FIU Magazine - Summer 2004 - Taking Care of Business

FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY SUMMER 2004

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TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS Retired executive and philanthropist R. Kirk Landon’s record $5 million gift—to be doubled by a state grant—assures the College of Business Administration’s ever-increasing influence and creates the R. Kirk Landon Undergraduate School of Business.

Also in this issue: FIU researcher leading the battle against South Florida’s AIDS epidemic

FIU alumnus goes from intern to VP of New York Mets

Dennis Lehane, author of “Mystic River,” sits down with FIU Magazine

Football team gears up for home opener Sept. 2

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Show your school pride every time you hit the road.

Whether you’re a member of the FIU Class of ’03 or ’73…or you drive around in a luxury sedan or an SUV…the new Florida International University Golden Panther license plate is for you. With the Golden Panther on your vehicle, you’ll show your school spirit every time you drive.

It’s now easier than ever to receive a Golden Panther plate through the FIU Golden Panther License Plate Replacement Program. Go to www.fiu.edu/fiuplate and follow the instructions to order your plate.

This is not part of your annual vehicle registration process—no additional charge will be incurred until your next license plate renewal.* At that time, if you choose to keep your FIU plate, a fee of $27.50 will be assessed to benefit FIU scholarship funds.

Show Your True Colors

ide! r P e h Feel t FIU alumni, friends and supporters—show your pride for the Blue & Gold with your FIU Golden Panther license plate. *Vanity plates are available at an additional charge from any licensed tag agency.

FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY

on the cover

volume 11

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departments

profiles

03 In Brief

12 David Cohen ’86:

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FIU alumnus goes from unpaid intern to VP and general counsel of New York Mets

31 Alumni

22 Dennis Lehane ’01: Catching up with the author of “Mystic River”

34 Upcoming Events 35 Class Notes

32 Kelsey Vaughan ’04: FIU’s first Truman Scholar discovers her life’s passion in Bolivia

37 VIP: Very Important Panther Nury Feria ’76

36 Donor Profile:

Blue Cross & Blue Shield of Florida

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Investing in the Future R. Kirk Landon’s multimillion-dollar gift to the College of Business Administration will help prepare tomorrow’s leaders.

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Taking it to the Streets

Renaissance in Overtown

Community Voices

Effecting Change

Ready to Play

Renowned researcher William Darrow is leading the battle against South Florida’s AIDS epidemic with a street-savvy, community-empowerment project.

With flowers and shrubs, hard work and plenty of care, Psychology Chairperson Marvin Dunn and his students are reviving Miami’s Overtown neighborhood.

Three FIU alumnae will appear on the ballot this fall in bids for the Florida House of Representatives.

The WolfsonianFIU: At Home in the Neighborhood

Across the University, hundreds of FIU faculty and students are making a difference everyday.

A retooled defense, greater overall speed and increased intensity are just a few of the changes you’ll notice as the football team enters its third season.

Since opening in 1995, the museum has engaged in an ambitious program of community education that welcomes art lovers of all ages.

www.fiu.edu/orgs/fiumag

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SUMMER 2004

volume 11

FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSITY

from the AVP, Alumni Relations In this issue you will read about the ways that FIU is making a difference in the community through active service and dedicated outreach. Especially in South Florida, where so many of our alumni continue to live and to work, the efforts of our faculty, staff and students to improve the lives of our neighbors bear investigating.

Just as you, individually or through religious or other organizations, put your own special skills to use in helping those in need or otherwise making positive changes to benefit the greater good, so too does FIU take seriously its responsibility to the community. Aside from offering highquality, affordable education that ultimately builds our local economy and contributes to everyone’s quality of life—the University’s number-one mission and its most important “community service”—FIU is running a highly active public museum on Miami Beach, conducting programs that support community health and even providing the man- and womanpower to beautify one of Miami’s low-income areas. And that’s not the half of it.

From your days on campus, you may know that many of our professors and academic programs incorporate a component of “service learning” into the coursework. Likewise, FIU fraternities and sororities make charity work a significant part of their activities. All of these endeavors reflect the civic spirit that FIU strives to engender in its students and in its employees—and that many of you have embraced in your own lives. Let us all keep up the good works.

Florida International University 2003-04 Alumni Association Board President

Ty N. Javellana, CPA, ’88 ’98

Editorial Advisory Board Associate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences Gisela Casines

Editor in Chief, The Beacon

President-Elect

Lisa Cawley

Parliamentarian

Associate Vice President, Alumni Relations

William R. Trueba Jr. ’90 Jose M. Perez de Corcho ’93

Bill Draughon

Secretary

President Elect, FIU Alumni Association

George B. Brackett Jr. ’76 ’77

Treasurer

Raul Perez Ballaga ’97

Members at large Sergio Abreu ’94 Stewart L. Appelrouth ’80 Gayle Ann Bainbridge ’75 James K. Beard ’88 Irma Becerra-Fernandez ’94 Jorge Bofill ’78 Jose C. Bofill ’90 Joseph L. Caruncho, Esq. ’81 Slenda C.M. Chan ’94 Raymond del Rey ’97 Jose Manuel Diaz ’86 Ralph A. Espinosa ’89 ’94 Carlos H. Hernandez ’97 Lisa Peniche ’90 Justo Luis Pozo ’80 Jose R. Riguera ’86 Estelle Vera ’88 Susan Webster ’87

In the spirit of Blue and Gold,

William R. Trueba Jr. '90

Vice President, Undergraduate Studies Rosa Jones

Associate Vice President, Student Affairs Larry Lunsford

Associate Vice President, University Advancement Terry Witherell

FIU MAGAZINE Division of University Advancement Director of Publications Bill Stahl

Assistant Editor Karen Cochrane

Writers Karen Cochrane Gary Libman Lyn Millner Deborah O’Neil Alexandra Pecharich

Designers

Bill Draughon Associate Vice President Alumni Relations

Oscar Negret Aileen Solá

Photographers Cover: Donna Victor The Miami Herald/C.W. Griffin Roldan Torres Michael H. Upright

Write To Us: Send your letters via fax to 305-348-3247 or mail to PC 515, Miami, FL 33199. Letters should refer to content in the magazine, and may be edited for publication. All letters must include writer's full name and address. Alumni, please include degree and year of graduation.

