conversation I'm absolutely delighted to welcome Professor Doctor and President Freeman Herbowski. He's the president of the University of Maryland Baltimore County He has been there for quite some time and has proven to be an exceptional leader Not only is he a campus leader, but he's also caught a huge reputation as someone focused on helping black students succeed Ever over the past year and a half This has been a matter of a special interest to everyone in higher education It's been something that we've been focused on here in the Future Trends Forum So to talk about leading University and to talk about helping us support black students. Let me welcome President Herbowski Thank you, Brian. Thank you Great. Very good to see you. I'm now this is I'm glad that you've obeyed our background code of having bookshelves Yeah, there's so many ways to introduce you so many Achievements that I can point to but since this is the Future Trends Forum I'd like to ask you to introduce yourself through the future What are you gonna be working on for the next year? What are the big topics and the big projects that are gonna be top of line for you? Sure, I don't think anything is more important than talking about our students and Supporting our students and I think the the title you give me for supporting black students is appropriate because a lot of my research focuses on students of color But I start from the position that if you show me a university or community college that cares about students in general That will mean they will also support with specificity different groups whether they're black or Latinx, LGBTQ all these different groups and so this future period for us and I think for our education We'll focus on how to do an even better job in supporting these groups of students in understanding their challenges in Supporting them by understanding also what they bring to the to the campus their strengths to use that strengths-based approach and and most important on looking at ways of I think using technology as We work to seek the truth and to teach students how to think critically and there are a number of techniques We can use I often use the language though From Jim Collins that says we should think about the genius of the and Versus the tyranny of the or in other words It's not just about face-to-face or working remotely or teaching and learning remotely It's not just about science and tech or arts humanities and social sciences that we have to look at the genius of the and ways of Integrating our approaches and the disciplines in the way we use disciplines and solving problems And so the future from my perspective must focus on Preparing our students to live in a world right now that in many ways is so divided And in a world that is changing every day and that's that's why the idea of the broad education is very important But also understanding that different people need different types of education at different points in their lives Let me stop there. We can go from there. Well, that's fantastic That gives us a great introduction into your into your thinking and into what you what you're working on friends, I'm gonna ask President herbowski a couple of really quick questions, but the forum is here for you. I'm not the interviewer I'm just the emcee It's all your job to bombard our guests with with your thoughts and with your questions So again, if you're new to the forum or haven't been here for a while those two main buttons at the bottom of the screen There's the raised hand to join us on stage with video and there's the Q&A box. That's the question. I Might my first question For you is one that I've been asking myself every day and I think almost everybody has been What what are some of the lessons that you take in terms of supporting students based on this Terrible epic experience of the COVID-19 pandemic. What what have you learned that we should know about and apply? Let me start with something that may surprise me, but I've learned the importance of humility I understood it some before but but but the wisdom comes when there's that appreciation of humility and for all of us In understanding we can never necessarily predict what the future holds That we find ourselves being challenged to understand more about who we are as Individuals as universities as people when the tough times come and most important If we are wise we come to appreciate Everything that others are doing to give us support at every level at every level You you've put up somewhere on the screen You had the name of our last book my colleagues and I wrote entitled the empowered university right now We're writing one that Focuses on what we've learned during this period about the extent to which we were the right or not quite right in the last book the empowered university and The ways in which we were I think on point after listening to our colleagues and students on campus Is that this was a period? Where we all learn how to listen more carefully if we've been successful how to listen more carefully to what our Students were saying from all kinds of backgrounds students of color first-generation college students students in general to listen to faculty and staff Especially people who were dealing with family challenges start children as well as other parts of the family and To think about what we could do to be supportive of them during this difficult period and then finally Listening to the fears that people have had and they the mental challenges Having to do mental health challenges having to do with just stress and the crisis. I mean and so I've said to colleagues As I've listened that I am learning more and more about ways that we all can be supportive During this next period. It's been very important and not one other thing While we all started off saying oh what a shame we're not able to do things face face to face I know many of my colleagues on the faculty would say we've learned some things about teaching and learning in this process That things will not be the same as they were before and even in face-to-face We're gonna have much more emphasis on hybrid on using technology in the classroom on opportunities for some remote learning and We've come we've learned to be more flexible and agile in thinking about how best to support our students That's fantastic that's I mean, it's okay. We're done now, you know That's a great great list All kinds of things that we really really should