iami’s first professional art exhibition space wasn’t much bigger than a typical apartment when it opened back in 1950: three rooms on the second floor of the Merrick Classroom Building.

But from those humble beginnings emerged what is today one of Miami-Dade County’s premier museums of art. Located on the University’s Coral Gables campus, the Lowe Art Museum has a permanent collection of more than 12,000 objects—10 percent of which is exhibited at any given time. It includes antiquities, 17th- to 20th-century art of the Americas and Europe, as well as Asian, African, pre-Columbian, and Native American art
 

This year, the Lowe celebrates its 50th anniversary with the special exhibit, “Catalyst: 50 Years of Collecting at the Lowe Art Museum,” which explores the Lowe’s role in developing the region’s first broad public art collection. On view through April 20, the exhibition features some 200 objects selected by curators, art historians, and specialists from the Lowe’s diverse permanent collection.

The paintings, sculptures, and works on paper are on display in the Lowe’s Beaux Arts Gallery and other galleries, where they are identified by special labels. Visitors can use a special ballot to vote on their favorite pieces of art, and the results, says director Brian Dursum, will be used by the Lowe for organizing future installations.

“The real impetus for this exhibition is to show a broad spectrum of what the museum collected over the 50 years of its existence,” says Dursum, adding that a special 50th anniversary booklet also will be produced.

In his 11 years as director, Dursum says the Lowe’s mission has remained unchanged: to serve the University and the greater South Florida communities, and national and international visitors as a teaching and exhibiting resource from its permanent and borrowed collections.

“One person described the Lowe as a mini-Metropolitan museum, where one can experience world art,” says Dursum. “When I became director the goal was to improve the existing museum facility and organize exhibitions that complemented our mission. We select exhibitions with a view toward complementing our permanent collection as well as its reception with the community.

“Sometimes you hit a homerun, and other times it’s sort of a fly ball that fizzles out in left field. In the case of the Louise Nevelson exhibit, we hit a homerun,” he says, alluding to the Lowe’s recent exhibition of the U.S. sculptor’s work.

A major renovation and expansion project in 1996 included the addition of 12,000 square feet of temporary and permanent exhibition space, renovation of the existing 26,600-square-foot building, a new unifying facade, and museum entrance.

Building an endowment and increasing student visitation are the next major goals the museum faces, according to Dursum.

“I think now more of our students know there’s a museum on campus,” says Dursum. “We’re trying now to expand the availability of the museum’s collection,” he continues. “Ultimately we would have material available so that if a student is doing research, they could come into the museum; seeing an original work in the museum is far better than seeing a picture of it in a book or as a digital image. This museum needs to really function increasingly as a research entity within a university and also needs to serve students.”

The Lowe Art Museum is open Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday, and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.; Thursday from 12 p.m. to 7 p.m.; and Sunday from 12 p.m. to 5 p.m. Admission is free for members, UM faculty and staff, children under 12, and UM students with ID. Visit its Web site at www.lowemuseum.org.

ll children can learn, whether they are prosperous or poor, able-bodied or feeble, raised in a stable family unit or the product of a broken home, and the nation’s millions of public-school teachers must take accountability for their students’ learning. That was the message delivered by U.S. Secretary of Education Rod Paige in a lecture hosted by the School of Education and held at the Storer Auditorium.

“Despite the dedication of many excellent teachers, principals, and parents, our educational system still falls short of what we need. Still, too many children are failing and being left behind,” said Paige, citing statistics that only 32 percent of fourth graders read at proficient levels and even bleaker numbers that only 12 percent of African-American fourth graders read at a proficient level.

Paige, a former Houston superintendent of schools, is credited with turning around the nation’s seventh-largest school district, improving reading and test scores and creating the Houston area’s first independent school district, which is now a national model for the charter school concept.

Paige said that the students who are being left behind are the students who need the most attention and that the United States cannot maintain its national leadership in the world with its current educational system. “We have the capability and the responsibility to do better,” he said.

The nation’s first black secretary of education, Paige outlined President Bush’s education reform plan, saying it is aimed at improving reading skills and teaching quality, as well as supporting the creation of magnet schools and encouraging technology in the classroom.

He also said the University could play a major role in improving the nation’s educational system by supporting research that can provide answers to problems in education.

University of Miami faculty, staff, and students shattered their goal of $700,000 for the 2001 United Way campaign by raising a record $1 million. The amount represents a 47 percent increase over last year’s campaign, according to the University’s United Way chairperson, Vice President for Student Affairs Patricia Whitely.

“I’m pleased with the outpouring of support for this year’s United Way campaign by University employees, especially during these difficult times,” says President Donna E. Shalala. “A nearly 50 percent increase in United Way giving at UM reflects a real commitment on the part of our students, staff, and faculty to our community.”

Among the many ways the University raised funds: an Orange Bowl collection, departmental sales and raffles, employee pledges, and a golf tournament.

