Freeman Alphonsa Hrabowski III 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 composing the University System of Maryland. Dr. Hrabowski has been credited with transforming UMBC into an institution noted for research and innovation. Under his leadership, UMBC was ranked the #1 Up and Coming University in the U.S. for six consecutive years (2009-2014) by U.S. News and World Report magazine. When that designation was retired, U.S. News and World Report began including UMBC on its annual Most Innovative National Universities list.
Dr. Hrabowski is the co-author of the books Beating the Odds: Raising Academically Successful African American Males (1998); Overcoming the Odds: Raising Academically Successful African American Young Women (2001); Holding Fast to Dreams: Empowering Youth from the Civil Rights Crusade to STEM (2015); and The Empowered University: Shared Leadership, Culture Change, and Academic Success (2019).