Miami magazine: University Journal

Noteworthy News and Research at the University of Miami

Hurricane Helpers		Adding Einstein to English Class

Approaching the Goal		Beloved Author Speaks

Economic Powerhouse		Little Salt Springs Forth

Savory Science		The Win in Their Sails

Getting Down to Business		An Unlikely Poet

This Land Is Your Land		Music Masters Conduct Classes during Festival Miami

Voyage of Courage		Self-Serve Cervical Exam

Architectural Gem		Go Figure

University volunteers play a role in Gulf Coast recovery

Hurricane Helpers

he University of Miami—which felt the early fury of Hurricane Katrina—reached out soon after the winds subsided to assist victims on the Gulf Coast.

After receiving calls from displaced college students—many from Tulane and Loyola Universities in New Orleans—UM found space to enroll 101 students under a non-degree-seeking status.

The Center for Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing (CSTARS) of the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science helped authorities assess storm-related damage by providing them and the media with high-resolution satellite images of flood-ravaged areas.

Faculty from the Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine and the School of Nursing and Health Studies were on site, providing free medical care in a number of impacted regions. Two teams treated hundreds of patients daily in a clinic tent near Biloxi and Gulfport, Mississippi.

A team of Bascom Palmer Eye Institute ophthalmologists, technicians, and photographers spent three weeks in various locations in Louisiana and Mississippi aboard the Vision Van, a converted 40-foot mobile eye clinic outfitted with examination rooms, screening stations, and state-of-the-art equipment.

“We never thought the Vision Van would be used for this purpose,” says Bascom Palmer Chairman Carmen A. Puliafito, M.D., who led the hurricane relief team. “Bascon Palmer is planning to develop this into a more regular program to provide emergency eye care in settings where there has been destruction of the medical infrastructure.”

Richard Weisman, UM research associate professor and director of the Florida Poison Information Center, and Joseph Scott, assistant professor of emergency medicine and director of emergency medical skills training at UM’s Center for Research in Medical Education, were deployed to Alabama even before Katrina made landfall. Weisman serves as the deputy commander of the Florida-5 Disaster Medical Assistance Team, part of the Department of Homeland Security. They set up a MASH field hospital in Mississippi, where they saw 1,400 patients in 12 days. After they were back in Miami for a week, the unit was reactivated to help Hurricane Rita victims near the Texas-Louisiana border.

Back on the University’s campuses, efforts included: a benefit concert by the Frost School of Music, student-led fundraisers, and donation drives in the residential colleges. The Butler Volunteer Services Center helped the American Red Cross coordinate relief activities.

2005 is a banner year for the Momentum campaign

Approaching the Goal

hilanthropy reached record heights this year at the University of Miami, with Momentum: The Campaign for the University of Miami achieving the best-ever annual fundraising results and putting the $1 billion goal within reach.

As of November 29, 2005, the campaign had reached $974 million. During fiscal 2005 total private cash, gifts, and grants topped $135 million—an 8 percent increase over last year’s record total of more than $125 million. The stunning progress propelled the total of the campaign to $890 million by May 31, 2005, the fiscal year’s end.

“Thanks to the dedication and generosity of a multitude of wonderful individuals, the Momentum campaign just keeps gaining speed,” says President Donna E. Shalala.

The University recorded increases in every category of fundraising. Some of the largest gains included:

Foundation giving reached $58.2 million, an increase of more than 58 percent.
Endowment gifts totaled more than $13 million, a 66.2 percent rise.
Total support for the Miller School of Medicine topped $81.7 million, which is an increase of 27.7 percent.
Total alumni giving reached $13.6 million, up 33 percent from last year. If alumni-related entities such as personal foundations and alumni-owned companies are included, alumni giving actually reached $41.3 million.
Last spring the faculty and staff component to Momentum launched, featuring a “100 Percent UM” theme that calls on all employees’ support to propel the initiative down the homestretch. To date, this drive has raised more than $14 million.

