Corbett’s call that night was also a testament to a lesser-known but arguably as important part of Dr. He has written four books, given thousands of speeches, made it onto influencer lists and seen hundreds of graduates go on to obtain professorships and other positions at some of the country’s most prestigious institutions.īut Dr. Hrabowski acquired something like celebrity status over the course of his tenure. has cracked one of the most vexing conundrums in higher education - the lack of Black students excelling in the sciences.įor these achievements, Dr. in the natural sciences or engineering, U.M.B.C. The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of California, Berkeley, are among those that have replicated it.Īs the nation’s top producer of Black undergraduates who go on to complete a Ph.D. Corbett, has served as a barrier-breaking model for colleges nationwide. The school’s Meyerhoff Scholars Program, whose alumni include Dr. for 30 years, is renowned in academic circles for transforming what was once a regional commuter school into the country’s strongest pipeline of Black graduates in science, technology, engineering and related fields. Hrabowski, who retired last week after leading U.M.B.C. Corbett, now an assistant professor of immunology and infectious diseases at Harvard’s T.H.

“I had to call someone who understood all that I had been through - what it meant to even get a Ph.D., what it meant to traverse this space,” said Dr. But all she could think about was the man she had met as an 18-year-old freshman at the university, who immediately recognized her thick Southern accent and her potential to make history. Corbett was the first Black woman to achieve such a feat, a groundbreaking development in the fight against the deadliest pandemic in recent U.S. Hrabowski III, the longtime president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.Īt 34, Dr. BALTIMORE - Late one night in the fall of 2020, when Kizzmekia Corbett learned the vaccine she had helped design was highly effective against the coronavirus, there was only one person she wanted to call: Freeman A.

Commuting Wife by Dean McCoy