The Meyerhoff model: twenty years later, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County's efforts to increase the number of minorities pursuing graduate STEM degrees have become something to study and replicate

Diverse Issues in Higher Education, July 10, 2008 by David Pluviose

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As an example of the effectiveness of the group-study concept, Dzirasa says of the six Meyerhoff scholars that were chemical engineering majors at UMBC, "We had the top six scores in all of our classes because we worked very efficiently together.

"Of those, there are three M.D./Ph.D.s, one Ph.D., one M.D., and one person with a master's in systems engineering from Columbia," Dzirasa adds. "The notion that all of us succeeded together is the idea that drove all of us forward."

McFadden says the Meyerhoff program is "a well-oiled machine," in that Meyerhoff faculty and staff know that many of the high-achieving students coming into the program "tended to do things on our own and excelled on our own." And they know that group-study "is a new concept for many of us, but they encourage us to enter into study groups and find a support system of students who are going to be in our classes so we have them to lean on and help us in our weaknesses in certain subjects."

Replicating Success

Annually, Hrabowski says, the Meyerhoff program gets around 2,000 nominations from high school principals, guidance counselors and teachers; and 1,000 applications for 80 Meyerhoff seats at UMBC. Nevertheless, Hrabowski says the concepts of group study and forging relationships with faculty mentors emphasized through Meyerhoff have been replicated among the general population of students at UMBC, and other colleges have taken their cues from Meyerhoff's success. Louisiana State and Cornell universities are just two of the institutions that have modeled programs after Meyerhoff.

Dzirasa recalls a meeting of Meyerhoff students in which they discussed how the success of Meyerhoff could be replicated at other institutions. He says that what "people don't realize is that Dr. Hrabowski is constantly in the process of replicating himself in the people that are coming through the program.

"Even if it's something that may not show in five or six years, going back to the reunion, I'm now seeing my classmates and the people who tutored me who are professors at Michigan, professors at Yale, professors at Harvard, and you see this subtle thing happening, where indeed, he has replicated himself," Dzirasa adds.

Ultimately, McFadden says, Hrabowski's insistence that he get nothing but the best from his Meyerhoff scholars has paid great dividends.

"An underlying theme of great expectations is why Dr. Hrabowski was successful," McFadden says. "If you have great expectations for yourself, then you will rise to the level of great accomplishment. What he always reinforces in all of his Meyerhoffs and in all of the students at UMBC is to expect the best from themselves."

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