The Momentum campaign is endowing student scholarships; creating endowed teaching chairs; attracting gifted professors and scientists; endowing new interdisciplinary centers and institutes; and enhancing research initiatives across the University’s campuses.

Economic Powerhouse

he University of Miami is South Florida’s premier intellectual engine, and now its role as an economic powerhouse has been quantified in an independent economic impact study conducted by The Washington Economics Group.

The University of Miami is the largest private employer in Miami-Dade County and the sixth largest employer overall, with a total economic impact of over $3.9 billion in 2004. Its more than 10,000 employees on all campuses were compensated $739 million, with an indirect impact on 27,000 additional jobs in the local market. The University is the single most important economic enterprise in the city of Coral Gables, with a total impact of $1.1 billion—and approximately 40 percent of the University’s payroll goes to employees living in the city.

More than 68,000 out-of-town visitors attended University-sponsored academic events and spent an estimated $62 million in 2004. Overall, the University, its guests, and out-of-state students injected $1.5 billion into Miami-Dade County’s economy.

“The University of Miami is inextricably linked to this wonderful and diverse community—and as a key intellectual and economic force, we are committed to its continued advancement,” says President Donna E. Shalala.

Stephen Roper makes a case for good taste

Savory Science

spoonful of sugar may help the medicine go down, but Stephen Roper, professor of physiology and biophysics at the Miller School of Medicine, is working on better ways to buffer the bitterness of good-for-you edibles. He is one of four prominent national researchers appointed to the Scientific Advisory Board of Linguagen Corp., a biotechnology firm that identifies and develops compounds to improve the taste of pharmaceutical, food, and beverage products.

“Blocking bitterness to make medicines more palatable is not trivial,” Roper says. “Patient compliance is a huge health care issue.”

Roper has been studying the physiology of taste for 30 years, but the biggest breakthrough in the field, he says, came only five years ago with the discovery of taste receptor proteins. Humans have up to 10,000 taste buds, each one containing 50 to 100 cells. Each cell contains a receptor protein that reacts only to a specific taste molecule—bitter, sweet, salty, sour, and umami—much like a lock and key. Roper works closely with fellow Miller School professor Nirupa Chaudhari, who has been instrumental in identifying receptors for umami—savory flavors in meats, cheeses, some vegetables, and monosodium glutamate. The name umami is a derivative of the Japanese word for delicious.

Identifying taste receptor proteins is the first step in finding ways to turn them off and on. Blocking bitterness could mean the end of coated pills in favor of faster-acting liquid medications, and it also could help kids eat their broccoli and brussel sprouts. Diabetics and people on low-salt diets could benefit from products that enhance sweet and salty receptors. Triggering foul flavors on the taste buds of insects could lead to the use of less-toxic pesticides.

The mechanisms of taste and smell, which are strongly interlinked, are less understood than other senses like sight and hearing, but it doesn’t mean they are less essential. “What we choose to eat has a major impact on nutrition,” Roper says. Citing diabetes, high blood pressure, obesity, and other diet-related ailments, he makes a sweet argument for good taste.

Getting Down to Business

bout 130,000 people a year earn a Master of Business Administration degree, the second most often conferred master’s degree in the United States after the master’s in education. While that number is climbing, the number of people willing to sacrifice two years of earning potential to be a full-time MBA student is dropping.

In addition to its two-year Executive MBA program—offering weekend classes for people who work full time—the School of Business Administration is introducing a new One-Year MBA option in spring 2006.

“This is a private University, so we’re very entrepreneurial; we try to stay ahead of the curve,” says Harold Berkman, vice dean of graduate business programs in the School of Business Administration.

The 32-credit program admits up to 30 students each January who progress together in a “lock-step” format through four seven-week terms. The One-Year MBA and traditional two-year program share the same faculty, but One-Year MBA students take eight classes per semester instead of six. In lieu of summer classes, the program requires that students without work experience complete an internship, which they can obtain through the Ziff Graduate Career Services Center. Only students who have earned an undergraduate degree in business within the past five years are eligible.