bear in mind Just one quick question deep how much do you think campuses are going to expand their mental health support? After this, I think we will have no choice But to expand mental health support and support in other ways, you know You took we have in that title growing support for black students It has certainly been a time when we've had to listen We've needed to listen to the reactions of our students of color black students and next students other students as They've seen how miserably we've handled so many things in our society in this period and as They've seen us working to keep hope alive and to move to a better place and most important as we've all seen the light Shining on all the disparities in our society from the academic achievement gap issues to the income disparities to the health care issues in terms of health disparities and and quite frankly Campuses are now having to understand What it means to say that race matters, for example, we know gender matters We know sexuality LGBTQ but but until a year or two ago We for the most part were very uncomfortable if we heard someone say structural racism Experts would have been saying yes, it's there, but the typical person would say aren't we beyond that somehow? And yet it's been very clear for obvious reasons why we need to keep talking about ways in which as a Society we discriminate against certain groups more recently about Anti-Asian sentiments and the challenges of that kind and so what we've learned in this period and what we should be continuing to learn is how we should be listening to the voices of people affected and having robust and uncomfortable Conversations about what we can do to move to the next level of supporting people Wise words very very wise words. Thank you. Thank you and before I can ask another question questions already started coming in So, let me let me share one from our mutual friend and our mutual editor Greg Britain Johns Hopkins and Greg asks a powerful question. How do we support students around social justice issues like a black lives matter movement? Especially when students are working and living remotely. Oh It's it has been a fascinating experience and Greg will appreciate this because we talked about some of the things we get in the Empowering University to build community among students some of you've seen my Ted talk on Success in science but what we say about success in science four pillars of success in science can be seen in general And that's about high expectations building community It takes faculty working with faculty with students to pull them into the work and then evaluating what we do and The high expectations part is the one that's not so obvious. We always talk about high expectations of our students Question is how do we have high expectations of ourselves not just in our teaching and in our research But in our work with our students to open our minds and understand how they are perceiving the environment What they see as being definitely not in their favor how they may be feeling peripheral in some ways And and and so I would suggest that during this period I know as we've talked with people in different on different campuses using that book What has been really helpful has been to have focus groups with different groups And that's of students and then a faculty and staff on everything from issues involving politics They have different points of view and and to even talking about how do you have the difficult conversations to students? Undergrad students grad students who have certain challenges black students in engineering or students of color in science up To hear what they are perceiving and how they are feeling about the experience And then the other part that the people don't talk about is how do we look to see how the students are doing? Academically as you see that academic performance will have an impact of what they think about the institution And if they're not doing well and somebody isn't being proactive in helping them to improve Through the supplemental instruction through tutoring through focus groups through building community then people feel even more Um Negatively about the experience and that's that's what we're gonna be going through We went through it on many of us went through it as we went through what we did this past year remotely and That's true for any campus. I mean is I talked to presidents that was still major concerns on campuses about social justice The other part that I often talk about is the need to get our students involved as we come out of this remote situation But even during it in helping young children in cities and other places In Hispanic children and so we had a number of our students who were working remotely to tutor Kids in some of the schools in Baltimore and what it does is to put the challenges in perspective There can be challenges on the campus and we can be more sensitive and more supportive and make sure that we're hearing those voices But we also want to teach our students of all races about social justice beyond our campus in thinking about what's happening in our communities And how do we help young kids to become? Proficient so one day they can come to college and that puts in perspective some of the social justice issues I don't want those issues to only be on our campuses. We need to deal with the challenges on our campus In each of our campuses I have a piece in the Atlantic from the past few months on how higher education should address structural racism And the other point I haven't mentioned is our the professoriate has to become much more diverse I'll give the diversifying up the student body We have to be creative if people look at our stride program as TRID it's focused on approaches to increasing the number of faculty from underrepresented groups and people should know mine is I'm very pleased that we are a minority serving institution. We have students from 100 countries And about 20% black students overall We are probably about half of color the largest minority group is Asian actually But we the country in producing black scientists with number one in producing black scientists Bachelors who are going to get science PhDs and MD PhDs and I promise my colleagues I would give people a reference to UMBC.edu slash ripple effect again UMBC.edu slash ripple effect and it is a Website for the my hall program, which gives a sense of what we do to create Excellence among students in