Two Baltimore County universities ran what seemed like parallel efforts to help people of color earn advanced degrees. One ended after scrutiny from President Donald Trump’s administration; the other is thriving.
Towson University was among dozens of colleges that broke ties with the PhD Project, a national nonprofit that supports underrepresented students interested in earning a doctoral degree in business. The schools faced federal investigations alleging the program discriminated based on race.
Yet, on the other side of the county, the University of Maryland, Baltimore County’s Meyerhoff Scholars Program remains unscathed, recently celebrating its 500th alumnus to earn a doctoral degree.
Founded by longtime former President Freeman Hrabowski and philanthropist Robert Meyerhoff in 1988, the program grants scholarships to undergraduates who want to earn a doctorate in a STEM field and are interested in the advancement of minorities in those fields. It was initially reserved for Black men, but by the mid-1990s expanded its eligibility to women and people of other races. The focus on diversity, though, has remained.
Leaders say the program has endured because it admits applicants of all races, though the majority of each cohort remain Black and Hispanic. The continued survival of the scholarship and programs like it illustrates how universities have sought to keep supporting students from underrepresented groups in spite of Trump’s bans on diversity, equity and inclusion. The administration has said DEI programs and scholarships violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by segregating students and reinforcing racial stereotypes.
Meyerhoff’s success hinges on accepting students of all races, said Roger L. Worthington, executive director of the Center for Diversity and Inclusion in Higher Education.
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“It is conforming to the law,” he said. “This is a program that is flying under the radar, in part because it has been working under conditions that are threatening to diversity and inclusion in higher education for decades.”
The Meyerhoff scholarship ranges from $5,000 to $22,000 per year, depending on a student’s financial need and academic achievement. It’s funded by the original seed money, donations and the university, and it has elevated the regional institution to national status through its accomplishments for Black students, especially.
“Today UMBC leads the nation in producing African American bachelor’s degree recipients who go on to complete Ph.D.s in the life sciences and engineering,” Hrabowski said.
That’s always been the goal. Starting their first year in the program, students are taught to write résumés and cover letters for summer internships and compose essays for graduate school applications.
“Meyerhoff alums are now on the faculties at Harvard and Duke and Stanford,” Hrabowski said. “This is about excellence. When you meet a Meyerhoff, you know you’re meeting a very high-achieving scientist or engineer.”
Caly Ferguson just graduated from UMBC, earning his Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering. The Meyerhoff program, he said, changed his life.
“For my college experience, I knew I wanted to be somewhere where I could grow into a leader,” Ferguson said.
While studying at UMBC, Ferguson served as the president of the university’s National Society of Black Engineers chapter, founded a 3D-printing company and worked as an undergraduate research intern at Duke University, Johns Hopkins and UMBC.
His internship at Duke University was with Kafui Dzirasa, a researcher in psychiatric neuroengineering and a Meyerhoff alum himself.
Dzirasa has welcomed countless Meyerhoff scholars into his lab and has had three graduates complete their Ph.D.s in his Duke lab. He knows Meyerhoff scholars will be excellent, Dzirasa said, and working with them helps him remember where he came from.
“Who I am and who I became did not exist in my head until I hit the Meyerhoff program,” Dzirasa said. “It not only planted the seed, [but] it sort of cultivated my path to give me what I needed to survive in the world outside of UMBC.”
Ferguson, who didn’t know what a terminal degree was before he joined Meyerhoff, is headed to Hopkins this fall to earn his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering. He hopes to use his knowledge to build prosthetics, an especially personal mission for the scientist, who is missing two fingers on each hand from an amputation due to a birth defect.
“I want to be able to affect lives with the work that I do,” Ferguson said.
Although the Trump administration hasn’t taken aim at the scholarship, other elite universities have. Meyerhoff-inspired programs have popped up across the country at large research universities including the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Pennsylvania State University, and they, too, have so far escaped federal scrutiny.
It’s the reason Keith Harmon, senior director of the Meyerhoff program, has stayed at UMBC since 1999.
“The Meyerhoff program is an effort to celebrate inclusive excellence and the rich diversity of talent in our nation,” he said.
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