“It appeals to the Millennium Generation,” says Susan Gerrish, program coordinator. “They’re scheduled, they’re focused, and they’re really motivated to achieve.”

Property swap paves way for UM bioscience center

This Land Is Your Land

ometimes hope and prosperity can rise from the most unlikely of places. Take, for example, the almost eight-acre stretch of land located between NW 7th Avenue and I-95 in Miami’s Civic Center area. Covered mostly by gravel and grass, it isn’t much to look at. But a new facility providing economic growth for a community is envisioned for this barren site.

A land swap agreement between the University and the City of Miami is enabling the creation of the Miami Bioscience Center, a 1.4 million-square-foot technology park that will elevate South Florida into the ranks of the nation’s elite medical research communities.

Under the terms of the deal, the University will build a bioscience research center on the stretch of land adjacent to UM’s medical campus and currently controlled by Camillus House, a charity serving the homeless. In return, Camillus House will build a new facility for the homeless on a smaller parcel of land the University owns about a block further south.

The first 200,000-square-foot phase of the center could be finished by early 2008, and the entire project will be funded through private investment, according to Sergio Rodriguez, vice president of real estate, campus planning, and construction, who negotiated the land swap deal.

“This University needs to position itself as an economic engine to create quality jobs and opportunities, and over the next five to ten years, we will double our employment in the city of Miami,” says UM President Donna E. Shalala.

The bioscience center would be a cornerstone of The Miami Partnership, a broad initiative spearheaded by President Shalala and City of Miami Mayor Manny Diaz to revitalize the Civic Center area. By creating housing, retail shops, a shuttle system, and restaurants, the goal of the initiative is to make the Civic Center a place where people come not only to work, receive world-class medical care, and seek help from government agencies but also to live, raise families, and enjoy a wide range of amenities and services.

After more than two decades of searching, Camillus House will replace its current shelter with a 340-bed facility offering services for intensive treatment, vocational training, job placement, and housing assistance, according to Camillus House President Paul Ahr. Its new facility also will serve as a base for joint projects with the University of Miami that research the causes and cures of chronic homelessness.

”Back to Top

Marielitos recount their 25-year history

Voyage of Courage

hen UM assistant librarian Celeida Figueroa was 25 years old, she made a decision that would change her life forever. Cuban-born Figueroa, who was studying for a Spanish-language doctorate in Havana, decided to break away from the repression in her country—the lack of opportunities as well as the hours she was forced to guard her university’s campus.

“I never accepted the Cuban revolution,’’ Figueroa says. “I wanted to go to a place where I could freely express myself.”

So she crafted a letter declaring her to be a violent alcoholic and had it signed by a friend who was a Cuban government official. This was her ticket off of the island.

Figueroa is one of approximately 130,000 refugees who arrived in South Florida during the Mariel boatlift in the summer of 1980. Started by a group of dissatisfied Cubans who stormed the Peruvian embassy in Havana, the massive exodus included a large number of artists, painters, writers, and dancers who eventually helped transform the cultural landscape of Miami. The boatlift also included a minority of criminals and mentally ill refugees—forced to emigrate by the Fidel Castro government—who eventually helped make Marielito a bad name.

“People like to speak about the bad things Mariel brought,” says Lesbia Varona, bibliographer and reference librarian at the Otto G. Richter Library’s Cuban Heritage Collection (CHC). “In reality, the Mariel boatlift brought many good things and gave a cultural boost to this city.”

Figueroa remembers the voyage vividly, 14 bouts of seasickness and all. When the 45-foot-long shrimper named Carry Hill docked in Key West, her sister-in-law picked her up and drove her to a restaurant in Little Havana. “I felt like I had reached paradise,’’ she recalls.

Like many of the refugees, Figueroa had some family members who helped her settle in Miami. At the beginning she worked in factories, then she landed a job at the University of Miami, got married, and raised three children. She credits family support and bona fide hard work for her ability to adapt and escape the stigma of being labeled a Marielita.

