University. The notion is this our university should be empowered to look in the mirror and be honest with herself, we use it in a way of talking with leadership and talking about our society that institutions that are healthy and secure and should be willing to recognize whatever is going well and to be willing to say that we have a way to go. Its empowered to be honest with itself. In the subtitle which is shared leadership, culture change in academic success starts with the notion its not about one person, is not just about the University President , its about all of us working together with the vision of educating students, that is the notion of empowerment. I found the subtitle interesting because if you look at the cover of the book, you dont have one listed higher than the other or greater priority, you really have them almost laid out as a circle that we all rely on each other. Thats exactly right. Why was that you really tell important stories in this word the university is never an overnight thing, the idea of building culture, the idea of academic success, the idea of shared leadership, those cannot just be catchwords, those are things that have to be infused and nurtured and those are things that you have to give time, you plant the seeds and give time to grow. I think the experience that you had at umb see is a great example of that. As a person is going through their own journey, how do they think about that in terms of patient and timeline for a lot of leaders is not an easy thing. You start with the idea that the university of campus is fairly young, under 60 years old and founded in the 60s. Ive been fortunate to be there for the president of 25 years. What i learned is a success that weve had, its been considerable, is, the result of the work of a lot of people taking the time to analyze and assess the problem and challenges to get to know our students, to understand how the culture needed to change and then to work in a very organized approach of making the difference. That means what, that means that we understand that in american Higher Education, half the students unfortunately will go to college and dont graduate. How can we increase Graduation Rates on the one hand. It also means we need to think about, what does it mean to be an educated person, to understand that it takes more than sending students through classes that were trying to touch the hearts and minds of people, it means we have a self fulfilling prophecy which means when students are coming to your institution, we want to make sure they succeed, most people go to college, remember when the dean or the president said look at the student to your left, look at the one to write, one will not graduate, thats a terrible thing to say to young people, or young people were not so young, look to your left, look to your right, our goal is to make sure all three graduate and if you dont wear info also, its a matter of having the patient as an institution and as an individual to know that you dont make progress overnight, when you talk about improving Graduation Rates or discussing what it means to be educated and helping people understand how to work with people different from themselves, it takes time to shape a culture to make for success. So for leaders who are going to the process, how do you know when youre on the right path of shaping the culture, how do you know because sometimes you need the benchmarks to let you know indicate going that youre in the right direction or you need to change directions. I use quotes from erics book that says culture is the seaweeds women in that you really dont appreciate until you get out of the and look back out of. I was adjusting my colleagues would suggest the coauthors and i all are saying we have to get out of the culture and step out and look back at whats going on, when thinking about success and how successful we are, the two approaches we worked on for years, analytics, use of data and looking at trends and disaggregating the data and looking at women and people of color, number one and number two, looking at the majors of students in the economic backgrounds, number two focus groups. I have learned over the years, my colleagues agree that the best way to understand what is going on beyond looking at data which can seem cold is getting to listen to the voices of people of the students, over calling what is working whats not working and whats very challenging to understand what excites them, its in the listening process that we learn more about who we are and what the challenges are. I think one fascinating thing that has happened at the university of maryland under your leadership is how he reshaped what people see when they look at you. This was a university that frankly felt like a sleepy Commuter School and now were talking about the community that is leading the nation in many ways and how is training in teaching scientists, mathematicians and engineers, and series of color for scientists, mathematicians, engineers and et cetera. So talk to us how that transition took place from going from the sleepy Commuter School in the name at the nerd factory, the house of great, talk about that transition. First of all it is true that people continue to talk about our first 20 25 years as years when we were not well known and in many ways we were still commuter, we had not become residential as we are now, in the first years, faculty was working very hard to build a Solid Foundation to make sure the academic enterprise was found and it was in that setting when i first came that i realized that we had good stuff, i colleagues and i said we spent high bars in academics and we need to see how we build on that and build the village. We come from over 100 countries, you there in new york, the fact, when you walk down on our campus, you will see students from all over the world and it feels like the plaza nation at the un, peoples talk about us with science and engineering, we meet the country with white institutions within b phds, what is more important than in that is that we are educating