Conference Speakers

Matt Chingos is a PhD student in the Department of Government at Harvard University. He graduated from Harvard College with a BA in Government and Economics in 2005. Matt's primary research interests are education policy and the economics of education. He conducts empirical research on elementary and secondary education as a research fellow at the Program on Education Policy and Governance at Harvard and on higher education as a research associate and project manager at The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation in New York. Most recently, Matt is a co-author (with William G. Bowen and Michael S. McPherson) of Crossing the Finish Line: Completing College at America's Public Universities (Princeton University Press, 2009).

For nearly 40 years, Ann Coles has played an instrumental role in improving college access and success for underserved populations. Currently she is a Senior Associate at the Institute for Higher Education Policy in Washington, DC, where she directs the Pathways to College Network, an alliance of over 30 national organizations working on college access and success issues. Coles also is a Senior Fellow at ACCESS, a non-profit organization that provides financial aid advising and scholarships to public school students in Boston, Massachusetts, where she resides. Previously, she served as Senior Vice President of TERI (The Education Resources Institute) where she provided leadership for national and local college access programs, including GEAR UP, TRIO, and the Boston Higher Education Partnership. She also managed programs for low-income students at a Massachusetts community college and held administrative positions with the Institute for Services to Education and the National Scholarship Service and Fund for Negro Students.

Coles is a member of various national committees, including the Technical Advisory Group for the national GEAR UP evaluation. She also has served as vice chair of the College Board trustees and was founding board member of the Council for Opportunity in Education. She holds a doctorate from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Greg has a BA in Sociology, a K-8 teaching certificate from St. Louis University and a MA in Christian Education from Wheaton College. He has worked for organizations such as the I Have a Dream Foundation, LaSalle Street Community Youth Creative Learning Experience (CYCLE), and Chicago Cluster Initiative, among others, designing and implementing programs for each that assisted students in reaching new levels of education.

Greg has served on the Board of the Albert Pick, Jr. Fund, the Steans Family Foundation, The Roberta Bachmann Lewis Scholarship Fund, Scholarship Chicago, The Illinois Education Foundation and the North Lawndale College Prep Charter High School.

Greg established the Department of Postsecondary Education and Student Development, designing and implementing an assortment of postsecondary, academic, financial, and social support programs and building university, corporate and civic partnerships to enhance college access. As such, he was named the director of the Department of College and Career Preparation with the Chicago Public Schools (CPS), a newly formed department that consists of the Department of Postsecondary Education and Student Development and the Department of Education To Careers.

In 2009, Secretary of Education, Arne Duncan, named Greg the Special Assistant to the Secretary for College Access at the U.S. Department of Education, where he currently serves.

Freeman A. Hrabowski, III, has served as President of UMBC (The University of Maryland, Baltimore County) since May, 1992. His research and publications focus on science and math education, with special emphasis on minority participation and performance. He currently chairs the National Academies’ Committee on Underrepresented Groups and the Science & Engineering Workforce Pipeline.

In 2008, he was named one of America’s Best Leaders by U.S. News & World Report, which in 2009 ranked UMBC the #1 “Up and Coming” national university and #4 (tied with Stanford) among national universities in the quality of undergraduate teaching.

He serves as a consultant to the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the National Academies, and universities and school systems nationally. He also serves on the boards of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, France-Merrick Foundation, Marguerite Casey Foundation (Chair), and The Urban Institute. He also sits on the boards of Constellation Energy Group, McCormick & Company, and the Baltimore Equitable Society. He also served on the board of the Maryland Humanities Council as both a member and Chair.

Examples of recent honors include election to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the American Philosophical Society; receiving the prestigious McGraw Prize in Education, the U.S. Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring, and the Columbia University Teachers College Medal for Distinguished Service; being named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and Marylander of the Year by the editors of the Baltimore Sun; and being listed among Fast Company magazine’s first Fast 50 Champions of Innovation in business and technology. He also holds honorary degrees from more than a dozen institutions, including Princeton, Duke, Haverford College, the University of Michigan, and Georgetown University.

He has authored numerous articles and co-authored two books, Beating the Odds and Overcoming the Odds (Oxford University Press), focusing on parenting and high-achieving African American males and females in science. Both books are used by universities, school systems, and community groups around the country.

A child-leader in the Civil Rights Movement, Dr. Hrabowski was prominently featured in Spike Lee’s 1997 documentary, Four Little Girls, on the racially motivated bombing in 1963 of Birmingham’s Sixteenth Street Baptist Church.

Born in 1950 in Birmingham, Alabama, Dr. Hrabowski graduated at 19 from Hampton Institute with highest honors in mathematics. At the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, he received his M.A. (mathematics) and four years later his Ph.D. (higher education administration/statistics) at age 24.

For over 10 years, Dr. Karl Reid has been a leading advocate for increasing educational access and opportunity for low-income and minority youth. In his current capacity as Senior Vice President of Academic Programs and Strategic Initiatives at UNCF, he leads the Office of Academic Affairs that awards over 400 scholarship and internship programs, the Institute for Capacity Building, the newly launched Social Entrepreneurship Programs, and the Frederick Patterson Research Institute.

Prior to his current position at UNCF, he served as Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education at MIT and Director of the Office of Minority Education. In this capacity, he was responsible for the academic performance and leadership development of over 800 underrepresented minority (URM) students. Dr. Reid also held the title of Assistant to the MIT Chancellor for Student Diversity, where he delivered institutional and programmatic solutions for increasing URM graduate student matriculation. Prior to these appointments, Dr. Reid served for eight years as the Executive Director of Engineering Outreach Programs for MIT’s School of Engineering, where he directed national and local pre-college programs that aimed to increase the number of students from underserved and underrepresented communities prepared to study science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM).

Born and raised in New York, Dr. Reid earned both his Bachelor and Master of Science degrees in Materials Science and Engineering from MIT, and his Doctorate of Education from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.
He and his wife of 22 years are the proud parents of three children.

Joyce Smith’s background spans the areas of admissions, management and marketing over thirty-one years. She has served in college admission counseling as a practitioner and a manager through her work with several professional associations. With Bachelor’s of Science in Speech Pathology and Master’s of Science in Counseling degrees from Kansas State University, Joyce has also pursued additional course work in Education Policy, Planning and Administration at the University of Maryland-College Park.

Joyce has gained a wealth of experience as a practitioner having worked in both public and private college admissions at Kansas State University, Amherst College (MA) and Queens College of the City University of New York, where she served as executive director of admissions for undergraduate and graduate admissions, marketing and scholarship services. She worked for seven years as a program service officer of the Student Search Service and associate director of the Admission Testing Program with the College Board in New York, assisting colleges and universities with marketing and direct mail in support of their recruitment efforts. Joyce served as the associate executive director and acting executive director of the National Association for College Admission Counseling before being named NACAC’s executive director (now CEO) in February 1997.

In addition to her NACAC inter-association responsibilities, Joyce has served as a member of the Advisory Board for Scholarship America, the Board of Directors of the Association of Independent School Admission Professionals (AISAP), a newly formed association of admission directors of independent schools, and numerous other boards. She is a member and the association representative to the Washington area Secretariat, under the auspices of the American Council on Education.