From the Editor

The Season of Resilience and Renewal

In September 1926, less than a month before the newly established University of Miami was slated to open, a Category 4 hurricane ripped through Miami. A quick plan to relocate from the ravaged Coral Gables campus to the nearby Anastasia Hotel allowed the U to open on time.

Sixty-six years later, in 1992, a Category 5 hurricane named Andrew came barreling into south Miami-Dade County, this time on the first day of orientation, with thousands of new students and their parents in town. Not only did UM’s administration and staff manage to keep everyone safe and sheltered, classes started just two weeks late despite a reported $13.7 million worth of damage to campus.

Since Andrew, there hadn’t been an equivalent threat to the UM campus until recently, when Hurricane Irma triggered the evacuation of the entire Gables campus and other key facilities. Even vulnerable stock from UM’s Experimental Fish Hatchery had to be transported to safer environs—ironically, the Rosenstiel School’s 40,000-gallon SUSTAIN hurricane simulator tank.

With roughly the entire state facing possible impact—the cone of uncertainty as it’s known in hurricane lingo—UM’s Office of Emergency Management snapped into action. A small army devoted countless hours to ensuring the safe and orderly evacuation and return of thousands of students, many of whom had never experienced a weather event of this magnitude.

In the wake of the storm, UM President Julio Frenk assured, “We are Miami Hurricanes, and we have a historic legacy of resilience and renewal. The University community will have a successful semester, and together we will help our neighbors recover.”

Resilience is defined as the capacity to recover quickly from difficulties. Psychologists have described it as that particular quality that allows some people to be knocked down by life and come back stronger than ever. But how do we do more than simply get back up? In rising again, how do we get better?

Though planned before hurricane season, many stories in this issue address just such questions of resilience, recovery, and renewal. Resilience requires long-term meaningful approaches, as Dr. Gillian Hotz, who spearheaded UM’s concussion program 20 years ago, details on page 22. Resilient people need strong yet adaptable structures and resources, and as religion professor Michelle Maldonado notes on page 15, perhaps even a saint in their corner now and then.

A few of the stories in this issue also stem from the recently released UM Communications Special Report on Cuba and the Caribbean, a region critical to our own endurance as a hemispheric, Pan-American institution of higher education and research. In the wake of hurricanes Irma and Maria, that long-standing spirit of solidarity and reciprocity will only strengthen.

In his introduction to that special report, President Frenk stated, “Our immersion in the rich and varied Caribbean cultures helps blend and weave the intricate and diverse hemispheric fabric of the University of Miami.” To explore how that fabric is being enriched in new and exciting ways, read on in these pages, view the report at cuba.miami.edu, and visit the Richter Library’s exhibition, “Caribbean Fragments,” on view through summer 2018.

—Robin Shear, editor

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From the Editor

Making Our Way

Amid a wave of bloody pogroms in Poland, my grandfather was born a Jew. Repeatedly denied a visa to reunite with his mother in the United States, he fled alone at 13 from Eastern Europe, landing in Mexico, where he made his way for four years by selling saints and crucifixes to locals, riding horseback through the town, and learning to speak Spanish with a Polish accent. He always said he felt more at home there than in Poland. From Mexico he crossed the Rio Grande into Texas to reconnect with his U.S. relatives.

Decades later, government officials came calling, but they didn’t lock him up or deport him. They told him how to leave and re-enter with the proper papers. They gave him a chance to resume the productive life he’d built as an otherwise law-abiding citizen. His is just one of this proud nation’s countless immigrant stories, one with a very happy ending.

Many of the stories in this issue are about bringing invisible struggles to the surface and truly seeing the stranger in our midst—whether in an off-the-grid community in Colombia (p. 34) or on the streets of Miami (p. 20). And within our own University. As the writer James Baldwin said, “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.”
Dear World gave UM the opportunity to explore that notion directly, inviting students, faculty, and administrators to share the one thing they want the world to know about them. A sampling from that brave and revelatory photo project is on page 16.

Creating change is the sphere of politics, another area where ’Canes are deeply engaged (p. 26)­—just as this issue went to press, yet another ’Cane, Jovita Carranza, M.B.A. ’03, was tapped for a national post: treasurer of the United States.

Associate professor of political science Joseph Uscinski, who studies the impact of fake news and conspiracy theory on politics, recently presented a ’Cane Talk (online at miami.edu/magazine) in which he urged his audience to look for facts and follow science. Equally important, he said, is to keep talking. “I want to encourage you to open dialogues with people who you might disagree with,” he said. “Disagreement leads to learning, and learning leads to growth.”