students of all races are crossed, the media people love the science and engineering and those are important but im really exciting that across and eight in the morning that we have students in arts that we get to the American Theater festival and we have so many students studying language and culture and studying french, i have plenty of students who speak french all day long to me. It is a place where stem is important but humanities and social science are important and i bring that up because of something we say in the book which we as a society have to appreciate the fact that is not one area of discipline and another versus another, its not stem versus non, to how we integrate, how do we teach her future scientist to appreciate the value of ethics and how do we make sure theyre looking at digital and using technology. A part of looking at the mere and the university in looking at the mere in society, how do we teach our students that they can be proficient in a number of areas and love languages and culture even if they study math or vice versa. Right now if you like this book is coming out a powerful time because weve never seen the university as a system under such attack, the Higher Education, why people need that, we need more training, so on and so forth, jobs of the future, how when you think about the empowered university, what is yours response to the criticism and was several of the university to encounter that record. I think when an institution is empowering we are able to look at the big picture, the big picture should say several things, the college is not for everyone a lot of students dont want to be in a liberal arts setting and they were right to have a post secondary opportunity later on but number two, we need to appreciate the value of Community Colleges, they are educating the most half of all students in america and at the university we need to be connecting with Community Colleges and understanding what is happening in the post secondary world, so we talk about being empowered to appreciate the genius of the end versus the tyranny of the all, that is jim collins, it means is not one thing or the other, it could be the colleges American Education is rich and diverse with all the different types of institutions. When people ask me if Higher Education matters, my First Response is always absolutely. Excuse me, when i say if you show me a family that is seen some success in college, somebody is gonna College Degree and gone on to get a job, we will see a family where they continue to want others to go, i dont see a family whos had success in college and universities saying we do not need this anymore. The challenge that we face the most people dont realize is only about 30 of American Families have experienced college graduation. If you have not experienced it, you dont appreciate what it can do for your family to move into the middle class. So two things we need to say as the book talks about, empowered to say to our nation and beyond Higher Education matters, absolutely were creating citizens, teaching people how to think critically and engagement that was the other institutions do at the same time you should be empowered to look internally at yourself in the mere is a we can do much better. Theres more that we can do. When you think about theres more that we can do, i cannot help but think about your own personal stories in your own personal journey. A journey that brought you from alabama to maryland and now leading one of the most prestigious and forwardlooking universities in the world. Can you tell some bit about your journey. In the World Education played in the journey. I appreciate that. Before he been a participant in the childrens margin birmingham and a child of educators in all my life i love reading and math and thats what i wanted as a child to appreciate the meaning of words and to understand the connections across the discipline so im very fortunate to be at a university that allows me too get to know people from all over the world, i could never imagine growing up in birmingham in the 50s and 60s that i would be at a university to have people from every continent. Because what im able to see on our campus that is so remarkably inspiring is people from countries that are so different in many ways and yet my students come in they appreciate what they have in common. They appreciate cultural differences but they also appreciate here in our country we have brought in people from all over the world who come to learn who come to talk about ideas and to prepare to be leaders. I think my own journey to have doctor king and the journey into go to jail in the experience in the child leader in the Civil Rights Movement who then was inspired that their community and we as university can only prepare people to lead in civic engagement, and stem work, and the arts in other areas. So my journey actually the year that i had the honor to march with doctor king and the other children was the same year that the university was founded in 1963 by the maryland legislature. So we are together over 30 years. I would also say for private and public Higher Education, as we tell our stories, the question has to be who are the people giving support whether our donors, alumni but empowered also means looking at context. Looking at the state, we are fortunate in maryland when the governor and the legislature comes from different parties and they work well together the way american democracy is meant to work. Our political leaders, our elected officials, the governor and the legislatures work very closely to ensure that we keep building the quality of education and Higher Education. It has been very encouraging to those in the field to appreciate in the state of maryland that the understanding is very clear that the future of our state, the future of her citizens, economy, families will be closely connected to the quality of education and Higher Education. You talked about how if you look how they value, such as people from baltimore nor maryland or the united states, this is a Global Community. What