the areas where American students tend not to do as well. That's in the science and engineering areas I think you'll find people right now in the forum community are frantically typing in links and and sharing them Already we've been seeing people sharing this on on Twitter Greg, thank you for that really really good question Greg if I can just say this one other point about that to To your point. I think that any campus that wants to be successful in working with students of color And all the issues we face I say and that's why I say genius of the and it's about African-Americans and Latino and Pacific Islanders Asian-Americans in general, but it's also about LGBTQ and then the gender issues It's not one or the other there are times when we need to focus on one This is where you had great conversations on my campus when people were saying where you're talking about black students here Well, there have been other times when we've talked about issues involving women Which we should be doing and these other groups during the time of George Floyd the emphasis was on black lives matter because People have gotten to the point in our society of thinking well There's a president of the United States or race doesn't matter I actually had students on my campus at one point say to me Well, you're president of UMBC and President Obama's there so why should race matter? Well, we are exceptions. They've always been exceptions who've done well I mean, you know, but the question is what's happening to most people and so I'm suggesting that this coming year Will be one in which institutions all types will have to face these challenges because the challenges are real We're talking about all kinds of reforms in our society But even when policies and laws are changed it takes years to implement so that people on the streets Necessarily see some of those changes and so all of us will need to think about ways of continuing to have the difficult Conversations and looking at best practices on the my heart program for example and others that we develop that are now being replicated on other campuses Well, thank you. This is this is fantastic. This is an embarrassment of riches so many programs and If you're again, if you're new to the forum by the way, Greg's question was an example of a Q&A question now Well, I'd like to give you an example of is a video question because we have our longtime friend from the West Coast George station when we bring him on the stage and by the way professor Harbusky George said that you gave him homework assignment, which he failed to accomplish Wanted to make sure that we had the full humiliation of that. Oh, I think we just hi George. I Think George just froze up I like a little humor in things and so Brian that before you use the term you would beam them up and Star Trek everybody knows I won't sound effect here. I don't Think you may have a connection problem his end I'll give him a minute more and oh great You seem to be there George, but you're a little staggered. Yeah, I think he's got a bandwidth issue on his end So he asked a question without having his video up. He can he can ask it through text. So I'll just send him a note about that But for everybody else George just let us know when when you can And we had another question that came in from Kenan Solanero who just Chatted should we also be looking at how to create a different way of doing things from a different worldview Such that mental health outcomes are not the natural progression You know, we should be rethinking How we do most things, you know, we've done a lot of tele-counseling tell them that mental health But I'll be people student affairs and others have been talking about the need for wellness We are actually just She just texted me a few minutes ago the picture as we're coming to fruition with this completion of a new wellness center and so thinking about your broadly mental health but wellness and on many levels and Finding ways of bringing resources to the campus that can help us to help our students and colleagues faculty and staff This will be a period of transition for everyone in so many ways as we move back to campuses Since most were not on campus fully and we will need to be again Asking questions a lot of questions and listening and making sure the environment is one where people can say what they really think As we go through this this process, you know I just had a meeting with some of my colleagues who were talking about Wanting to make sure that people who have gone through education remotely this year And well prepared as necessary for the next year's work How do we measure that to make sure that that's the case and if there are some gaps somewhere? How do we use supplemental instruction to help with those and so it's about mindset? It seems to me you're saying we're in this together with our students It's not just no you should have learned this this and now you have it No, if we didn't get it if something didn't work it quite as effectively We need to find a way to work with you to make it up since help make it work Similarly when thinking about mental health Partnering with other groups. We've been doing that all along and even more so in the community That can be helpful to us depending on the challenges that people face and our student affairs people have been very creative in working with groups that involve addiction and Working with them for some students who needed to be in housing involving our recovery programs at the same time so it's looking at the particular needs of students and seeing how we can address those needs and Creating an environment that will ensure that people are comfortable talking about their problems You know now students are much more comfortable particularly when they're from more advantage families of saying I come in with this addiction problem of that All right Many students working class students sometimes middle class students are not accustomed to thinking about therapists. Yeah Mental health counseling and they think what do you think? I'm crazy. No, no, no, no No, we all need help in different ways at different times And so for many of and part of the book talks about culture change About how do you change the culture so that people are not embarrassed if they're having an anxiety problem But can talk about it and get the help they need and that's what we're gonna have to be proactive in doing So his point is well taken it takes