A year-long study conducted by a team of University researchers has found that, given current knowledge, disposing of treated municipal wastewater effluent via deep injection wells generally poses lower public health risks than other available Southeast Florida alternatives.

“From what we know now, health risks appear lowest for injection wells,” says James Englehardt, professor of environmental engineering in the College of Engineering and the study’s principal investigator.

Considered as a “starting point” toward more detailed research, the study assessed the human and ecological impacts of the three, high-volume methods of municipal wastewater disposal available in Southeast Florida: ocean discharge, deep well discharge, and surface water discharge (primarily into canals).

Prior to any discharge, wastewater undergoes secondary treatment, a process in which oxygen is injected for several days to promote the decomposition of organisms and which is designed to remove at least 90 percent of the pollutants. The study noted that treated wastewater meets most primary and secondary standards for drinking water.

Researchers based their analysis on a worst-case assumption for deep injection wells—that the highly treated water sent down deep wells would quickly migrate upward thousands of feet into the Florida aquifer, a brackish aquifer; and that an aquifer storage and recovery well for non-potable water in the brackish aquifer would be within one mile of the deep well.

Of the approximately 500 million gallons of highly treated wastewater effluent produced in Miami-Dade, Broward, and Palm Beach counties every day, approximately 46 percent is injected into deep wells; 50 percent is discharg-ed via ocean outfall; and 4 percent goes to reuse.

The Florida Water Environment Association Utility Council sponsored the study to evaluate whether deep well injection threatens underground drinking water sources and to quantify the risks to human health and the environment associated with the most commonly used disposal methods in Southeast Florida.

The project comprised two phases, data collection and relative risk assessment based on the data. “Results represent the first quantitative assessment of wastewater discharge risks of such scope, and are therefore considered a starting point rather than an end,” the study says.

Its original location is a small office in Albert Pick Hall on the University’s Coral Gables campus, but now, the Sue and Leonard Miller Center for Contemporary Judaic Studies (CCJS) is getting a new home. The center recently unveiled plans for its future home during a ceremony attended by Sue and Leonard Miller, President Donna E. Shalala, and several other guests.

Construction for the center’s new site involves gutting and renovating a portion of the Merrick Building. The new center will house a research library, a multiuse media conference/ classroom, several display areas, and storage facilities for the CCJS’s permanent collection of Judaica, as well as offices for faculty, scholars, and staff.

First established in 1998, the center is the first academic and research center in the United States to focus primarily on 20th- and 21st-century Jewish studies as well as trends affecting the future of the Jewish people.

“This community has the will and the capacity to support a first-class contemporary Judaic studies center. We are entirely confident that, in time, the Miller Center will rank among the very top of its kind and will be a gem in the University of Miami’s crown,” says Haim Shaked, the center’s founding director who is also professor and director of the Middle East Studies Institute and the incumbent of the Dr. M. Lee Pearce Chair in Middle East Peace Studies.

The renovation, which marks a new chapter in the CCJS’s pursuit of cultural and religious understanding, is being made possible by a gift from Sue and Leonard Miller. It comes just as the global coalition to fight terrorism has heightened interest in religious awareness.

“It’s a privilege to be able to assist the University in furthering such an important field within Judaic studies,” says Miller, who in 1954 founded Lennar, today one of the largest homebuilders in the United States. “The Jewish community worldwide deserves a resource that brings outreach, teaching, and scholarship to new levels.”

The University presently offers a major and minor in Judaic studies. Course offerings are expected to be expanded as part of the center’s future development.

Second-year medical student Adam Blomberg, speech pathologist Donna Lundy, and menopause specialist R. Wayne Whitted walked the same path last December. These three members of the School of Medicine represented the South Florida community as bearers of the Olympic torch on its run through Miami.

Blomberg, Lundy, and Whitted were three of 7,200 torchbearers across the country selected to run in the relay that carried the Olympic flame from Atlanta to Salt Lake City. The Salt Lake Organizing Committee called for nominations of individuals who embodied the Olympic spirit and served as an inspiration.

Blomberg was nominated by friends, who found inspiration in his crusade to educate the community on vehicular safety. A survivor of a near-fatal car crash five years ago, Blomberg created and frequently presents a multimedia informative and dynamic seminar on the importance of safe driving to high school students and other organizations.

Lundy, a speech pathologist at the University of Miami Ear Institute, was nominated by her brother, who found inspiration in her dedication to her work. Lundy is co-director of the Center for Sinus and Voice Disorders at the Ear Institute and works with patients to improve their vocal abilities and correct nasal, sinus, and voice abnormalities.

A grateful patient’s letter led the selection committee to choose Whitted, assistant professor and certified menopause clinician in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology. Whitted co-created the Menopause Support Series, a two-day interactive conference that offers direction and guidance to women experiencing the first stages of menopause.