Emphasizing her commitment to an inclusive environment for all learners, Valerie Sheares Ashby was inducted Thursday afternoon as the first woman to serve as the president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County.
“By our words and through our actions, we want you to feel that you belong and know that you are welcome,” Sheares Ashby told students at her inauguration ceremony. “We want to remove barriers that would block your success, whether they’re financial or otherwise.”
Ashby began serving as UMBC’s president last summer upon the retirement of Freeman A. Hrabowski III, who held the position for 30 years.
Along with being the university’s sixth and its first female president, Sheares Ashby is the first Black woman to serve in the role. She also has a faculty appointment in the college’s department of chemistry and biochemistry.
Under Hrabowski’s tenure, UMBC joined the ranks of the nation’s top research universities — alongside the Johns Hopkins University and University of Maryland in the state — when the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education classified it as among Research 1 school last year.
The Catonsville school also became the top producer of Black undergraduate students who go on to earn doctoral degrees in math and computer and life sciences, as well as No. 1 for producing Black undergraduate alumni who earn combined MD-Ph.D.s — “with Harvard being second,” Sheares Ashby said.
“They told me not to say this, but it’s not even a close second,” she continued.
Sheares Ashby hopes to build on Hrabowski’s legacy by elevating the university as a national leader in inclusive excellence in research, which she said “doesn’t exist anywhere in the country.”
“It’s just that — the issue of not having faculty and staff and graduate students that represent communities,” she said. “We’re going to do it. If we can’t do it, I don’t know who can because it’s our culture.”
Sheares Ashby is taking the reins of a university that has graduated a slew of accomplished alumni, including Kizzmekia Corbett, whose research laid the groundwork for the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine, and Maryland House Speaker Adrienne A. Jones, who also broke glass ceilings when she became the first woman and first Black person to lead the House of Delegates upon the death of former Speaker Michael E. Busch in 2019.
:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tronc/BSYIB5HXKBDJDMV7WZJZMFIS3E.JPG)
:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tronc/NEEZT2ODZVBLDPT4JFVIE4SYQQ.jpg)
:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tronc/L64YBATTBFDH5DBIMUCJTPZ5Z4.jpg)
:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tronc/6AK42CKDUVCULKYFHCEL3JVI6I.JPG)
:quality(70)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/tronc/I47YCP7MKBHW7NUKZ34MBAE5IE.jpg)
Gov. Wes Moore, who will celebrate his 100th day in office Friday as Maryland’s 63rd and first Black governor, said during his address at Sheares Ashby’s installment ceremony that her inauguration marked a historic day for the state.
“She has spent her entire life serving others as a scholar, serving others as a teacher, serving others as a mentor to so many young women,” Moore said. “I tell you, when you consider your background, you are built for this role. Absolutely built for it.”
Quoting Sheares Ashby, the governor said that “diversity equals excellence.”
“And you’re absolutely right,” he continued. “So it is absolutely fitting that we now have her as the president here at UMBC — an institution that understands that power, that understands that we don’t have to choose between advancing innovation and advancing equity. We can and we will do both.”
Sheares Ashby came to the University of Maryland, Baltimore County from Duke University, where she had been dean of the North Carolina school’s Trinity College of Arts & Sciences since 2015.
Prior to her tenure there, she chaired the chemistry department at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she worked in several leadership roles from 2003 to 2015. She began her tenure in higher education at Iowa State University in 1996, starting as an assistant professor and moving up to an associate professor.
[ 25 Black Marylanders to Watch for 2023, plus 5 Living Legends ]
Sheares Ashby, who has a research focus in chemistry, received her bachelor’s and doctoral degrees in chemistry from UNC-Chapel Hill. She completed her postdoctoral studies at Johannes Gutenberg Universität Mainz in Germany as a National Science Foundation postdoctoral fellow and NATO postdoctoral fellow.
The newly inaugurated UMBC president has familial roots in education and service. Her parents, whose families both have histories in sharecropping in the South, were high school teachers. Her mother, Shirley, was an English and literature instructor who started and ran a shelter for working, unhoused men in Raleigh, North Carolina. Her father, James, was a pastor who taught math and chemistry.
According to Sheares Ashby, she “had a math and science brain from moment one.”
“My dad was such a supporter, I didn’t even know that math was supposed to be hard,” she said in an interview with The Baltimore Sun after her inauguration. “I didn’t even think about being a woman or a girl because it wasn’t a big deal in my household.”
While UMBC strives to foster the same attitude of inclusivity, Sheares Ashby acknowledged that not every woman has the supportive mentorship that she did. She said she hopes to reduce barriers for other young women to achieve.
“It shouldn’t be a thing to be a woman in science,” she said. “You’re just another student studying science.”
During her inaugural address, Sheares Ashby announced the creation of UMBC’s James and Shirley Sheares Family Scholarship Endowment — a need-based, cross-disciplinary scholarship for undergraduate and graduate students.
The Evening Sun
“I can hear my mother’s voice saying, ‘Now, don’t be skimping. Make sure you put enough in so the children have what they need.’ And I would be saying, ‘Yes, ma’am,’” Sheares Ashby told ceremony attendees.
Throughout her career, Sheares Ashby’s eyes have been trained on inclusion and diversity; she was an inaugural member of UNC-Chapel Hill’s summer pre-graduate research education program, an initiative to introduce underrepresented students of color to full-time research programs and encourage them to apply to graduate and doctoral programs. She eventually led the program during her tenure.
“There are those in leadership positions, and there are those who are leaders,” said Dr. Henry T. Frierson, Sheares Ashby’s undergraduate professor and mentor and the program’s initial leader, during the ceremony. “President Sheares Ashby is a leader.”
Junior Farah Helal serves as a student representative on UMBC’s board of regents and first met Sheares Ashby at orientation in August.
”The moment she got started, she was taking those steps to reach out and get to know the campus community. It’s really special to have a college president that is so easily accessible and willing to listen and act,” Helal said. “I’m still trying to figure things out, but I won’t lie to you: Working with President Ashby and other administrators has made me really interested in pursuing graduate school.”
During her address Thursday, Sheares Ashby reflected on the school’s vision statement, which she called “a reason to get up and come to work every single day.”
“While there are many measures and rankings in education and higher education here, that first line says that we are bold enough to say that not only do we refuse to deem ourselves excellent unless we do it through an inclusive culture, we are actually stating that true excellence is impossible without it,” Sheares Ashby said. “Looking to the future, our challenge is to ensure that inclusive excellence permeates our institution in every decision — every investment — at every level, consistently. We will get there.”