To commemorate the 25th anniversary of the exodus, Varona curated an exhibit at the CHC called “The Cultural Legacy of Mariel,” which ran from October through December and included one-of-a-kind documents, letters, paintings, and etchings of the period.

Architectural Gem

he School of Architecture has dedicated its new building, the 8,600-square-foot Jorge M. Perez Architecture Center. The majestic modern-yet-classical structure encompasses three major spaces: the Stanley and Jewell Glasgow Lecture Hall; the Marshall and Vera Lea Rinker Classroom; and an exhibition gallery that will showcase juried work of students and professionals. Signature elements are an octagonal lantern above the lecture hall, a stepped tower above the stairwell, a colonnade, and an arched portico serving as a ceremonial entrance facing Dickinson Drive.

Education professors use science to Strengthen Standardized test scores

Adding Einstein to English Class

he eyes of 30 third-graders at Hialeah Elementary School widen in excitement as they “make rain.” The experiment is teaching them about the water cycle, but through a new curriculum developed by University of Miami School of Education professors, the students also are expanding their proficiency in English and math.

Hialeah Elementary is one of 15 Miami-Dade County public schools participating in P-SELL (Promoting Science Among English Language Learners in a High-Stakes Testing Policy Context). In the first year of the five-year project, funded by a $5 million National Science Foundation grant, 45 teachers engaged more than 1,100 third-graders in science instruction that also boosted the students’ scores in math and reading on the Florida Comprehensive Assessment Test (FCAT). From 2004 to 2005, P-SELL schools gained 20 points in math, in contrast to only 4 points at comparison schools; reading scores rose 8 points in contrast to 3 points at comparison schools.

“When I came to Hialeah Elementary four years ago, the science materials were full of dust, obsolete, and incomplete,” says Carolina Naveiras, principal of the school, which the Florida Department of Education upgraded from a C to a B rating this year. “P-SELL was an eye-opener for educators on science and a creative way of teaching it.”

UM professor Okhee Lee and colleagues in the Department of Teaching and Learning have been developing the P-SELL curriculum over the past ten years. The materials reinforce reading comprehension, oral language, and writing skills in science lessons that ask students to present their hypotheses, explain science concepts, describe what they did in experiments, and draw conclusions. Math also is a natural complement, as students have to take measurements and interpret the data in charts and graphs.

Encouraging minority students to consider careers in science is an added bonus.

“Science is still perceived as a field for the middle-class white man,” Lee says. “The real value in science education is not just for students to become scientists but also so they learn how to make rational decisions in day-to-day life.”

Over the next four years, P-SELL will involve more than 300 teachers and 7,000 students in grades three through five at schools rated C or D. Science will become a component of the FCAT for fifth-grade students beginning in 2006, and in 2007 it will become part of the federal No Child Left Behind Act.

The P-SELL curriculum is presently under review by a major commercial publishing house for state and national adoption.

Coach Katie Meier shoots for the top

Courting a National Presence

hings have changed in the last 40 years since Nobel and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Toni Morrison penned her first novel, The Bluest Eye.

“Minorities are finally articulated, though I find them still to be supplementary, a kind of footnote or sidebar,” Morrison said, citing voids in documentation of the African-American experience as a prompt for her writing. For her, “the act of writing is an attempt at a shared effort of imagining,” a process that etches clarity into the obscure slate of recorded history.

“When there is that nothing, that for the novelist is the real excitement,” said Morrison. “It’s like there’s a tall door that rises up into this nothing. Later on, you reach into your pocket and find a key that fits the lock.”

Professor of humanities at Princeton University, Morrison kicked off the University of Miami’s fall 2005 academic semester by delivering The Robert and Judi Prokop Newman Lecture at the BankUnited Center (formerly the Convocation Center). Prior to her visit, all incoming freshmen read Beloved, a powerful tale inspired by the true story of a runaway slave who killed her own daughter rather than relinquish her to a life of slavery. The missing pieces in that snippet of history—told from the perspective of a mother haunted by her tragic act of love and sacrifice—spawned the novel that earned Morrison a Pulitzer in 1988.