FIU MAGAZINE is published by the Florida International University Division of University Advancement. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited. Distributed free of charge to alumni, friends, faculty and staff of the University. Postmaster and others, please send change of address information to FIU Magazine, Office of Publications, PC 515, Miami, FL 33199.

Copyright ©2004, Florida International University • Equal Opportunity/Equal Access Employer and Institution. This document was produced at an annual cost of $63,336 or $0.53 per copy to inform the public about a university program. Qualified individuals with disabilities as defined under the Americans with Disabilities Act who need special accommodations for any FIU-sponsored event can request assistance by calling the number listed in association with the function. The request must be made five working days before the scheduled starting time. TDD, via FRS 1-800-955-8771.

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in brief Johns, Villanova and Arkansas, as well as teams from St. Thomas and Florida State.

A second FIU team comprised of second-year students Rosann Spiegel, Alejandro Alvarez and Sheila Janati also competed and won its two preliminary-round oral arguments. Due to a complex scoring system, however, the team did not advance.

Florida International University Students Prevail at Model U.N. Conference

Nursing School Program Wins $1.4 Million Grant FIU’s School of Nursing, the nation’s only program to transform foreign-trained doctors into nursing professionals, has won a $1.4million grant. The U.S. Department of Labor award will be used to expand and enhance FIU’s New Americans in Nursing program.

The grant is part of the federal government’s High Growth Job Training Initiative, which identifies critical workforce shortages in highgrowth areas. FIU’s two-year-old Americans in Nursing program taps under-employed, foreign-trained physicians and retrains them to become nurses. The program not only creates new employment opportunities, it addresses a critical nursing shortage in the state of Florida.

“To have our program recognized as an innovative solution to address this crisis and gain such substantial federal support is a testament to the new avenues of nursing education we are pursuing here at Florida International University,” said Divina Grossman, dean of the School of Nursing.

The grant dollars—along with an additional $500,000 from the Hospital Corporation of America’s East Florida Division—will ensure the program is available for a fourth straight year, allow the class size to grow from 60 to

100 students, create a long-distance education curriculum for students in Orlando and provide scholarships for tuition.

Law Students Impress in First National Competition A team comprising Florida International University College of Law (COL) students won secondplace honors in its first national moot court competition. The FIU contingent was one of 27 teams that participated in the 11th Annual Weschler First Amendment Moot Court in Washington, D.C., in February.

“We came to this competition as the new kid on the block, and we left with respect,” said team member and second-year COL student Bobby Hutson.

The team of Hutson and fellow second-year students Natalie Inchaustegui and Jennifer Remy dropped a close final-round oral argument to Baylor University, which has won the competition for the past three years. The competition featured law schools such as Georgetown, Wisconsin, Washington University (St. Louis), William & Mary, St.

For the fourth consecutive year, the FIU Model United Nations Team captured top honors at the annual National Model United Nations conference in New York City. The 15-member student team beat 231 universities represented by more than 3,000 students to win the distinction of “Outstanding Delegation.”

“Yes, we have developed a reputation,” said Jeanne Kates, the team coach and an FIU political science instructor. “We usually try not to disclose that we’re from FIU because during the competition sometimes other teams don’t want to cooperate with us because they don’t want us to win.”

Model United Nations works just like the real thing, with each team representing a country – FIU was assigned this year to the African nation of Zambia. Delegates are divided into committees that grapple with such issues as refugees, nuclear proliferation and AIDS. To prepare for the five-day conference, students enroll in a class taught by Kates and spend the semester learning about their nation and honing their negotiation skills.

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in brief Dalai Lama of Tibet to Visit FIU This Fall The XIVth Dalai Lama of Tibet, His Holiness Tendzin Gyatso, will visit FIU on Sept. 22, delivering a lecture free of charge exclusively for FIU students, faculty, staff and friends of the University. His lecture will address “Compassion–The Source of Happiness.”

The spiritual leader first visited FIU in 1999 to receive an honorary degree and deliver an inspiring message to the community. This time, he will give lectures at FIU and the University of Miami as well as several public events hosted by the non-profit organization ODN (Osel Dorje Nyingpo).

During his 1999 visit to FIU, the Dalai Lama blessed a new peace monument (left) at the University Park campus.

Religious Studies Chair Nathan Katz can be seen in the background to his left.

Nathan Katz, founding chair and professor of FIU’s Religious Studies department, has facilitated both visits by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Katz first met the Dalai Lama in India in 1973 and studied with him in 1978 when he was a researcher at the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives in Dharamsala (India).

The two have renewed their acquaintance through the years, most notably in 1990 when Katz was part of an eight-person delegation of Jewish scholars and rabbis who journeyed to Dharamsala to address the Dalai Lama’s question about the “Jewish secret” for preserving a religion and a culture while living in diaspora.

