New Toppel Center puts career planning high on UM’s priority list

From left, UM trustee Patricia Toppel, B.Ed. ’58, M.Ed. ’59, board of trustees chair Leonard Abess, and President Donna E. Shalala help dedicate the new building. Photo by Jenny Abreu

Click here to watch Christian Garcia, executive director, showcase the new Toppel Career Center.

Students on the verge of entering a highly competitive job market welcomed the arrival of the new Patricia and Harold Toppel Career Center, which held its official opening in January. Accounting major Jasmine Holmes calls it “awesome.” International studies major Suzanne Aldahan appreciates the professional interview suites. Daniel Rosenberg, a biomedical engineering major, likes the video feedback available for mock interviews.

“It’s a tremendous upgrade,” says Christian Garcia, the Toppel Career Center’s executive director for the past five years. At 12,000 square feet, the two-story center is twice its previous size, dwarfing the average college career center, which is just over 2,000 square feet, according to Garcia. “What that size allows us to do is provide more programs that can run concurrently,” he explains. “In our old building, we had only one big space where we’d have our presentations. Scheduling was always an issue.”

Another advantage is greater visibility. The center has moved from its Stanford Circle location—once a bowling alley—to its current spot near the Stanford Drive entrance to UM, at 5225 Ponce de Leon Boulevard.

We’ve incorporated technology into every inch of this building, allowing us to reach students and alumni here and anywhere else in the world.”

UM trustee Patricia Toppel, B.Ed. ’58, M.Ed. ’59, made the new center possible. President Donna E. Shalala likens Toppel to a “fairy godmother” who, along with her late husband, Harold, helped turn a campus bowling alley into “a bustling and beloved career planning center” that changed the way students prepared for employment. “Like all great fairy godmothers, when the Toppel Career Center outgrew its home, Pat’s unconditional generosity made magic again with this amazing center before us,” Shalala notes.

Updates include ceiling-mounted cameras to record job interviews for feedback sessions; videoconferencing equipment to enable live streaming and archiving of presentations; and a well-stocked computer lab, courtesy of donors Marjorie Stone and Rick Rodriguez, who also led the Parents Council’s fundraising campaign for the center.

Students and alumni get one-on-one assistance from Toppel Career Center staff. Photo by Andrew Innerarity

“We’ve incorporated technology into every inch of this building, allowing us to reach students and alumni here and anywhere else in the world,” says Garcia, who serves on the National Association of Colleges and Employers board of directors.

The center’s staff of 18 works with high-profile recruiters such as Citi and Google, IBM and the Peace Corps, holding outreach events in the spacious Career Loft. William Scott Green, UM’s senior vice provost and dean of undergraduate education, emphasizes that the Toppel Career Center is “a place in which our students can envision the multiple possible trajectories for their lives after college.”

Patricia Toppel adds, “We all have the same goal here at the University—to provide an excellent education, a wonderful campus life, and the opportunity to plan for our students’ future.” For Jasmine Holmes, who received help with résumés, interviewing, and internships, that future now includes a position in her field after graduation—as a risk assurance associate at PricewaterhouseCoopers in Miami.

To learn about the Toppel Career Center brick campaign, click here. Email your best career advice in 140 characters or less to [email protected].

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At $1 billion and rising, Momentum2’s impact is building University-wide

The Patricia Louise Frost Music Studios, the Patricia and Harold Toppel Career Center expansion, and the Dr. Nasser Ibrahim Al-Rashid Orbital Vision Research Center (renderings clockwise from top) are just a few of the exciting projects funded by Momentum2’s 100,000-plus generous donors.

Just over a year from its public launch, Momentum2: The Breakthrough Campaign for the University of Miami is indeed breaking through. It passed the $1 billion mark toward its $1.6 billion goal in October, with contributions reaching every corner of campus. Recent highlights include a $10 million gift to create a vision research center, a pledge to dramatically expand the Toppel Career Center, and a matching fund to give law scholars a boost.

The gift from Nasser Ibrahim Al-Rashid, founder and chairman of Rashid Engineering, who lost vision in one eye as a child, is the largest the nation’s top-ranked ophthalmology program has received during Momentum2. It will establish the Dr. Nasser Ibrahim Al-Rashid Orbital Vision Research Center in the Miller School of Medicine’s Evelyn F. and William L. McKnight Vision Research Center.
The Bascom Palmer Eye Institute surgeon Al-Rashid credits for preserving the sight in his other eye, David T. Tse, M.D. ’76, professor of ophthalmology and holder of the Dr. Nasser Ibrahim Al-Rashid Chair in Ophthalmic Plastic, Orbital Surgery and Oncology, will be the center’s director.

The Patricia and Harold Toppel Career Center will be housed in a new building on the Gables campus that doubles its current 6,000-square-foot size, thanks to a gift from UM trustee Patricia Toppel, B.Ed. ’58, M.Ed. ’59, along with a significant Parents Council contribution. “I am honored to continue to support the important legacy Harold and I created 17 years ago,” Toppel said. “The new center will be much more integrated into the overall learning experience and help prepare our students for a globally competitive job market.”

As chair of the School of Law’s Momentum2 and Visiting committees, UM trustee Wayne Chaplin, B.B.A. ’79, J.D. ’82, launched the Chaplin Challenge. The dollar-for-dollar match on donations to new or existing Miami Law scholarships through 2016 has raised $500,000 to date, with 13 new scholarships created.

The sweet sound of student support is also in play at the Frost School of Music. Groundbreaking took place in February on the Patricia Louise Frost Music Studios, made possible by longtime UM philanthropists Patricia Louise and Phillip Frost, the latter a UM trustee. The state-of-the-art, environmentally sound complex will include 82 chamber music and teaching studios, replacing the antiquated Foster Building practice rooms, which have needed updating since the 1970s, Patricia Frost said at the event. “Well, we’re doing more than updating,” she added. “And I’m proud to have my name on your educational building.”

For more information about the campaign, visit miami.edu/momentum2.

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