a lot to change the culture of institutions Kenan thank you so much for that great question, which is a very deep one and again Thank you President Herboski for a rich answer. I love the external partnerships as well as that openness to people being able to speak we we just got a Question from George and something to read this out He said can you say more about retaining your social justice mission on campus in the view of challenges? And the challenges are first from the previous White House with executive order And now state-by-state with how black history should be taught critical race history, etc Sure, there's several things. Thank you George very much. I'm very respectful of you several things I would say number one institutions will need to look at the structure on their campuses that will be responsible for focusing on this issue and One of my challenges to campuses is that that that focus on social justice Should not simply be the role of committed minority staff members that we need faculty Professors some of whom may have those areas as their expertise others who just have an interest But we need to think about how are we Focusing on issues of social justice not only in co-curricular activities But throughout the classroom situations in what settings in what classes and what courses will students have Exposure to these questions and how can we read we reinforce them We have an equity and inclusion counsel that was set up a couple years ago And I talked about that in the other book coming first out of some title nine issues that we had We could be much better than we were we thought we were doing a great job Turns out we had more work to do and I think that's a part of learning that I don't care What campus it is we need to admit we can do better. I don't know a campus They can't do better in some of these areas, but secondly and making sure that council reports to the president's office throughout chief of staff and that we have key faculty and staff members and students on the council and to bring up these issues and to have a relationship between that council and The provost office who is responsible for all those academic initiatives and so the question about structure of the question about How do we go about evaluating level of effectiveness and most important? What's the level of priority of those conversations of those initiatives on the campus when it is important? You invest in it financially money. You have Time set aside by people who are the major influences to be involved And then you have the difficult conversations because we can't get everybody involved immediately Because there's there's always some backlash But there are enough allies that you worked it We did the same thing in talking about diversifying the faculty and we have a long way to go We've begun to get a presence of One or two black faculty members of several Latinos in a number of departments. We still some departments with none You know and so I think speaking the truth about it that we have a way to go We've done a better job in educating African-American students not just in science but also in the humanities and social sciences and students in general and That we're still working to diversify the faculty, which is a part of the issue involving retention of students social justice issues but also issues involving gender equality and as we think about our LGBTQ faculty so I think it's possible to give appropriate attention to each of these groups as long as we're giving respect to each of these groups and listening to their voices as we're discussing these kinds of issues you Is one of our center for democracy is really focused on social justice and large enough and the Shriver Center We've got these entities on campus that are focused on work not only on voting But what happens after we talk about the whole vote the idea what do we do after the voting has taken place? How do we get involved with the infrastructure in our state? For example and beyond to make a difference in policies and so all of these are initiatives that focus on keeping us Grounded in that work involving social justice We actually have it in a part as a part of our broader mission statement That so that it becomes the DN a part of the DNA of the institution excellent excellent Sharing out a bunch of links to a bunch of these including your center for democracy and civic life Yeah, George. Thank you very very much for the excellent excellent question. I appreciate your patience and and working through the technology And that's just a Fantastic answer. I mean you just gave us a whole series of excellent excellent plans to follow We have another question that comes in from Ohio University. This is Bob Klein when we bring him up on stage Hello, Bob Hi, everyone. Thank you so much. It's good to see you again president Ravowski Good to see you. It's nice to see you beamed up to us. Absolutely. I and my particles all seem to be intact here but you know you said earlier that You know, there's a an issue here of assessing the graduates You know as a result of the pandemic it seems also the incoming first year students You're talking about half a generation that's going to have gaps potentially and they're learning as a result of the pandemic And especially, uh, you know for me the the the pandemic Um Really exposed the differential access by locale by race by ethnicity by so many things to internet and learning resources uh You know, that's a huge issue. How are we going to deal with that as as? Universities and leaders of universities to come It's a great question that we should be thinking about people who've not had the advantages And that all and so many of our campuses that is the case We are looking at ways of assessing where they are in their education when they come And in the ways that we have done before whether talking about verbal skills math skills, but but most important We we focus heavily on our academic success unit. We've got a unit that looks at where students are at what they need and In in making sure we effectively placing them in the right courses in that first year And then monitoring them carefully This is where the use of technology can be really helpful in addition to the personal touch So we we've been using analytics for years, but we've now moved into using machine learning and data science as an approach to understand with greater intimacy the student experience in classes and outside