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The Meyerhoff Scholarship Program was founded at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County (UMBC) in 1988 with a grant from the Robert and Jane Meyerhoff Foundation, under the guidance of future UMBC President Freeman A. Hrabowski III. It is focused on minority scholarship and awareness in the science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) disciplines. The program has served as a model for fostering scholarship in the African American community.
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History
Female students of African American descent were admitted to the program as of its second year, and the program was opened up as a general scholarship with an emphasis on minority interests in 1997. This was widely viewed as preemptive action in response to the outcome of protracted litigation levied at the Benjamin Banneker Scholarship Program, the first scholarship of its kind to be ruled unconstitutional (though the University of Maryland, College Park did publicly contest the issue vigorously for years).
Overcoming the Odds
Two books chronicle the experiences and results of those affiliated with the program in its formative years. The first was written in the late 1990s with an emphasis on African American males with its companion volume on African American females published in the early 2000s.