The head of state and spiritual leader of the Tibetan people, the Dalai Lama was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1989.

For more information, please visit www.dalailama.fiu.edu.

Diplomat joins FIU from Rio de Janeiro FIU will welcome its third State Department Diplomat-in-Residence Mark Boulware this summer. Boulware has served as the U.S. Consul General in Rio Mark Boulware de Janeiro, Brazil, since October 2001. He will join FIU’s International Relations program for a oneyear assignment doing outreach with FIU students on career and internship opportunities in the State Department.

Boulware brings to the University more than 20 years of experience as a Foreign Service officer with assignments around the globe.

Prior to becoming the consul general, he was Deputy Chief of Mission at the American Embassy in San Salvador, El Salvador. He previously held assignments in Cameroon, Mali, Botswana, The Gambia, Burkina Faso, Venezuela and Indonesia. Before joining the Foreign Service, Boulware was a U.S. Army

Fellow Wins Distinguished Air Force Research Award FIU’s 2004 National Defense Fellow Lt. Col. Chris Cotts earned a distinguished Air Force award for research he conducted at Florida International University.

Cotts, an Air Force communications officer, spent 10 months at FIU teaching and doing research on geopolitics in the International Relations Department. He was one of 40 officers selected by the Air Force annually to serve as fellows at universities and think tanks such as Harvard, Stanford, the Brookings Institution, MIT and Tufts. Participants research contemporary subjects and issues on which the military needs information and analysis.

Cotts’ research focused on the interests

of the European Union and the United States. In his final paper, he recommends a reformulation of the alliance that allows the U.S. and the E.U. to pursue their own interests while forcing the E.U. to take responsibility for its own defense. He credits his colleagues in the International Relations Department for focusing and refining his research.

“The environment in the department is really conducive to good scholarship,” Cotts said. “It’s supportive, non-competitive and collegial.”

The Air Force awarded Cotts its prestigious Walker Prize, recognizing his research paper as the best of the 40 completed by the fellows.

“The fellows really are a great bunch of

people, all of whom are militarily distinguished and really terrific thinkers.”

Cotts said. “To emerge from the group is quite an honor.”

A key factor in the success of the research, Cotts said, was the assistance of his advisor, Paul Kowert, an expert on international relations theory and U.S. and comparative foreign policy.

“Paul taught me how to take a pile of ideas and express them in a clear, useful fashion,” Cotts said.

The paper will be published in a monograph and circulated in the military intelligence community. Cotts left FIU on June 10 for a new assignment at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma City.

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in brief officer. He earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees at Midwestern State University in Texas, and in 1994 he graduated from the U.S. Army War College. He is the recipient of the Department of State’s Superior Honor Award and three Meritorious Awards. He speaks Portuguese, Spanish, French and Indonesian.

FIU’s 2003-2004 Diplomat-in-Residence Roger Meece left the University in June to become the new ambassador to the Democratic Republic of Congo in Africa.

In the Congo, Meece will work with FIU alumnus Antoine Ghonda Mangalibi, the nation’s foreign minister.

Construction Begins on New Marine Science Center Florida International University’s Marine Biology program at Biscayne Bay Campus will soon have a new home. The University broke ground last April on a new 57,000square-foot teaching and research laboratory.

The three-story teaching and research center will house state-of-the-art classrooms, offices and laboratories. The labs will have access to seawater piped in from an 80-foot well reaching beneath the bedrock of Biscayne Bay, providing an ideal environment for such projects as the molecular-biological study of marine organisms and ecological research of saltwater plants.

The building is scheduled for completion in approximately 18 months.

Scholar and Civil Rights Leader Joins College of Education American civil rights legend Robert Moses has joined the faculty at Florida International University as an eminent scholar in FIU’s Center for Urban Education and Innovation. His focus is on teaching future educators how to better instruct school children in mathematics. Additionally, Moses has started holding adult math literacy workshops twice a month at St. James AME Church in Miami.

The recipient of a MacArthur “Genius” Award, Moses pioneered the educational movement known as “The Algebra Project,” which targets middle school students. The philosophy behind the Algebra Project is that math is “the new civil right,” without which minority students cannot get into college or participate effectively in our technology-driven economy. The project has served 10,000 students in school districts around the country. During his young adult life, Moses was a civil rights organizer in the South.

2004 State Legislative Session a Success for

Florida International University In the 2004 Legislative session, FIU emerged as one of Miami-Dade County’s biggest winners.

“The last couple of years have been tough due to the weak economy. Despite this, our legislators in Tallahassee have understood that education is not a luxury but a necessity that needs protection,” said FIU President Modesto A. Maidique. “Thanks to this group of young, proactive community leaders, this year we did not have to figure where to cut but, rather, where to invest.”

Prior to the 2004 session, the FIU Board of Trustees adopted eight priorities critical to

the University. This is how FIU fared on those items: • Base Funding: For the first time in several years, FIU’s base budget was not cut.

• Salaries: This year, full-time FIU employees will be included in the state's pay raise—a one-time, $1,000 bonus. Next year, the state's public universities will lobby again to be included in the state's pay package, something that is becoming increasingly difficult to do now that Florida's public universities are no longer considered state agencies.

• Enrollment Growth: The Legislature provided FIU with $4.5 million in support of FIU’s growing enrollment.

• Fixed Capital Outlay: FIU’s biggest win. The budget funds $19.3 million in support of construction and maintenance of the Molecular Biology and Social Sciences buildings.