Following her presentation, Morrison fielded questions on disparate topics, ranging from African-American role models in popular culture to national sentiment after 9/11 to the definition of freedom, which is a common theme in many of her novels.

“There’s a play between the desire of humanity to be absolutely unique and at the same time to belong,” Morrison said. “I don’t know if you ever reach a plateau and say, ‘Oh I’m free’—because then you just might be alone.”

Little Salt Springs Forth

mong the dozens of sinkholes scattered throughout the Florida landscape, there is one that reveals the secrets of early human societies. Little Salt Spring, a 240-foot-deep, hourglass-shaped sinkhole on the Gulf Coast of Florida, recently revealed two important artifacts to researchers at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science.

The latest finds—a green stone pendant and another stone artifact that appears to be part of a spear-thrower, both estimated to be about 8,000 years old—are among hundreds of items uncovered at the spring since it was first discovered as an archaeological site in the late-1950s. Marine archaeologist and Rosenstiel School associate professor John Gifford, M.S.C.E. ’73, has been excavating Little Salt Spring with students and colleagues since 1992. Gifted to the University in 1982 by the General Development Corporation, the site is on the National Register of Historic Places because its water source is so deep underground that it contains no dissolved oxygen, thus inhibiting bacteria from growing and decomposing organic materials.

The pendant is intriguing, Gifford explains, because its material is not indigenous to the area, making the object something rare that would have conferred some sort of status on the owner. “Archaeologists are interested in data, but they’re not above admiring a well-made and rare object such as this pendant, which just happens to be an artistic achievement.”

New sailing team joins competitive circuit

The Win in Their Sails

ngela Leffingwell was eight years old when she first skittered across water on the pull of a billowed sail. In that taut sheet of canvas she captured not only the wind but also a lifelong passion. While the University of Miami was her top college choice, she lamented the fact that it did not offer competitive sailing.

“I come from Wisconsin, where we have only three months of sailing a year,” says Leffingwell, now a junior music major. “I couldn’t understand why there was no sailing team here.”

So Leffingwell chartered a course to change that. In her freshman year she met fellow freshman Fred Moffat, who led his high school sailing team at Miami’s Ransom Everglades to a national championship. Last year the sailors registered the University’s first competitive team with the Inter-Collegiate Sailing Association (ICSA), the sport’s national governing body. The sailing team, part of the South Atlantic District, competes against schools such as Duke, Embry-Riddle, Georgia Tech, Vanderbilt, and the University of Florida.

The team is a boon for students who long for the thrill of the race, but the University has had a recreational sailing club since the 1970s.

“I estimate that more than 5,000 students over the years have learned how to sail in the club,” says Rhonda DuBord, associate director of recreational sports, who served as the sailing club’s advisor from 1981 until 2004. The current club faculty advisor is UM physics professor Ken Voss, who sails in national races with his wife, Kay Kilpatrick, a senior research associate at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science.

The recreational club keeps its fleet of boats at the Rosenstiel School, but they are different from the racing vessels used in competitive sailing. The team, unable to purchase racing boats due to high insurance costs, struck a partnership with the Coconut Grove Sailing Club. In exchange for access to racing boats and facilities, the team pays a rental fee and provides sailing instruction to patrons of the club. A donation from Jon Stemples, B.S.C.E. ’63, also helps support operational activities of both the club and team.

“I can’t get kids to join the sailing team if we don’t have a place to practice,” says Moffat, team captain. “The Coconut Grove Sailing Club came through.”

Propelling the team’s competitive ascent is UM senior Zach Railey, a sport administration major who also is on the U.S. Sailing Team. As one of the top five sailors in the United States for the Finn class of boats, he has a promising shot at the 2008 Olympics. Last semester Railey captured the first-ever Finn College National Championship for the University of Miami.

“I chose Miami because I loved the school from the second I set foot on campus,” Railey says. “And the U.S. Sailing training facility is here in Miami, so it couldn’t have worked out better.”