As the University of Miami continues to forge bridges and roads into the future, it also aims through initiatives like the Culture of Belonging to tear down the kind of invisible walls we erect to block people we perceive as different, as threatening to our way of life or ideology. During a recent Q&A with UM President Julio Frenk, Academy Award winner Tarell Alvin McCraney (p. 30) praised UM’s Culture of Belonging as “a powerful tenet,” adding, “We have work to do here, but that’s where it all starts.” I’m certain my grandfather would agree.
—Robin Shear, editor

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From the Editor

Lend Us Your Ears

Remember Doctor Doolittle and his talent for talking to the animals? UM has its own version of Doctor Doolittle. But instead of talking to the animals, Professor Carolyn Cray is listening to them—their blood and other biological samples tell her when they’re in trouble and, oftentimes, how their lives can be saved. As you’ll see in the feature “Animal Pragmatism,” the things the animals have been telling Cray and her colleagues the past few decades also bear greater implications for another animal species near and dear to us—humans.

When we listen, nature can warn us about impending danger. That’s what’s happening at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, where the one-of-a-kind storm simulation facility described in “Hurricanes on Demand” is helping researchers to learn the language of super cyclones and other fast-changing storm systems in an effort to better predict their paths and mitigate their power over our built environments.

If we just listen, even buildings can come alive and share the precious details of our history. That was the case when we explored the award-winning 1300 Campo Sano renovation for the story “From Military Barracks to Modern Treasure.”

These are just a few examples of how valuable the act of listening can be.

UM’s new president, Julio Frenk, has made that message loud and clear, placing active listening at the centerpiece of his strategy since taking office on August 16.

His first public event, a Town Hall at the BankUnited Center, included a live Q&A moderated by proud Hurricane Bryan Llenas, B.S.C. ’10, a national correspondent for Fox News Channel and reporter for Fox News Latino. Eager students lined up 10 deep at two microphones to address Frenk about everything on their minds—from climate change to diversity on campus to the performance of UM’s athletic teams.

Frenk listened, and he highlighted the importance of understanding the expectations of UM’s current constituents and those of its pioneering founders in order to create a roadmap toward UM’s centennial—just a decade away. That roadmap, Frenk explained, and the intensive listening exercise he is conducting in support of his first 100 days in office both are intended to help ensure that the U will continue as a leading academic light regionally, nationally, and on the global stage.

President Frenk’s talent for listening, for taking cues from the world around him and transforming that knowledge into great strides and great impact, is evident in the cover story, “Future Focused.” In it, Frenk shares a key moment from his development as a youth in Mexico that helped set him on his path to becoming a pioneer of public health in Mexico and the United States.

For more on Frenk’s University-wide listening exercise, visit president.miami.edu/listen. To learn more about his inauguration on January 29, 2016, visit inauguration.miami.edu.

—Robin Shear, editor

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From the Editor

Back to the Future

Miami: The University of Miami Magazine shares its 25th anniversary with a humble little creation known as the Internet. When this publication launched in 1989, the World Wide Web was just coming to life. With the birth of the Web, the world of communications embarked on a journey whose course no one could predict.

As both the Internet and UM evolved at the approximate speed of a luge barreling down an icy track, many talented editors, designers, writers, artists, and photographers kept pace, nimbly steering the University’s flagship publication through its first quarter-century. Chief among them was Jerry Lewis, who, as Miami’s founding editor, was kind enough to pen a retrospective for this issue in the midst of his career transition from vice president for communications at University of Texas Arlington to senior vice president for communications and public affairs at Emory University. Thank you, Jerry!

Reviewing each of Miami’s first 56 issues, I saw a larger story emerge from the awe-inspiring people, places, and events that have come together at just the right moments during this past 25 years to cement UM’s enduring legacy. Two particularly notable covers came back to back in 2001: The first praised President Edward “Tad” Foote II’s legacy as he signed off after 20 years of noble and notable leadership. The next ushered in the University’s fifth and first-ever female president, Donna E. Shalala. Now, after more than a decade of dynamic stewardship from President Shalala, we are reporting on her plans to step down and on the University’s search for its sixth president. There will be much more on both of those topics in future issues.

Another milestone heralded in this issue is the advancement of the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center. Forty years ago the center initiated Florida’s very first Cancer Control Research Program. Within a decade it had secured significant support and prominence. Since 1986, its devoted physicians and scientists have served as the first line of defense for more than 100,000 newly diagnosed cancer patients while contributing groundbreaking research. Now, under the leadership of renowned oncologist Stephen D. Nimer, Sylvester is poised for the next big step in its mission “to reduce the human burden from cancer”—NCI designation.

Much as the Internet exploded 25 years ago, interactive media is exploding today. Our cover story shows how UM is harnessing that growth for the good of students and society.

—Robin Shear, editor

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From the Editor

A Vicarious Bon Voyage

I decided not to take a summer vacation this year. Maybe I didn’t feel the need after the vicarious thrills of adventure I experienced by editing all the stories in this issue.

