FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 19, 2021
Contact: Maya Matthews Minter
Phone: 703.385.2411
Diverse: Issues In Higher Education is pleased to announce the recipient of this year’s Dr. John Hope Franklin Award.
Dr. Freeman Hrabowski, III is one of the nation’s most distinguished college presidents. With 30-years at the helm of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC), he serves as a consultant on science and math education to national agencies, universities, and school systems. In 2012, he was named by President Obama to chair the President’s Advisory Commission on Educational Excellence for African Americans. Under his leadership, UMBC has been recognized as a model for academic innovation, undergraduate teaching, and inclusive excellence by numerous publications.
In 2012, he was named one of the 100 Most Influential People in the World by TIME, and more recently he received the American Council on Education’s Lifetime Achievement Award (2018), the University of California, Berkeley’s Clark Kerr Award (2019), and the University of California, San Francisco’s UCSF Medal (2020).
His most recent book, The Empowered University, examines how university communities support academic success by cultivating an empowering institutional culture. He has announced his plans to retire from UMBC at the end of the 2021-2022 academic school year.
Award Presentation:
The November 25, 2021 edition of Diverse will include a feature profile on Dr. Hrabowski. The awards presentation will take place (virtually) on Tuesday, November 16, 2021 at 4 pm ET.
About this Award:
The Dr. John Hope Franklin Award was created in 2004 to pay tribute to Dr. Franklin, historian, writer, educator, and humanitarian who made significant contributions to shaping the perspective of American history in the 20th century.
With the late Dr. Franklin’s permission, Diverse created the award to institutionalize and celebrate his scholarly contributions to the nation on an ongoing basis. The individuals and organizations chosen are those whose contributions to higher education are consistent with the highest standards of excellence.
Past recipients have included Dr. Clifton Wharton, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Dr. Maya Angelou, the late Dr. William Friday, and Dr. Johnnetta B. Cole, just to name a few.
For more than three decades, Diverse: Issues In Higher Education has been America’s premier source of timely news, provocative commentary, insightful interviews and in-depth special reports on diversity in higher education. Savvy individuals who appreciate the crucial and ever-changing role that higher education plays in the lives of students, professionals, their families, and their communities make reading Diverse a regular habit.
This year’s award is being presented with support from TIAA.