Medical Student adds Rhyme to reason

An Unlikely Poet

University of Miami student has written a poem called “Daytime Dreamer,” which lauds the magical moment when the creative mind becomes free to “dip into streaming subconscious” and “pour forth a lyric hymn.” The free-spirited author is not a creative writing student, but a future physician-scientist.

“My mind is an interesting place,” admits Shawn M. Rose, B.S. ’00, who has published “Daytime Dreamer” in his first book of poems, Lessons from Eternity (University Press of the South). Rose is in his seventh year of the M.D.-Ph.D. program at the Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine. He recently completed his Ph.D. in immunology, studying anti-inflammatory T cell responses in neonatal versus adult mice.

While it would seem that Rose’s day-to-day rotations through labs and clinics would leave little time for creative musings, he is never without a literary eye. “Everything has a story. Whether you are doing science or writing or taking care of patients, observation is number one.”

Rose began writing poetry in high school, inspired by the written eloquence of his mother, an English teacher. As an undergraduate psychobiology major, he formed a poetry exchange and discussion group with other students that evolved into a spoken word show on the University’s student-run radio station, WVUM.

Lessons from Eternity is an amalgamation of Rose’s early works and new creations, all linked by a common thread: “The major theme is intellectual and social enlightenment,” Rose says.

“There are so many intelligent people who want to walk through the day and keep it status quo. My goal is to get people to think about things. There has to be a collective consciousness to make a difference in the world, and it starts with education and awareness.”

Music Masters Conduct Classes during Festival Miami

aking a breather from promoting his newest album, Same Dream, the Grammy-winning Jon Secada, B.M. ’83, M.M. ’86, added a dash of celebrity spice to this year’s Festival Miami. In addition to a sold-out concert with the Jazz Vocal I Ensemble, Secada conducted a master class open to faculty, students, and the general public. Famed composers Jerry Herman, A.B. ’53, and Marvin Hamlisch also conducted master classes as part of the Frost School of Music’s Stamps Family Distinguished Visitors Series.

Secada opened the class with a nod to music technology. “When I started, there was no iTunes, no Napster. Artists cannot ignore any more what is happening in the industry in terms of the way we create and market music.”

Before leading into a question-and-answer session, Secada demonstrated his musical versatility by playing snippets of another new CD featuring jazz arrangements of some of his hit pop songs.

“In the studio, people were always saying, ‘Jon, how do your harmonies come so quick?’ I would just say, ‘I’m really feeling it,’ but I always knew where it came from. I always kept my education in my back pocket, but today more than ever, that card is out.”

Fournier device may help save lives

Self-Serve Cervical Exam

rthur Fournier, M.D., says casually that he was out to “build a better mousetrap,” but his modesty belies the lifesaving results of his efforts and ingenuity. Vice chair of the Department of Family Medicine and Community Health and associate dean for community health affairs, Fournier has invented a cervical self-sampling device for detection of cancer and sexually transmitted diseases—an invention that could prove especially vital to countless women in developing nations.

The Fournier Device, which has been issued three patents, resembles a tampon and is easily used by women to obtain their own specimens. In a study published in The Journal of Reproductive Medicine, researchers compared the Fournier Device with traditional sampling methods such as the Pap smear, using cytologic and molecular-based tests for chlamydia, gonorrhea, and human papillomavirus (HPV), now known to be the cause of cervical cancer. Self-collected samples showed an overall increase in cells collected and identified more cases of HPV than Pap smears.

Fournier initially thought of the idea for his device some 20 years ago. “I’ve been teaching students how to do Pap smears for 28 years,” Fournier says. “It’s much more of a skill to do it right than is generally appreciated—but more importantly, women hate it.”

Fournier’s experience taking UM medical students to Haiti as part of Project Medishare—traveling to the nation more than 100 times—reinforced the need for the device. “In developing countries women are dying of cervical cancer because they aren’t being screened. When we go back to Haiti we’ll screen every woman in Thomonde at risk for cervical cancer. We’ll save at least 100 lives among women who have never been screened. Ultimately, the goal is to make this an option for all women.”