uick. Your car engine has conked out, leaving you stranded on the side of a busy highway, miles from home. What do you do? If you’re one of the millions of motorists who carry a cell phone, you simply call for help, or you might rely on a Good Samaritan to render assistance. Either way, there’s no doubt in your mind that you’ll eventually get home.

But imagine being stranded 200,000 nautical miles from Earth, inside a dying spaceship floating adrift in space. There’s only enough oxygen and food left for a few days, and the temperature inside your spacecraft is 38 degrees Fahrenheit.

That’s the crisis in which James A. Lovell, Jr. and fellow astronauts John Swigert and Fred Haise found themselves 21 years ago as crewmembers of the ill-fated 1970 Apollo 13 mission to the moon.

Lovell, commander of the nearly disastrous flight and one of the group of nine astronauts first selected by NASA in 1962 for the space program, recently shared the leadership lessons learned from the Apollo 13 mission during a speech at the Storer Auditorium. His lecture, “Crisis Management and Teamwork: Lessons from Apollo 13,” was sponsored by the School of Business Administration.

“The mission was more than just an exciting adventure,” Lovell said. “It is a story full of human virtues and characteristics—leadership, teamwork, initiative, imagination, perseverance, and motivation. Those were the attributes that were so important in turning Apollo 13 from an almost certain catastrophe to a successful failure. It is a story that really is a classic case of crisis management.”

Originally planned for ten days, the Apollo 13 flight schedule had to be modified after a service module oxygen tank exploded, wiping out the crew’s main supply of life-sustaining oxygen and power. Lovell and his fellow crewmen worked closely with Houston ground controllers to convert their lunar module, Aquarius, into an effective lifeboat and help the spacecraft return to Earth safely. Lovell’s book, Lost Moon—The Perilous Voyage of Apollo 13, became the basis for the 1995 movie Apollo 13, starring Tom Hanks.

In gripping detail, Lovell described how the Apollo 13 crew conserved power, oxygen, and water by using Aquarius as a solution to their crisis, shutting down all of its systems—except for those related to communications and environmental control—so that it could provide life support for three men for 84 hours.

Lovell admitted that the Apollo 13 crew thought the chances of successfully using Aquarius to sustain them for their return to Earth were slim. “But we never got pessimistic,” he said. “It was like playing a game of solitaire. The game continues as long as you have somewhere to place a card. If there’s no place to put it, the game ends. That never occurred on Apollo 13. We always had things to work with, and we always found solutions to the crises as they occurred.”

Lovell credited the dedication and teamwork of ground controllers in Houston for getting him and his crew home safely. “There are three types of people in this world: people who make things happen, people who watch things happen, and people who just wonder what happened,” Lovell said. “Back in the control center in Houston, we had people who had the ability to think outside the box and make things happen.”

ith his team down by two points and only seven seconds left in the game, Hurricane basketball forward Darius Rice steals an inbound pass along the baseline, eludes two defenders, and launches a desperation three-point attempt from half-court. The ball hits the backboard, lands on the front of the rim, and sits there for what seems like an eternity before finally falling through the net. The ’Canes win, and a capacity Ryder Center crowd erupts.

Such may only be a fictional account, but soon, hoop dreams like that one will come true on the University’s Coral Gables campus when the 7,000-seat Ryder Center, the future home of Hurricane men’s and women’s basketball, opens in 2002.

Seven months after its official groundbreaking, the $48 million facility has celebrated its first “Topping Off” ceremony. UM Athletic Director Paul Dee and men’s and women’s basketball coaches Perry Clark and Ferne Labati joined hundreds of construction workers in celebrating the successful completion of the concrete phase of construction at the site.

Dee says the facility is about a year away from completion. “We’re looking at December 15 as a possible date, but that’s give or take,” Dee says. Still, a Ryder Center opening in time for the early part of the 2002-2003 men’s and women’s basketball seasons is likely.

Along with the center’s ongoing construction, efforts to fill the arena continue. All of the facility’s 25 sky boxes have been sold out, and seat license sales are continuing at a steady pace.

When the center opens, it will fulfill a promise made by then-UM basketball coach Bruce Hale half a century ago, when he envisioned an on-campus field house for the University. The center also will host a variety of educational, cultural, and community events, such as lectures, concerts, and theater productions.

“From the very beginning this center has been designed as a multipurpose facility,” says Dee. “It has capacity for large shows and productions, with entrances and exits that a semi-truck could drive through. The floor can accommodate a large stage and stage-style seating. It’s a very flexible venue.”

The University of Miami’s Cuban Heritage Collection (CHC) has made available on the World Wide Web the Tomás Estrada Palma Collection, a compilation of the first Cuban president’s materials and papers. Funding from the Institute of Museum and Library Services has enabled the CHC to digitize this collection and provide online access at:
http://www.library.miami.edu/chcdigital/chc0460_main.html.