of classes And most important getting to know our students getting to know them and we we have 14,000 students who are We have about 11,000 undergrad and not quite 3,000 grad students We've got another seven eight thousand in a training company Which does a great job of getting to know students veterans and others for programs in that way But for the traditional students the fact is that Amazingly the the more we put them in groups So you have you found a form of community To make sure students don't slip through the cracks The more effective you can do so we've gone at your mvc from we say this in the book from 30 some percent graduation rate after six years to 70 percent with another 20 percent We can account for because they went to programs we don't have so we know we're we're reaching the students And so a key has been though making sure they're connected To some group on the campus and yeah, we've become much more residential. It's true But still of our freshmen 80 percent will be on campus, but as soon as in general it's only about half on campus The others are not so many around the campus But but the key has been whether they're residential or commuter What group are they connected to how do you make sure they're not on their own? Because students who are not assertive And who are not secure will just think it's on me We've worked hard to change the culture to say everybody needs tutoring at some point You know in high school Talented students think oh, I don't need any help. I don't need any help right But our approach is very different We want and so even our classes We have these innovation grants that focus on teaching and learning and heavily focus on collaboration And connecting if you look they they actually name the program after me after my 20th year as president I didn't because I said people get things named after them when they're dead, right? I wasn't excited about this, but they were able to raise money So if you look up if you google rubowski innovation grants You'll see where they a lot of branches particularly for the lower level courses In ways of connecting disciplines But most important of thinking out of the box about different ways of helping more students to succeed And so for me most important Assessing where they are when they come in with some level of Specificity and then meeting those needs by thinking about experiences They might have sometimes it's a supplemental course a piece of a course you put together We do a lot of that and just as one example There have been classes where many of the students Didn't quite get up to the beat to get to the next level But they were close and so we were able to develop Parts of courses based on what they didn't get let them take that in january So they could keep moving ahead. We've got to do much more of that kind of thing very important Thank you Thank you so much And i'm just uh Going from a graduation rate in the 30s to the 70s. That's tremendous Great power and no no difference in graduation rates between black white asian and hispanic That's probably the big deal No difference in graduation rates, and i'm very proud to tell you that of my african about 2000 other 14 000 of black But all the african-american students half on male That's the other issue that we don't talk enough about Most places will have minimal women and we're very glad to have those women But the black male gets left behind or the latino male sometimes and interesting enough We are half of the black students on campus on male. That's been a very deliberate effort to have that kind of balance Wow. Yeah, that's a big change. What's the total gender breakdown at umbc now? It is about 52 percent men 48 percent women. We're always looking for more women We're always that's because we have science and engineering. We have a center for women in it Women in it and engineering. So we have ambassadors working to build the numbers of women In those disciplines, but we want more women in the humanities and social sciences We especially want to make sure we keep that some balance in the resonance halls Most of you know if the resonance halls becomes too male you have much more physical destruction That's what the research shows But that reason and for the obvious reason it's really good to have gender balance Well, thank you. Thank you. And uh, i'm going to mess with the gender balance right now here. Um, and uh, by inviting Mark Breneman up to the stage. He's uh, university maryland college park Or he's assistant director of classical technology. Okay. Let's see mark Hello, can you hear me? Yeah, you've been beat up. Yeah, all right Hi, uh, mark Breneman here from university of maryland college park So I was as I was listening to your talk This might be egg on my face because I missed some of the first chunk of the the session I apologize. So if you already answered this question, just like shove me off stage And move on I'm wondering if there are opportunities to link these types of programs across the university system of maryland You know, I know dr. Pine says his List of programs that we're trying to develop over here and work on so I'm wondering if there's any way to collaborate on that If so, I'm wondering does that add too much bureaucracy like does it make sense to really keep it localized? Or is there some some kind of effort across the universities and I'm hoping the system of maryland at the top level is fully supportive of these these types of programs as well It's a great our chancellor j perman talks about Ness and working to work together and daryl and I at prison of college park are good friends In fact, we just announced College park is leading but we are partners here in this work in artificial intelligence. This got this 68 million dollar grant with arl I'm really pleased about that and that will be for research and training and daryl himself has been a major player in Bringing that about we're very proud to be the partners on that But we do have nsf funded programs for graduate minority programs of The promise program is across campuses with the medical school downtown college park umbc But also with umes and some of the other hbcu So we do have some of those initiatives and then at the undergrad level We have the alliance for minority participation Which includes those other campuses now the mire program is not being replicated there But both chapel hill and penn state have replicated the mire program With