Scholars for a New Baltimore: Uniting Local Resources for Community Building

This week we commemorate the birthday and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. One of my first childhood memories is of sitting in the kitchen of my grandparents’ west Baltimore home watching my family react to the breaking news of Dr. King’s assassination. I was only 3-years-old, but their reaction, and the fires, which destroyed blocks not far from our home, made me certain that something had gone terribly wrong.

The Chesapeake Crescent

Baltimore sits in the greatest innovation gold mine in the world. The National Capital Region headquartered by the Federal government now stretches far to the north of Baltimore and as far south as Tidewater, Virginia, with Baltimore being the second largest and Tidewater the third largest Federal government employment centers in the nation, after Washington […]

Encouraging STEM education

My audacious idea is that we want to produce students who will help our country to be as competitive globally as possible. The 21st Century Economy is going to require more emphasis on STEM fields – Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics — and we need in Baltimore to think about being competitive within the 50 […]

On the responsibilities of universities

Baltimore City public schools are underperforming. The Baltimore City Data Collaborative showed that between 2006-2007, just over 44% of 8th graders were proficient in state reading assessments, and just 24.4% were proficient in math. We know that while high-school graduation rates have improved from over six years ago, still nearly 9.6% of our 9th-12th graders […]

What if we let anyone who is smart enough to go to college…actually go to college?

For some reason, the immigration debate is faceless. It’s easier to say “those illegal aliens” instead of “Juan, my nephew’s best friend.” We say we have no moral responsibility to “those that broke the law coming illegally to this country,” but things change when we think of Ana Maria, our neighbor’s housekeeper.   For some reason, we […]