Citizen ’Cane

The Artful Dealer, from Reebok to Renoir

Photo by Jenny Abreu

For his business savvy in the worlds of sporting goods and modern art, Manhattan gallerist Herbert A. Rosenfeld, B.Ed. ’62, was selected to give this year’s Distinguished Alumni Lecture at the Newman Alumni Center.

Rosenfeld shared his history of growing up in New York, the grandchild of mattress makers and builders. At City College of New York, his father and uncle played basketball under the legendary Nat Holman, he said. The players would often slam into the brick wall that was right behind the gym’s basket, so Holman asked the Rosenfeld brothers to make a thin padding for the wall. That was in 1919.

The protective canvas they developed, explained Rosenfeld, led to the creation of the gym mat and other gymnastic equipment. Rosenfeld began his career in 1963 at his family’s business, which made all sorts of padded merchandise, from football dummies to balance beams. By 1979, Rosenfeld, just 38, was the president and chief operating officer of the publicly traded giant MacGregor Sporting Goods Inc., which he helped acquire, along with its noted Champion, Riddell, and Reebok brands. In his 24 years with the companies, sales rose from $18 million to $900 million, he said.

In 1987 Rosenfeld left MacGregor for his next chapter. Since 1988 he has worked with his wife of 49 years at her eponymous business, the Michelle Rosenfeld Gallery on New York’s Upper East Side. To go from helmets and gloves to Chagalls and Warhols, he immersed himself in museums and galleries and learned the art of the deal. “In a lot of instances I’m not selling a product,” he said. “I’m selling faith. I’m also selling an opportunity for somebody to buy and acquire a legacy.”

That legacy includes masters, such as Renoir, Picasso, and Lichtenstein, whose art has gone up exponentially in value. A Picasso that sold for $25,000 in 1950, for example, could command $135 million today, said Rosenfeld, who shares his expertise on the asset classification of art as a lecturer in the economics department at Harvard. He’s still involved with athletics, too—as a coordinator with Harvard’s Ivy League Championship-winning basketball coach Tommy Amaker.

Another legacy Rosenfeld values long-term is his relationship with the U. “This University prepared me for leadership,” he said. “I am proud to say I was a graduate of this school.”

Click here to watch Rosenfeld’s lecture.

—Robin Shear

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Citizen ’Cane

Helping Students Overcome Language Barriers

The daughter of a Saudi Arabian diplomat, Taghreed Al-Saraj, B.F.A. ’99, M.S.Ed. ’01, has lived in the United States, Europe, and the Middle East. Now at the University of California, Berkeley, where she is the school’s first Saudi female postdoctoral research fellow, Al-Saraj specializes in foreign language anxiety—the fear many experience when learning a new tongue.

Al-Saraj, who is fluent in English and Arabic, became fascinated with the phenomenon after returning to Saudi Arabia to teach university students in intensive English courses. Many students there enroll in “English medium universities”—popular institutions where all the coursework is in English. But Al-Saraj noticed her smartest pupils were often paralyzed by trying to learn or speak English.

“It shouldn’t be that way, feeling such fear when you’re trying something new and fun like learning a new language,” she says. “What I’ve found from my research is that the teacher is the main source of the anxiety. So we have to train the teachers, work with them in developing new teaching styles.”

That involves different approaches to having students speak in front of the classroom or in engaging the teacher directly. To put her theories to the test, Al-Saraj is learning Turkish while taking detailed notes about her own emotional state.
Al-Saraj grew up in Washington, D.C., but also lived in France as a teen and attended high school in Saudi Arabia. She enrolled at the University of Miami as a newlywed, joining her husband, Fouad A. Kaaki, M.S.M.E. ’00.

The diplomat’s daughter has since become quite the ambassador for the University. Al-Saraj serves as a director on the UM Alumni Association Board of Directors and is now leading the charge to gather alumni in Saudi Arabia. She also has two brothers-in-law who are ’Canes, and her twin sons, Kenan and Rayan, were recently accepted to the U as freshmen.

“To this day I give lectures around the U.S., as well as internationally, and every university I go to I’m always comparing it to UM,” says Al-Saraj. “I’m the person I am today because of that UM education. The classes that I took, the freedoms to explore that I had, and the professors were all fantastic.”

Her only regret from her time in Miami? She never learned Spanish. “I could have been fluent!” she chuckles.

—Tim Collie

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Photo by Donna Victor    

Making Biomechanical Magic

Hardwired into his soul when he was just a little boy, curiosity has helped Moataz Eltoukhy, Ph.D. ’11, come up with a better way for astronauts to perform tasks in outer space, for victims of cerebral palsy to take giant strides in improving their gait, and for his 6-year-old son and others with autism to, perhaps one day, communicate more effectively.

As a kid growing up in Alexandria, Egypt, Eltoukhy would take apart his toys and then reassemble them just to see how they worked. Now the University of Miami biomechanics engineer employs his inquisitiveness to boost and, in some cases, correct bodily function.