was your first exposure to the Global Community and how did it change you. I had the privilege of studying in egypt and my girlfriend at the time studied in egypt as Exchange Students from Hampton University in virginia at the American University and there were students from all over the world and it was the first time that i was in the environment or people first did not speak english except for those at the university often did not speak english and worry began to learn some things about another culture, another religion about the arabic language but most important to see how people viewed as americans and africanamericans. It was a bonding experience in many ways, it led me too appreciate what you and bc does today as we work to encourage more of her students to have experienced abroad as we have more students to come to us and faculty from all over the world and the most important thing i tell mickens all the time and for us to appreciate the beauty of the american democracy into appreciate the responsibility that we have in this country and the privilege of country to understand humankind and to reach out to other people with a sense of welcoming to say that we are all a part of this human race. How much of your education was that. When i think about your leadership on me and others, its an allencompassing love and accepting people where they are and bringing them all in this conversation. There is a formalized education and theres something you really touch on which is the informal education. Can you talk a little bit more about that. My experiences were shaped by being in egypt in my granddad and my Mother University of champaign in the late early 70s when i began to understand that the world was predominantly white quite friendly, i had been in my world in birmingham in my college and professors from other races, my world has premier the been africanamerican. I began to see the differences and challenges in the strength of being in the integrated society after being in champaign. However, all those experiences shaped me and prepared me and working other institutions for the un bc experience, historically, it is very special in the state of maryland because its only university founded at such a time of people of all races could go and come there. At the time were talking black and white. From the beginning we were an institution from different races. But this is what i saw when i went around the country and what we have worked to improve on it un bc, this is a controversial point but ill make it, we have desegregated and students of all races and all types of institutions but we are not truly integrated. At this point in my life i have to tell the truth, when you go to most places, you see people with themselves. As times when its great for people to know people from their own culture, their own backroom, of course we should appreciate self but the question we have to ask as we talked about the empowered university and the empower of society, are we teaching our young people how to interact substantively with people different from themselves. This is one of the strengths of umbc, we will ente work really d out of the classroom. Get beyond your comfort zone, you dont want to know people suffer from your own state, your owners, your own country, you want to know people from all kinds of backgrounds as human beings because the world is so diverse. And we dont talk enough about how we should go about coming to appreciate other people, caring about other people who are very different from ourselves. This is part of our success at umbc and success is never final, we can always do better, empowered university to be better than we are. We saw that perfectly on display and is a native of baltimore and a silken resident of baltimore, we saw that on display almost five years ago after the uprising around the death of freddie gray, the leadership role that you personally played in the leadership role that you and bc played in the fact that you called on our society to do what you just said to understand the interconnectedness of all of our joy and interconnectedness of our pain. Can you talk a little bit about that moment and why it was so important for you to use your voice and the voice of umbc in such an empowering way. I will never forget coming back to campus one day during that period when we were so worried about the children of baltimore, about citizens and that was a large sign over one of the buildings and it said we are baltimore to, tol and my students put this up, and our campuses in the suburbs, adjacent to the airport, 600 acres. So we were not physically connected to what was going on in the city but spiritually, emotionally connected because its our city. From the roof of my building you can see downtown baltimore. Faculty and staff who had been working and connecting and working to be supportive. People do not realize that baltimore region is the site of some of the most educated people in the world, and factor in looking at africanamerican population, we are the second best educated community in the country. To report from the brooklyn institution. You have a lot of well educated people of all races in baltimore and then you have people in new york and in america who are challenged who need our support in so many ways of education. You heard me say only 30 of americans have the expense of going to college and graduating from college. The point that i am making is the notion of an empowered university should be empowered, not only to look in at the campus but the big question, what are we doing to help the children of our region. What are we doing to help people who are poor, what will we do with the income and equality challenge that we face, the academic ups disparity in the health disparity, part of what were doing during that period is what other institutions have work to do when they proctologist, to get into the city and the environment and to get involved in the tutoring and the policies that can make a difference in there is much more work to be done. What i can tell you, our