[5] When that designation was retired, U.S. News & World Report began including UMBC on its annual Most Innovative National Universities list.

[9] Hrabowski chaired the National Academies committee that produced the report Expanding Underrepresented Minority Participation: America's Science and Technology Talent at the Crossroads.

[14] In 2011, Hrabowski received the Carnegie Corporation of New York's Academic Leadership Award, one of the highest honors given to an educator.

Birmingham's notorious Public Safety Commissioner Eugene "Bull" Connor spat in his face and arrested him.

At the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, he received his MA in mathematics and four years later his PhD in higher education administration and statistics.