• Major Gifts Matching Program: The Legislature funded the backlog in the Matching Gifts Program, providing $5.4 million to FIU. These funds are directly correlated to the monetary contributions made by private donors.

• Tuition and Fee Authority: While the authority to raise tuition does not currently reside with the boards of trustees at the individual state universities, the Governmental Relations office was able to lay important groundwork for such a change in authority in the future.

• Student Fee Issues: Another crucial win for FIU. Legislation passed will allow the University to raise the student fees necessary to fund the jump to Division I-A football. Passage of this bill translates into an extra $1.2 million for FIU’s football program.

• Enhancement Funds: The Legislature funded $600,000 to FIU for a medical partnership between the FIU Honors College, which offers an accelerated pre-medical program, and the University of South Florida’s medical school. Additionally, the Legislature included language that directs FIU to begin planning a medical residency program. These programs are an essential component of FIU’s efforts to obtain a medical school.

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in brief Former Assistant to Head FIU Men’s Basketball The FIU’s men’s basketball program has a new head coach with a familiar name—Sergio Rouco, formerly an assistant for the Golden Panthers who has earned a national reputation for strong recruiting. This will be the third stint at FIU for Rouco, who left the University last spring to become an assistant at the University of Texas-El Paso.

Rouco, 43, was an assistant under Golden Panther head coaches Rich Walker and Bob

Honors College Offering Accelerated Pre-Medical Program As part of the University’s contributions to the education of the next generation of physicians, the Honors College is offering an accelerated pre-medical program beginning with a Summer B Pre-Medicine Summer Institute.

The Accelerated Medical School Program for students of the Honors College will provide students with a rigorous baccalaureate education that combines the interdisciplinary Honors College curriculum with highlevel science and math requirements. The program emphasizes the sciences and skills necessary for the practice of medicine and prepares students to qualify for admission to medical school.

Weltlich from 1987-91 and for Donnie Marsh from 2000-03.

Rouco was born in Cuba and moved to Miami at age three. He got his start coaching high school in Miami before he went on to college basketball. He was given much credit in helping to turn around the Texas team, which won 24 games this past season before losing to Maryland in the first round of the NCAA Tournament earlier this year.

“It’s an unbelievable feeling to come home,” Rouco said.

“Becoming the head coach at FIU has always been a dream of mine, and it’s an opportunity I feel fortunate to have been offered.”

The program is available in two formats: an accelerated three-year track, offered in partnership with the University of South Florida School of Medicine, and a traditional fouryear track. The three-year track requires that the first three years of study be completed at FIU, with the fourth year to be completed in residence at the University of South Florida, as part of the first year of medical school.

The traditional, four-year track prepares students to begin medical school upon graduation from FIU with a baccalaureate degree.

Strategic Plan and the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce’s “One Community, One Goal” program, which promotes the growth of select industries.

In the recently concluded Legislative session, lawmakers set aside $600,000 for FIU for the program, as well as for the creation of a medical residency program.

Each of the six committees will be led by a vice-chair who is a leader in that particular industry. The industry committees will play an advisory role to the University administration and will foster enduring partnerships that can increase industry support and involvement in FIU’s core mission. The restructuring shifts the Council’s mission from a giving society to an organization that drives economic development in South Florida, supports partnerships with industry and promotes workforce development.

For more information on this new program, please visit honors.fiu.edu/premed.htm.

Council of 100 Refocuses on Economic Development In an innovative move that will foster partnerships to benefit FIU and its students while strengthening South Florida’s economy, the University’s Council of 100 has been reorganized.

The Council recently instituted a six-committee structure based on the FIU Millennium

The six committees are: • • • • • •

Biomedical/Health Arts & Entertainment Financial Services IT/Telecommunications International Trade Visitor Industries

Membership to the Council is by invitation only and each member makes an annual gift of $1,500 or more to the University. For more information about the Council of 100, contact George Corton at 305-348-7290 or George.Corton@fiu.edu.

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in brief

From left: CETA researchers Eduardo Manrique, Cecilia Bravo and Mariano Gurfinkel

FIU Energy Center Wins Federal Grant FIU’s Center for Energy and Technology of the Americas (CETA) recently won a grant of more than $100,000 to research the recovery of natural gas. The University was one of seven across the country to be funded by the U.S. Department of Energy through the Historically Black Colleges and Universities and Other Minority Institutions (HBCU) program.

CETA researchers Mariano Gurfinkel, Eduardo Manrique and Cecilia Bravo developed the grant proposal and will conduct the research.

The 24-month project involves advancing the recovery of natural gas trapped in concrete-hard geological formations.

Approximately 800 trillion cubic feet of natural gas exists in such formations, but its recovery has been considered too expensive pending advances in technology.

College of Law on Track for Accreditation After only two years of operation, the Florida International University College of Law (COL) took a major step toward provisional accreditation by the American Bar Association (ABA) when the ABA’s Council of the Section on Legal Education voted unanimously in June to recommend provisional accreditation to the fledgling program.

The final step toward provisional accreditation is expected to come in August when the ABA’s House of Delegates votes whether or not to accept the favorable recommendation granted by the ABA’s national accreditation review body.

Provisional accreditation is a key hurdle to clear before the first graduating class can sit for bar examinations in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

Future Transportation Engineers Receive Association’s Highest Honor

“I am more confident than ever that we will achieve our goal of provisional accreditation before our third class enrolls in late August,” said COL Dean Leonard Strickman.

The Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE) awarded FIU’s ITE student chapter its 2004 Best Chapter award in recognition of its outstanding program of activities.

This is the second such award in four years for the FIU chapter.

After provisional accreditation is awarded, allowing graduates to sit for the bar exams, the College of Law will continue a process toward permanent accreditation which may be granted no earlier than 2007.

“We are a step closer to fulfilling our promise to the South Florida community of graduating highly trained lawyers who will serve Florida well,” said FIU President Modesto A. Maidique.

The College is expected to graduate its inaugural class of approximately 50 full-time students in May 2005.

Religious Studies Faculty Given International Honors Two members of FIU’s Religious Studies Department have been honored for research and programs that promote understanding of other cultures.

Asian Studies Director Steven Heine Steven Heine, director of the Institute for Judaic and Near East Studies, received an award from the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in recognition of his outstanding service in enhancing Nathan Katz mutual understanding between Japan and the United States. His award is signed by Hon. Yoriko Kawaguchi, Japan’s Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Professor Nathan Katz received the 2004 Vak Devi Saraswati Award from the Madhyama Pratipada Patrika and Shaktivad Sanastha of India. The award recognizes Katz for promoting the spiritual traditions of India. The Patrika also announced it will undertake a Hindi translation of Katz’s 2000 book, “Who Are the Jews of India?”

“This is the highest recognition for a student group in the transportation profession,” says Albert Gan, assistant professor of Civil Engineering and chapter advisor. “I am extremely proud of this group and their achievement.”

ITE is an international educational and scientific association that includes more than 16,000 members in 90 countries. ITE members are traffic engineers, transportation planners and other professionals responsible for planning, designing, implementing, operating and maintaining “surface transportation systems” worldwide. The association has student chapters in the U.S., Canada, Argentina and Australia, among other locations.

FIU Chapter officers include President Rosa Hsu, Vice Presidents Xin Li and Ayman Elbermawy, Secretaries Vandana Nagole and Wendie James, Treasurers and Membership Chairpeople Xuemei Liu and Jie Bian, Social Coordinator Ashraf Iqbal and Student Council Representatives Yue Wang and Peng Zhu.

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Deone Jones of the Broward Urban League give out free safe-sex materials in Hallandale as part of FIU's REACH 2010 HIV/AIDS prevention project.

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t Famous Fresh Cuts Barber Shop, the place to go “When You’ve Got 2-B Fresh,” a flat tops run $13, an Afro ’do starts at $12 and the condoms are free.

This Foster Road barber shop in Hallandale with its Caribbean flags, football banners and warning against drugs and guns represents the newest frontier in the battle against HIV and AIDS–the community, the neighborhood, the street. Florida International University is tapping into this closely guarded world with an innovative, federally funded HIV-prevention initiative in Broward County that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) hopes to use as a model for communities around the country.

“We’ll all be better off if we have no AIDS. We’re trying to create a better world for all of us to live in.”

— William Darrow Public Health professor and leader of the FIU REACH 2010 coalition

The program, called REACH 2010, is part of a CDC effort to eliminate health disparities among minorities nationwide.

REACH stands for Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health.

Leading the FIU REACH 2010 coalition is William Darrow, an FIU professor of Public Health and one of the nation’s leading experts on HIV prevention.

During a 33-year career at the CDC, Darrow directed social and behavioral research on sexually transmitted diseases and was among the first researchers in the 1980s to determine that HIV was being transmitted through sexual contact. As a research sociologist, he has long advocated community-based prevention as a viable strategy for controlling the epidemic.

The FIU project brings together University researchers, Broward community leaders and social service organizations to design and implement culturally sensitive HIV-prevention community action plans. REACH 2010 has been welcomed by leaders in Broward where HIV and AIDS rates are among the nation’s highest.

“Universities should be places where students, faculty and staff confront the most important problems of our times, and AIDS is certainly one of them,” Darrow said. “Our project is all about learning from, working with and giving back to our richly diverse community."

Public research universities like FIU have an important role to play in

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An FIU team is leading grass-roots efforts to empower communities in the fight against HIV/AIDS

by Deborah O’Neil

“We want the messages of participation, ownership and decision making to saturate each community so individuals will want to reduce their risky behaviors and come together to put an end to the epidemic.”

— Dionne Stephens REACH 2010 community outreach coordinator

addressing community health, said Wayne Giles, associate director of science for the CDC Division of Adult and Community Health.

“Many of these communities have felt researchers have come into their community, done their research and left. They have felt abandoned,” Giles said. “The work you are doing at FIU and in other REACH communities across the nation to disseminate information and to make communities aware is very important.”

The CDC received more than 200 applications for REACH funding when the program was launched in 1999. FIU is among 42 organizations that has won a grant–almost $1 million a year–to set up a local REACH project. Three of the proj-

ects deal with AIDS; the others are tackling health concerns such as breast cancer, heart disease and diabetes. For now, the program is assured funding through 2007.

In the FIU REACH program, University researchers work with three Broward community-based organizations–The Urban League, Hispanic Unity of South Florida and Minority Development and Empowerment—to provide HIV-prevention programs for Hispanic, Afro-Caribbean and AfricanAmerican young adults. In addition to outreach, FIU alumna and REACH 2010 staff member Ula Zucker has developed a communications campaign featuring local spoken-word artists promoting HIV prevention. REACH 2010 also offers HIV-

prevention education workshops for community members and a toll-free HIV information hotline: 1-877-HIV-FREE. In the 12 Broward neighborhoods with some of the highest rates of HIV and AIDS, outreach workers are knocking on doors and visiting community hubs like Fresh Cuts to hand out free condoms and educational materials, address misunderstanding about AIDS and empower individuals to make safer choices.