After all, without lifting a finger I managed to scale one of the most exciting equatorial terrains in Africa. Without stepping out of my office, I plunged into the Atlantic Ocean on the hunt for mysteries only sharks can reveal. Without breaking a sweat, I embarked on a medical mission with hundreds of students to bring health care to some of the most vulnerable regions of South Florida. And without having to fill out one application or subject myself to a single job interview, I felt butterflies in my stomach as thousands of newly graduated University of Miami students learned where they’d be doing their medical residencies, what company they’d be working for, or what next great journey they’d be embarking on as volunteers, entrepreneurs, or graduate students.

Unlike that slogan for the famous U.S. tourist destination, what happens at the University of Miami most definitely does not stay at the University of Miami. And therein lies the beauty and promise of this place. What occurs here telegraphs far and wide, across continents and from generation to generation. Read on and see for yourself, no passport required, stunning examples of just how much is evolving from the everyday academic pollination taking place at UM.

And, as always, please share news of your own explorations, vicarious or otherwise, so we can mention them in a future issue and here on our refreshed website.

—Robin Shear, editor

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From the Editor

Admission of Gilt

A couple of months ago I received an excited email from a parent. “It’s a terrific new year for us because [our daughter] was accepted into UM! She has been checking her email every 30 seconds this week and found out at 6:25 a.m., and then woke us up to tell us.”

I can only imagine the kind of sweet anticipation being felt right now by the thousands of high school seniors whose dream of becoming a ’Cane has finally come true. One young man was so eager, in fact, that he secured his spot in the annals of UM history when he managed to be first in line to register for classes the day the U officially opened on October 15, 1926. (To learn his name and family’s profession, click here.)

Perhaps no one at UM understands that level of anticipation, and the responsibility that comes with it, better than VP for student affairs for the past 17 years, Patricia Whitely. She and her staff work 24/7 not merely to meet those high expectations once students arrive but to help transform thousands of hope-filled freshmen into leaders of and contributors to a vibrant community.

“When you treat students as adults and co-partners, there’s a mutual respect that comes out of that,” Whitely told Stephanie Parra, editor of The Miami Hurricane. Parra took time from her extremely hectic schedule to contribute the story, “The Life of Whitely,” which highlights Whitely’s devotion to her profession and her national ascendance in it at a critical time.

“There is no doubt that higher education is under a microscope and rapidly changing,” Whitely said during her inaugural address in March as chair of the national board of directors in her field. But despite these changes changes and the complex challenges they bring, the basics remain the same. “In the end,” she noted, “our work is all about touching students, helping them to embark on a lifetime of engagement, and finding opportunities for them to continue their journey.”

Congratulations to those whose journey as ’Canes is just beginning—and to all of you, whose lifelong journey as ’Canes continues!

—Robin Shear, editor

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Moving Day

A couple of weeks after we moved into the stunning Robert and Judi Prokop Newman Alumni Center in September, I was making my already almost-routine trek to Sebastian’s Café when something near the ground caught my peripheral vision. A brown puff perched behind the manicured hedge stood out against the cream-colored Jerusalem stone ledge. It was a small owl. I snapped a photo, marveling at my good fortune.

Soon after that I began reviewing my notes to write this column. They had been hastily typed amid my purging and packing five years’ worth of habitation as we prepared to migrate across South Dixie Highway into our new offices. At the top of the page was the word reguero, the Spanish term my colleague used to describe the heap of magazines and other detritus spread across my floor as I tried to make all the tough and necessary choices related to starting over again in a new place.

Next to the words “period of change” I’d typed: new students moving into residence halls, new Student Activities Center opening, Schwartz Center for Athletic Excellence opening, move to Newman Alumni Center. Also there, under all this stream of consciousness, was the phrase “dreaming of owls.”

It came back to me: Before our move, I’d had an owl dream so vivid I had to share it with my coworker who, according to my notes, explained that owls signify change, “usually on an emotional or personal level.”

Change is always emotional and personal, it seems, experienced singularly by each of us: a new country, a new phase of life, the loss of a loved one. As our cover story shows, everyone has his or her own take on how the new Student Activities Center has changed the campus experience, but no one questions the exponential power that transformation will have for generations of students to come.

Change can be abrupt or occur over decades. Some of us take it for granted, while others, like the Cuban activists featured in our feature story by UM alumna Cynthia Corzo, B.S.C. ’90, spend their lives fighting for it. Sometimes change is so incremental as to be imperceptible. But at UM this school year, the physical changes have been just the opposite: dramatic, bold, and enlivening. We can see this from our own new perch at the Newman Alumni Center, nearer the palm trees and the Hurry ‘Cane Shuttle, and the fledgling owl, standing stock still, its feathers barely fluttering, wings ready to unfold.

—Robin Shear

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