"I realized that it wasn't a program where they just give you money and you do okay in your classes," says Hedgepeth, 30, who's completing his residency at Harvard. "They were pushing me to do my best. It's a priceless feeling, knowing that everyone wants you to succeed."

Contact Freeman Hrabowski by email (hrabowski@umbc.edu). Read his winning Fast 50 entry. For more information on the Fast 50, click here.

Sidebar: Chess Kings

In December, UMBC tied for first at the Pan-American Chess Championships, the NCAA tournament of college chess. It was the team's fifth title in six years. The ensuing celebration, where players enter wearing their team jackets and hoist their trophy, has become a tradition. There are cheerleaders, a marching band, and a smoke machine.

The man responsible for developing this chess dynasty is Alan Sherman, an associate professor of computer science. He became faculty adviser to UMBC's chess club in 1991, the year after it finished 26th out of 27 teams at the Pan-Ams. Sherman realized that the only way to turn the program around was to recruit better players -- the sort who were getting accepted into Harvard, MIT, and Yale. The problem was that they hadn't heard of UMBC. So Sherman began offering full and partial chess scholarships as an incentive. In every issue of Chess Life, he runs a classified ad looking for students in the top 10% of their class with an SAT score of 1,400 or higher and a chess rating of 2,000 or higher.

The chess club is making a name for itself -- and for UMBC. It has been featured in newspapers, on television networks, and on National Public Radio. "A colleague of mine went to a math conference in Arizona recently, and he was hoping that the people would know him from the great department at UMBC," says Sherman. "But people came up to him and said, 'You're from that chess school, right?' "