“We want the messages of participation, ownership and decision making to saturate each community so individuals will want to reduce their risky behaviors and come together to put an end to the epidemic,” said Dionne Stephens, who coordinates the REACH

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2010 community outreach from the Biscayne Bay Campus.

Along the way, the project’s successes and failures are carefully tracked by the University and reported to the CDC. FIU's project has already yielded impressive results, Giles said, leading to a 28 percent increase in HIV and AIDS awareness.

“FIU is getting folks engaged in HIVprevention issues,” Giles said. “That is not easy, particularly in communities where trust may be an issue.”

A South Florida Epidemic For more than 20 years, laboratories have been the epidemic’s ground zero. Yet HIV and AIDS rates in South Florida, particularly within minority communities, remain alarmingly high. The AIDS rates in Miami, Fort Lauderdale and West Palm Beach consistently rank among the top six for all metropolitan areas in the U.S. Today, AIDS is the number one killer of African-American men and women in Florida between ages 25 to 49. In 2003, the Department of Health estimated that one in 46 African Americans–men, women and children–living in Florida was infected with HIV. Along with the devastating emotional and social consequences of AIDS, treating it comes at a high public cost. In 2002, Florida

FIU’s project has already yielded impressive results, leading to a

28% increase in community awareness of HIV and AIDS.

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received $192 million from the federal government to operate health care and social services for individuals living with HIV who have had poor access to such help. An AIDS treatment regimen can cost as much as $15,000 a year for one person.

“In the early 1980s, everyone thought a vaccine would be developed,” Darrow said. “We don’t have a vaccine. We don’t have a cure. Not enough time and effort was put into changing sex norms and promoting healthy behaviors associated with AIDS prevention.”

A whole variety of factors affect our nation’s health, Darrow said.

“Finding a vaccine might be simpler than educating young people about safer sex because you don’t have to talk about sensitive issues,” Darrow said. “My argument is: You always have to deal with important–but often controversial–social, economic and political issues to be effective in promoting the public’s health.”

The HIV and AIDS statistics among minorities indicate that the strategies of the past have not succeeded in addressing the epidemic. REACH 2010 represents a different approach, one that redirects the focus at a grass-roots level to the often complex social dimensions of HIV disease.

There are many obstacles to constructive community dialogue about HIV and AIDS:

William Darrow, one of the world’s leading experts on HIV and other sexually transmitted diseases, joined the FIU faculty in 1994 after spending 33 years at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. His pioneering research in demonstrating the sexual transmission of the AIDS virus was described by Randy Shilts in the book “And the Band Played On.” At FIU, Darrow has led groundbreaking work on South Florida’s HIV/AIDS epidemic. He recently shared his views on this important public health concern.

WILLIAM DARROW ON HIV/AIDS: “Compassion would turn this around”

How would you describe the HIV/AIDS epidemic in South Florida?

It’s among the worst in the nation. The top cities for AIDS increases among young adults in 1996 were all in South Florida. Since then, things have gotten a little better, but not much.

I think the most imprtant problem is that the

culture, religious beliefs, discrimination.

Stigmas about how one contracts the disease and who gets it present some of the biggest challenges for REACH 2010.

Each community clings to its own set of beliefs, said Paula Fernandez, the REACH 2010 evaluation coordinator who earned her doctoral degree at FIU in Sociology and Anthropology.

“You hear quite a few in the AfricanAmerican community say, ‘The government created this disease to kill us,’” Fernandez said. “In the Latin community AIDS is often associated with promiscuity.

People think if they are married, they are not going to get it.”

Honesty and persistence are the best ways to overcome these erroneous beliefs, says Darrow. “The only way to overcome these myths is to repeat the scientific facts over and over again: HIV, a virus, causes AIDS, and a properly used latex condom offers more protection against this virus than matrimony and a wedding ring.”

A Community Dialogue Fresh Cuts owner John Hardwick rightfully calls his shop “the heartbeat of the community.” Folks drop in to catch the neighborhood buzz, get a trim and stock up on Lifestyle Tuxedos or multicolored Trustex. The condoms–complete with pamphlets on how to use them–come compliments of REACH 2010.

resources are insufficient to cope with the problem. In 1994, the city of San Francisco spent $16 million a year for HIV prevention and the entire state of Florida spent only $12 million. It points to why REACH (see related story) was so important for our vulnerable populations: So little had been done here compared to other places.

What role can FIU play in addressing HIV/AIDS in our community?

It is particularly important for FIU to be involved in addressing our social and political issues. Universities should be places where students, faculty and staff confront the most important problems of our times and AIDS is one of them. Our project is about giving back to the community.

Hallandale barber and business owner John Hardwick has welcomed REACH 2010 in his shop.

The REACH 2010 outreach workers who stock Hardwick's popular condom box focus on building relationships with community leaders. The Urban League’s Deone Jones and Veronica Wade are working for REACH in Broward’s black neighborhoods. At Fresh Cuts, they found a critical ally in Hardwick–a respected community leader unafraid of speaking up about HIV and AIDS. Hardwick sees his friends and neighbors behind the disturbing statistics that make REACH 2010 needed in Broward, where it is estimated nearly 1 percent of the population is infected with HIV, about three times the national average.