funding from howard hughes and we have a science piece if you look up science And replication of malhoff you'll see that article and then we have replicated We're in the process of replicating the malhoff at ukel berkeley in san diego with chan zuckerberg money If you look and you'll see if you look up replication mal reputation, you'll see that So there are programs that have been replicated We are pushing this model for students in science and engineering particularly of malho The more of that the more and and but i will say that both In looking at the top 10 producers of blacks who are going to get phd's in stem Umbc and college park are there Both of us are there. We're very proud to be number one But college park is definitely on that list and with exception of one other institution I believe university of florida the others are hbcu So we are in that list, but i can say we can all do much better and then sounds like I'm sorry. It sounds like some other universities are seeing some effective models. Oh, yeah, and kind of Using using those. So that's great. Yeah, and we need we need to be replicating models all over We really do and I will say uh, and uh, you know the president of college park had been the dean of engineering there and so Umbc i just got the new data i'm writing an article on this now that uh for producing blacks who go on But to get bachelors and going to get phd's in engineering um nc and t north cairn and t is number one morgan is number two But umbc and college park are tied for number three and then of course you've got george attack in some other places So, um, um, we're making progress here in the state now the point I would make about all of us is We can do a much better job. I mean i'm challenging national agencies and foundations and saying Take those if we took the number of the top 30 institutions, for example in producing blacks Who get phd's and we double those numbers? We would increase the number in the entire country by 25 percent and if we did the same thing for latinos We would actually increase the number by 45 percent So having a laser focus on those who are already doing a good job to make help them to do much better And then replicating can make a big difference I would argue the same thing should be true in the social sciences If we've got to diversify the faculty in humanities and social sciences We need to be producing more students who are going to get phd's in those areas also Thank you mark. Thank you. Yeah, no, great. Thank you. Great question mark. Thank you very much And uh, I appreciate the uh, the point towards systemness In the in the chat joe murphy just wants to toss on observation So there's really good work being done on systematic improvement with howard hughes medical institute funds. Yes, yes Yes, erin the president is is excellent Mike summons who is our howard hughes investigator has led the replication efforts at chapel hill pinstay And out at berkeley and san diego really nice story the program. Um, the c program at berkeley It's going really well and um, uh, a wonderful woman doctor dotna has just who is a nobel laureate Has just donated the the nobel prize That money to that seed program just just recently. It's very impressive. It really is so people People do care. That's the point very impressive Very much though, and you've talked about partnerships and reaching out and we can see that Yeah, yeah, yeah, it makes a difference. Um, you know as a president I will tell you I'm always shameless and saying I'm always looking for more money so we could do much That's your job. That's your job We have more questions coming in. I want to make sure everyone gets a chance to ask And this is one that comes from shannon dowling at the air sting rose Uh, and shannon asks, do you think the physical virtual space matters to student belonging and success? And with that, what does an inclusive classroom look like in terms of design? I appreciate that shannon the uh, and we here Experienced from your place, uh have helped us for years. Joe worked there our chief architect for years and others Have helped us in first of all with the outside space I I would give your firm credit for giving us a lot of support in working to build community Physically on the outside and because I had the chance to give keynotes about diversity to the american institute of architects Twice in the last 20 years I've gotten support from you guys in thinking through what we've been doing in the physical planning on the outside And then more recently as we have worked on innovation and collaboration What we've worked to do is several things our our new interdisciplinary life sciences building The focus is heavily on flexibility And equipment that can be used in a variety of settings and technology that allows us to beam from one room to another easily And for faculty to work collaboratively that way And so having the technology that that allows you to get into different spaces can be very helpful the virtual spaces but also um having space that encourages conversation and into disciplinarity and Um a comfort level in solving problems So our chemistry discovery center was one of our first major Facilities renewal if you look up the cdc it's not for disease. It's chemistry discovery center UMBC is focused on improving chemistry in the first two years and what you'll see will be tables around tables with Six people in each one each with uh technology there. Nobody's using paper and pencil or anything like that Uh, and every person has a role from the provocateur to the the technologist the the leader of the group uh someone else to help facilitate in the work describe and and um Students are getting real-time feedback from a professor who is And so the the notion of having Times when people can talk to each other rather than simply looking at the the the person Can make a big difference or quite frankly if you look at this setting I can see the faces of people. I can see how they're responding to what i'm saying And and and I can also go get from them feedback in that process and we learned a lot about The use of virtual spaces in communication during the past year that will be helpful to us in the time coming up I sent a letter around to my colleagues from one of my professors of literature who taught a course on happiness A seminar on happiness and she wrote to me saying I started off Knowing that it wasn't going to be the best situation