He does so with the aid of technology, using a wireless motion capture system that records the human body in motion and turns those images into 3-D stick figures for analysis. He’s helped cerebral palsy patients who suffer from painful spasticity to walk better. His data have helped orthopaedic surgeons pinpoint the correct operation site. And, not long ago, he worked with NASA to help astronauts in zero gravity conditions learn how to properly place cold plates onto avionics shelves aboard the Space Shuttle orbiter without damaging them—a delicate assignment, indeed, considering each shelf costs about $100,000.

Eltoukhy’s research expanded from the sole domain of machines once he saw the wider applications of his work. “The human body is evolving, it’s interactive, and there’s always a lot to learn from it,” explains the assistant professor of kinesiology and sport sciences in UM’s School of Education and Human Development. “While biomechanics has been around for years, there’s huge room for innovative solutions. There’s a lot to discover. We can make things better and make humans perform better.”

When his son, Yousef, was diagnosed with autism as a toddler, Eltoukhy’s work took on a new urgency. He knew some people with the developmental disorder work well with machines and computers, so he thought, “Why not use the autonomous robot called Nao to interact with such individuals?” Earlier this year he used the humanoid machine in a pilot health and fitness program at a local elementary school, programming it to lead kids in an exercise session. He’s planning a partnership with UM’s Center for Autism and Related Disabilities to launch a study to see if Nao can help youngsters develop communication skills and learn facial expressions.

—Robert C. Jones Jr.

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When the city of Delray Beach in Palm Beach County, Florida, decided it wanted an artistic gateway to welcome motorists arriving from I-95, it turned to well-known textile designer Michelle S. Newman, B.Ed. ’72, to design the $1.8 million Community Redevelopment Agency effort. Unveiled earlier this year to civic fanfare, Newman’s Delray Beach Gateway installation features six gateway pillars 30-feet tall, each adorned with striking visual scenes of Seminoles, early settlers, an array of plant and animal life, and other images and icons representative of what Newman calls a “vibrant, alive, and progressive” community.

“I photographed, sketched, and painted imagery that depicted Delray’s soul and spirit,” says Newman, who spent seven years working on the project.

Newman made a name for herself as an artist through hand-painted fabrics, which have been seen in national magazines like Better Homes and Gardens and Women’s Day, fine arts galleries and museums, and the couture collections of fashion legend Mary McFadden. Called an “Art Ambassador” in SURFACE magazine, Newman has co-hosted an HGTV show, teaching more than 60 million viewers how to paint on fabric, and co-wrote an award-winning book titled Handpainting Fabrics: Easy Elegant Techniques.

Creativity has been a constant in her life. Growing up in Miami Beach, Newman got into designing her own clothes while reading Women’s Wear Daily and exploring the designer clothing department at Burdine’s whenever she could find time. After earning her teaching degree with a minor in art, Newman worked as an elementary school teacher. But when she left her hometown for San Antonio, Texas, Newman reinvented herself as an artist and designer, traveling to exotic places like Bali, Japan, and Morocco for inspiration.

Photo by Emiliano Brooks

In 2000 Newman, who lives by the philosophy that “one person can make a difference in the world,” launched an arts and crafts program for women and children of the Siksika Nation in Alberta, Canada. “I wanted to teach them how to take their traditional native designs, create marketable products, and build a cottage industry so they could earn extra money through handicrafts,” she explains. “It was a lot of fun, and even the rowdy high school boys loved it.” The tribe eventually adopted Newman, giving her the title Naypisstaki (“Cloth Woman”) at an official naming ceremony.

Now, with her monumental South Florida commission complete, Newman says, “My next goal is to see more of my designs and installations on cruise ships, hotels, and in public places. After that, I hope to travel to El Salvador to help establish a cottage industry in a remote, impoverished village.”

Editor’s Note: A longer version of this profile by Richard Westlund, M.B.A. ’83, originally appeared in the Summer 2013 issue of the School of Education and Human Development‘s newsletter Perspective.

About The Gateway Project

By Michelle Newman, B.Ed. ’72

My challenge was to find a way to visually represent the City of Delray Beach’s past, present, and future. I visualized Delray Beach as an “Enlightened Community” that is vibrant, alive, and progressive. At the same time, I noted that the community has maintained a civic sensibility to its environment, embracing its natural flora and fauna. This caring community is exceedingly protective of its charm, beauty, and “small town” feel. In preparation for this project, I researched, examined, dissected, sketched, photographed, and compiled many components into a cultural collage, reflecting aspects of the community’s rich heritage. Interviews with civic leaders, historians, and citizens provided me with invaluable input for images and icons that tell the Delray Beach story. While it was not possible to include all of the diverse groups that contributed to Delray’s history, the six Gateway icons reflect a harmonious blending of many of the city’s past and present cultures and ethnicities. My goal was to select artwork that symbolizes and honors the diverse cultural mix and historic background of the community. Finally, the panel’s illumination at night is both an aesthetic and spiritual reference to “internal illumination” that symbolizes the beauty, harmony, and enlightenment of the Delray Beach community.

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