“I personally have had relatives who died from HIV,” he said. “A lot of times people in the black community die and they never announce, ‘The person had HIV or AIDS.’ Children and other people don’t take it seriously. They say, ‘I don’t know anyone who died of it.’

There maybe were hundreds who died but they were too ashamed…That is one of the biggest problems we face, people hiding the truth.”

In the neighborhood around the barber shop, Jones and Wade talk to people about HIV and AIDS as they hand out “safety kits” featuring five types of condoms. The women are affectionately known as “the Condom Girls.”

Jones, an FIU alumna, stays on message when men give her guff.

“I want them to know about the disease and how to protect themselves,” she says. “Second, I want to get their participation to tackle the prob-

lem. I want to go beyond the behavior to galvanize the community.”

Most people are receptive when the outreach workers approach. Often there’s giggling. Some ask questions. Some claim they don’t need condoms. Jones insists.

“Take it,” she tells an older man who declines her offer of a safety kit. “Having sex is the number one cause of people with HIV. This is what you need to protect yourself from HIV.” Project workers encourage women to talk about their concerns. When Jones explains to one young woman that certain substances can break a condom, the woman nods in surprise: “You learn something new every day.”

The FIU REACH 2010 project emphasizes personal choices by promoting the idea that there are lots of ways to protect yourself from HIV. Abstinence.

Mutual monogamy. Condoms.

“There’s a continuum and somewhere along that line you should be able to find a solution that works for you,” said Julie Montanea, the REACH 2010 project manager whose office is on the Biscayne Bay Campus. “Most of our work is focused on sexual transmission of HIV. Couples have to get more comfortable talking about sexual situations so they can find the approach that works best for them.”

Around Hardwick’s barber shop, the HIV-prevention message is sticking.

Some still view HIV disease as a problem of gays and drug users. What would you say to them?

The problem with HIV and AIDS is it has really not been in these individuals’ faces. There has been tremendous denial. Everyone wants to say, ‘It’s someone else’s problem.’ It’s not someone else’s problem. The other problem we have is this concept of “innocent victims.” If someone was a housewife or a blood transfusion recipient or a baby and contracted the disease, we were supposed to feel compassion. But for the people who were “destined” to get it, you have

shame, ostracism. We are all in it together. We are all suffering from AIDS. They are our brothers. They are our sons, our daughters. I think, to some extent, acceptance and compassion would turn this around.”

How has AIDS impacted health care?

Of the $16 billion the U.S. government spends on AIDS each year, three-quarters of it is for medical care, for drugs for people who can’t buy them. If we’d invested the money in the early years of AIDS on prevention, the people who now require life-saving drugs never would have become infected. The pharmaceutical companies have benefited tremendously

Regulars say Hardwick’s involvement in the AIDS project has made him a community resource.

“This is very available to the community, especially the young people,” said one customer with a nod toward the counter where Hardwick keeps condoms and HIV prevention literature. “John is always keeping the community abreast.”

At FIU, Darrow teaches a course called “Community Organization for Health Promotion.” It stresses two principles: maximizing community participation and maximizing community ownership. The REACH coalition can’t do the work alone, Darrow said, but it can serve as a catalyst to initiate community mobilization that later leads to measurable improvements in health outcomes.

“The whole purpose of our project is to bring about social change,” Darrow said. “We’ll all be better off if we have no AIDS. It’s very idealistic in that sense.

We’re trying to create a better world for all of us to live in.”

from HIV and AIDS. Now the American taxpayer is paying for drugs to keep these people alive when they could have paid much less for prevention 10 years ago so these people never got infected.

What will it take to beat HIV disease?

We have been waiting for a miracle cure too long. It hasn’t happened. With the civil rights movement, African-Americans said, “That’s it.

We’re not going to take it anymore.” The people changed a social system of segregation and discrimination against racial minorities. The AIDS problem will be solved when people say, “We aren’t going to take it anymore.” Social change always comes from the people.

profile

David’86

Cohen

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FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSIT Y MAGAZINE

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TEAM PLAYER

FIU alumnus goes from unpaid intern to VP and general counsel of New York Mets

by Gary Libman

FIU alumnus David Cohen’s 4-yearold son, Matthew, says he thinks the New York Mets’ catcher Mike Piazza is a nice person and wants to shake Piazza’s hand.

Cohen ’86 may fulfill his son’s wish when players mingle with team employees at the Mets’ annual family day picnic.

Introducing his children to players is among the job perks for Cohen, 37, the Mets vice president and general counsel.

Other benefits include good game seats, observing behind-the-scenes team activities and playing in “an occasional baseball or softball game on the [Shea Stadium] field.”

When he tells people about a job including these perks, most are envious.

“Most of them say that they’d like to have my job,” Cohen says by phone from New York, “and that’s particularly true of attorneys. I think people in general probably have an over-glamorized notion of what the job entails.

“They probably are under the impression that I’m having players over to my house and things of that nature.

There’s probably a tendency among male attorneys to believe that being a lawyer for a baseball team would be the ultimate dream job. I try to explain that it’s very hard work.”

In reality, Cohen spends little time socializing with players. Instead he provides legal advice and services to all departments of the Mets organization, including marketing, operations, finance and the baseball department.

“The work that is closely related to baseball is the work I find most exciting and interesting,” he says. “That would include everything related to baseball player contracts…

“I can’t deny that there are some outstanding perks here.”

— David Cohen ’86

“Contracts have become very complex with deferred compensation and vesting options and conditional bonuses and all sorts of variations. My role is to participate by advising the general manager of the team and to negotiate the language with the player’s agent.”