And trying to figure out how to make it as good as possible. She said and now she said I've had more In-depth conversation With people who have been able to talk to me from their Their their their bedroom their living room or whatever with me in my living room And somehow our mindsets changed and we connected more as human beings even than we had face to face Wow and our point to me was we should not be so presumptuous as to think that the connection is always better Face to face. Yes, and my Ted talk talks about the fact we we screen out We weed out the majority of students of all races in science in the first year in science and engineering I chaired the national academies committee two-thirds of americans of all races leave science and engineering within the first year or two And it's heavily because they didn't do well. It's not because they want to go and make more money in business They didn't do well in the coursework And so the point I'm making about virtual spaces, but about this period and using remote learning is we I think many people have learned we can be so much better Even in the face-to-face as a result of what we've done through the technology That's a great great feedback loop And shannon, thank you for the question. I just threw a shout out to air sink rose on twitter about this as well as link to your Chemistry discovery center, which sounds fantastic. Thank you Friends we have we're coming up on the very last part of the hour So if you'd like to share your questions and thoughts Your this is the time so the floor is open you've already seen what it's like to have a video question or a text question and I'd like to share a text question from another long time friend and supporter of the program Roxanne Riskin from Connecticut and Roxanne asks as a mindfulness educator I'm excited to hear about your new wellness center another topic Have you included campus climate challenges and any initiatives directly in impacting campus community? Oh very much so we've been doing a number of surveys I appreciate the question Roxanne a number of surveys of students of faculty and staff To understand how people are perceiving the environment on many levels about many issues from race to gender sexuality but also we're having Conversations about what we're learning through the surveys to give people a greater comfort level In speaking the truth in saying what they really are seeing or experiencing and while we are encouraged by Some of the good stuff we hear we're also challenged by And I'm encouraged by sometimes when we hear something that says we're not doing so well because it says people feel comfortable in telling you No, we can do better at this. You know, we knew for example when people said listen Um, many of you are older administrators So you don't know what it means to have a little kid and you're trying to teach at the same time You know remotely, you know, it was so important for us to hear that and to think about one of the things We can do to give young families support, you know, so Um, yes, we are doing those things, but I also want to say I'm a very strong believer in mindfulness I'm using it in many ways myself with my students. I'm doing the calm app for example So I meditate every day for sure. I'm doing tai chi I mean it's that human experience and and we talk about these things how and this isn't related to mental health and to Just health in general that that I don't think we should separate all the time What we're doing in the classroom or right there at university from our broader lives And so everybody knows I'm studying french. I've been studying french for several years with japan from say I think it's a to do, but I'm also doing Um, the the calm app my own medication tation and the tai chi and and acupuncture um, and I think Being Broad educators. Yes, we should be thinking about the liberal arts But we should also think about how we live our lives And how we talk about as leaders every educator is a leader how we talk about how we make it to the next day How can we inspire people to keep hope alive? And it's got to be yes about that which is intellectual But that which is on for many people on many levels spiritual and that which is involving just the life of our Our inner life. I would call it our inner life. I'm even using noom right now I'll say that as a mindful technique with eating Just because it's the idea that you keep learning that's the point I want to get across We should all keep learning and our campus is one that has a lot of groups involving yoga and wellness and um, we celebrate that that they the broad thinking about who we are as human beings Wow Roxanne you asked a fantastic question question and and uh President Horowski you went in a great direction with that Thank you. Thank you very much we've had A lot of support here for your your your comments about how we can learn more about the physical from the virtual experience And we've had some nice nice tweets celebrating some of your key points including about listening Yeah, which I hope we get to do as much of here By the way, we call it retrieva courage retrieva courage And we started doing that after a protest about some issues of needing more resources in title nine And I was the first to say it thought we were doing a great job We've got to do more and and retrieva courage. Remember the name of our dog is is a true grit It's and he's a chest retriever So we have retrieved if you if you if you google retriever courage You'll see all kinds of stuff where we are saying we can be better But we must listen to each other and understand what we're saying. Yeah That's a that's a great thing Um, oh, I love that you can't go wrong with a good dog model Oh, yeah, and we call you NBC the house of grit the house of grit. It's all about resilience getting back up When we beat uva several years ago in that basketball game It was so because we're such a nerdy campus So beating the the very wealthy and powerful uva as the first number 16c even me the nerd even I as a nerd got it And we were all so excited and I want everybody to know we just became national champions in mock trial very excited You and bc bc why is that important? It's important For our country to know that as a person or university you don't have to be rich to be the very best You won't have to be rich to be the very best Intellectually i'm not talking to athletics now. I'm glad about the athletics, but