Tomás Estrada Palma (1832-1908) was president of the Cuban Republic from 1902 to 1906. Donated to the CHC in 1995 by his grandson, Tomás Douglas Estrada Palma III, the collection features photographs of Estrada Palma, his wife and children, and of the interior of Cuba’s Presidential Palace at the time of his presidency.

Also included are letters from Estrada Palma to his son, Tomás Andrés Estrada Palma II, and many newspaper clippings related to Estrada Palma’s resignation in 1906. In total, the Cuban Heritage Collection offers online access to 163 items from the Tomás Estrada Palma Collection, approximately 98 percent of its entire content.

“This is a wonderful opportunity to give students and the community in general a window into Cuban history through exposure to rare, original documents and photos,” says Esperanza B. de Varona, head of the Cuban Heritage Collection.

Letters, photographs, and newspaper clippings from this collection were digitized and prepared for online presentation with the support of two grants from the Institute for Museum and Library Services. With these grants, the CHC has created the Cuban Heritage Digital Collection to digitally preserve and provide virtual access to the contents of its collections. This can be found at: http://www.library.miami.edu/chcdigital/chcdigital.html

At this Web site, visitors can browse EAD (Encoded Archival Description) finding aids and view digital images of the materials in selected archival collections, including the Enrique Labrador Ruiz Collection, the Lyceum and Lawn Tennis Club Collection, the Lydia Cabrera Collection, and others.

The next collection to be made available online includes the papers of renowned Cuban writer José Lezama Lima.

On the eve of its 75th anniversary, the University of Miami inducted more than 80 benefactors into the Society of University Founders, one of the University’s most prestigious donor societies, at a special concert and ceremony at Maurice Gusman Concert Hall at the School of Music. The School of Music also is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year.

Founded in 1967, the Society of University Founders was established by the UM Board of Trustees to recognize the generous support and commitment of University benefactors. Donors who have committed $50,000 or more were named Founders, and those who committed $100,000 or more were designated Grand Founders.

During the past 34 years, members of these donor societies have provided approximately $1.3 billion in support of the University of Miami’s programs and facilities. Last year, UM received more than $105 million in philanthropic support, the highest amount in the history of the University.

Sergio M. Gonzalez, who has served as chief of staff for Miami-Dade County Mayor Alex Penelas since 1998, has been named vice president for University Advancement.

“Sergio Gonzalez is a gifted leader and manager. He will play a lead role in expanding our development, alumni, and government relations programs,” says University of Miami President Donna E. Shalala. “He has more than a decade of experience as a senior executive in the public sector and has led a number of important community initiatives.”

Prior to joining the mayor’s office, Gonzalez directed the county’s Job Creation and Welfare-to-Work program. He served as executive director of the South Florida Super Bowl Host Committee from 1996 to 1998 and executive director of the Dade County Homeless Trust from 1993 to 1996. Gonzalez, an attorney, practiced commercial law with Valdes-Fauli, Cobb, Bischoff and Kriss and civil litigation with Mershon, Sawyer, Johnston, Dunwoody and Cole.

A South Florida native, Gonzalez holds a Bachelor of Science in foreign service from Georgetown University and a Juris Doctor from Columbia University. He is a member of the Florida Bar and resides in Miami.

The National Geographic Society, established in 1888, is the world’s largest nonprofit scientific and educational organization. The Committee for Research and Exploration (CRE) is considered the society’s scientific backbone. Since 1890, the CRE has distributed more than 6,000 grants for scientific field research and exploration in geography, anthropology, archaeology, astronomy, biology, botany, geology, oceanography, paleontology, and zoology. Presently, the CRE awards about $4 million a year in grants.

Members of the CRE represent the above disciplines as well as a range of some of the most prominent academic institutions in the United States and Canada. They are international authorities in their respective fields, including presidential advisors, members of the National Academy of Sciences, and Guggenheim Fellows.

Nijman’s primary responsibility will be to support research in the field of human geography. His more than 60 scholarly publications in the last ten years have been in the areas of geopolitics and international urban geography. Nijman’s current field research takes place in Mumbai, India, and at home in Miami. He is a past recipient of the University’s Excellence in Teaching award.

He’s a familiar figure at Hurricane football games, patrolling the Orange Bowl sidelines and end zones as he roots for the home team. Recently, though, UM mascot Sebastian the Ibis was on hand to cheer for a player of a different sort: the United States Coast Guard’s new Coastal Patrol Boat, Ibis, as it made a brief port of call at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science on its way to Cape May, New Jersey, for its official commissioning. Sebastian, second from left, UM President Donna E. Shalala, and Rosenstiel School Dean Otis Brown welcomed the vessel and presented its new logo: Sebastian, the Ibis, in a Coast Guard life preserver. The 87-foot, technologically advanced Ibis is part of the Coast Guard’s Marine Protector Class of Coastal Patrol Boats, and will assist in enforcing all current and projected environmental protection laws.