Welcome to another edition of Midday on Higher Education, our continuing series of conversations with university and college presidents across the state of Maryland.

Today, Tom's guest for the hour is Dr. Valerie Sheares Ashby, a chemist and university professor whose tenure as the new president of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County began August 1. The first woman to hold the post, she succeeds Dr. Freeman Hrabowski, who retired this spring after 30 years at the helm of the prestigious Baltimore institution.

Dr. Ashby comes to UMBC's Catonsville campus from Duke University, where she served as the Dean of the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences, a division of Duke with nearly 40 departments and programs and a faculty of 700. She has also held positions at the University of North Carolina and Iowa State University.

UMBC is recognized as one of only 146 R1 institutions, the highest ranking afforded to the country’s most prestigious research institutions. UMBC has also been a model of diversity and inclusion, which have long served as fundaments of Dr. Ashby’s career as a leader and a scholar as well. UMBC has produced more Black M.D. and Ph. D. degree-earners than any other college in the country.

Dr. Valerie Sheares Ashby joins us on Zoom from the president's office at UMBC.