intellectually I want my working in middle-class students to know they can be the very best We just produced the first black woman to produce a vaccine dr. Kiss meet your corbin She's one of my graduates who went on got a piece of job We'd never had in the world a black woman creative vaccine. That's huge It's huge and we should celebrate that because that says something to young women to girls the people of color that it can be done Yeah, that's fantastic You mentioned to me that my alma mater the university of michigan, uh, um bc sent uh the first black female chemist I think no she is uh lola is the first black female professor of chemical engineering mbc phc from university of pennsylvania and she's now an associate dean there and Full professor of chemical engineering there and that's one of our challenges working to produce more students who go on the faculties Around the country. Yes. Well, that's that's terrific. Yes. Uh, I guess my question I'd like to put to you is you know looking ahead Over the next say five or ten years and we've just lived through an extraordinary experience I'm wondering, you know, what does higher ed do you think look like right? Every is it are we going to be this much better at teaching this much better at listening this much better community involvement and student support Uh, what is what is it? I appreciate that if we continue to be attentive to each of these issues and Give both our time and resources To the teaching and learning process To support faculty in rethinking how we teach to teach students how to learn. All right If we continue to focus attention On social justice issues not just for black students or for students of color but for our country The more the future has to be that universities Help the entire society to know that Unless we do more to help our children who come from Families where two-thirds in general have never had anybody graduate from college and then large numbers of families of color We cannot continue to progress as a society and so I think and then unless we can teach our our students to be Even more enlightened than our generation has been So that we are able to discern the truth To present our arguments and give evidence as fred lorenz says from fiber to kappa and to listen carefully to other Perspectives and then find that common ground. That's what the future is going to have to hope that we are learning how Not to be so divided and how to begin to close those gaps income level health disparities Universities community colleges and universities and I want to give community colleges credit They are producing more than 40 some percent of all the students in higher education right now I was fortunate to co-chair the aspen prize just recently and just was amazed by the work They do to focus on students and so more and more we need more attention on students on use of technology in communicating and supporting each other and using all these different techniques data science machine learning to understand the students but broad big picture We must be seen as a major part of the problem solvers of the humankind challenges That's that's why i'm so glad to say my graduate young woman out of rural north carolina Creates with bunny gram a vaccine leads the team to create this vaccine. That's huge. Look at the name dr. Kiss mickey a corbett uh another one of my students after katlyn satler sd s a d t l e r is the um the person leading the campaign and the the study in in the country On asymptomatic covid patients because a lot of us are asymptomatic and we and they're trying to understand What is this involved? It's going to be very important She's got a chat talk and her chat talk has twice as many hits as mine I was lucky to get over a hundred a million hits. She's got 2.5 million hits and she's trying to get my age katlyn satler s a d t l e r So I use I often will put up those two graduates one white one black young women great scientists to change the attitudes Of society both out of working middle-class families now leading in the country leading in the world in helping with public health Fantastic and that is a great great direction for the future Friends unfortunately the the future just hit us really hard because we are out of time. Oh, wow This is actually the the end of the hour And I I'm I'm just astonished President herbosky at how much you shared with us and how much you've been Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you, Brian. Thank you The line we always leave with this keep hope alive. Oh, that's a good one. It's very important It's not original, but it's so profound It is alive, but don't don't leave yet because I wanted to ask you what's the best way for us to keep up with you Uh, should we just uh, you know, uh, if you go just if you if you look at the umbc home page Everything i'm doing all the time and you can just google rubowski. I'm talking somewhere all the time This is my 30th year's president. So i've been very fortunate very fortunate Very very fortunate. Oh my gosh. Well, that's fantastic. Thank you. Thank you so much And we will follow and we're looking forward to your next book too. Great. Thank you. Thank you everybody Now don't go friends because we need to point you out to uh, uh the next couple of weeks But thank you for all of your really really good questions Um, just looking ahead for the next few weeks on the forum. We've got uh a manifesto for how to teach better online We have another session on equity improving education equity for black students Uh a session on sparking conversations on emerging educational technology A session on mentoring and professional development and still more just go to forum that future Education.us to learn more Uh, you can also keep talking about all these issues how to partner with outside of of a campus How to best implement and support social justice in a mixed virtual and physical environment and more Just head to twitter and use the hashtag ftte and my blog as well will have comments there If you'd like to look back into our previous sessions on any of these topics Just head to our giant archive at youtube. Good tiny url.com slash ftfr archive And that's it for today. Thank you all so much for your thoughts for your conversations This has been a terrific session. I hope all of you take away a lot of thoughts and a lot of inspiration And above all, I hope you all stay safe. Take care We'll see you next time online Bye. Bye