Cohen doesn’t spend all his time on contracts. He also watches many of the Mets games. ”But many of them are in a working capacity,” Cohen says.

“First of all during the game, many people are working and it’s another time people might need to contact you and ask you questions. Second, there may be issues related to operation of the facility.

For example, security issues related to an unruly fan and whether we have the right to evict them. [Or] the question could involve discipline of day-game employees, who are typically unionized, so any discipline would be subject to the collective bargaining agreement.”

Cohen gravitated to sports law after enjoying sports while growing up in North Miami Beach. He attended North Miami Beach High before enrolling at FIU. “It was a real culturally diverse environment,” he says of the University.

“There were a lot of international students which I think helped to bring very diverse perspectives to the educational process. I think both the students and faculty were fairly international and diverse.”

After graduating from FIU, he attended the University of Florida law school and earned his J.D. degree in 1989. He spent four years with an Atlanta law firm where he joined a program initiated by lawyers at his firm to provide pro bono legal services to children involved in court proceedings.

“It was a part-legal and part-mentoring relationship,” Cohen says. “In the course of representing one particular child, I wound up appearing in a number of hearings before the chief judge of that juvenile court, and the chief judge eventually offered me a position with the court as a judge.”

He served a year as a juvenile court judge before focusing on juvenile law and sports law, his two major interests, while pursuing a master’s degree in law at Columbia University. There, he landed an unpaid internship with the Mets.

When he graduated from Columbia in 1995, the Mets hired him.

“Most interns are law students,” he says, “and I had already worked for a law firm for four years and had been a judge, so I was able to provide some real assistance as opposed to it being just a learning experience for me. I think my timing was right.”

After being hired as an attorney, he was promoted to general counsel in 1998 and to vice president in 2001.

With the Mets, he’s continued his involvement with charities that serve children as chairman of the board of the Harlem RBI, a baseball and social service organization in East Harlem.

The former wannabe athlete has also found a niche in sports, running in the New York and Boston marathons and several others.

So he’s busy, but probably wouldn’t trade jobs with many other attorneys.

“Being in-house counsel for a baseball team,” he says, “much of what I do is the same as what I would do in house for any company. But by the same token, I can’t deny that there are some outstanding perks here.”

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FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSIT Y MAGAZINE

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PROFESSOR, STUDENTS CULTIVATE OVERTOWN GARDENS AND COMMUNITY PRIDE

by Deborah O’Neil

Roses, strawberries and mulberry trees all bloom in Psychology Professor Marvin Dunn’s Community Gardens in the heart of Overtown, one of Miami’s historically black neighborhoods. When you stroll through the gardens, what you see are fiery bougainvillea, azure plumbago clusters and sunny golden shrimp. What you feel is cheered, optimistic, inspired.

Fostering those positive feelings was the idea six years ago when Dunn dreamed up the gardens to engage his Community Psychology students in public service. Students have the option of either working in the gardens for four weekends or writing a paper. On any given Saturday or Sunday, 20 to 30 FIU students are planting, weeding, pruning and picking up trash in the gardens.

“My feeling was the students should give something to the community. You shouldn’t just take away a degree from FIU and not get your hands dirty,” Dunn said. “Almost nobody chooses to do the paper.”

Dunn, one of FIU’s founding faculty members and chairperson of

the Psychology Department, lived in Overtown in the 1950s as a child.

He recalls the days when the mulberry trees lined all the streets and he and his friends would delight in squishing the fruit to a purple splatter on the sidewalk. He also remembers the decision in the mid-1950s to build a freeway through Overtown.

“This is what killed Overtown,” Dunn said. “When I-95 came through it divided Overtown in half.

It displaced many people. It didn’t have to happen.”

Today, Dunn does his part to rebuild Overtown’s sense of unity and community pride, and he speaks of the “renaissance of Overtown.”

Several foundations have recently become interested in investing in Overtown redevelopment. The gardens have grown over the years and now cover about 15 acres of public land throughout the neighborhood.

What were once abandoned, littered lots are now blooming with flowers, vegetables, bushes and trees. In the main gardens, across the street from the Overtown Youth Center, the word OVERTOWN is spelled

Left: Over the years, Professor Marvin Dunn has maintained the Overtown Community Gardens with the help of hundreds of FIU students in his community psychology class.

Right: Pulling weeds is a team effort in the Overtown Community Gardens.

out in plumbago bushes visible from “My feeling the freeway.

Dunn and his students have was the cleaned up the once dingy, filthy students area under the freeway and painted should give the beams Easter egg blues, greens and yellows. Every weekend, the something students clean up trash, most of to the which rains down on the neighborcommunity. hood from the freeway above. The biggest problem they have, Dunn You says, is people picking the roses. shouldn’t “People are very protective of just take the gardens,” Dunn said. “Overtown away a is improving. I wouldn’t have said that degree from a year ago. The gardens are part of the renaissance of the community.”

FIU and not get your hands dirty,”

— Marvin Dunn

Every weekend, Marvin Dunn

“I get to work with

and his students weed, prune and plant the looms fostering a renaissance in Miami’s historically black neighborhood.

some of the finest students FIU has to offer.”

— LeVon Dunn

Top: Marvin Dunn’s brother, LeVon Dunn, has been assisting in the Community Gardens since the project began.

Students say the weekend work is exhausting but rewarding.

“People say, ‘Hey girls, good job,’” said Melissa Hernandez, a senior Psychology major. “You’re helping the community, trying to get it cleaned up.”

At the end of a day of working in the gardens, said senior Jackie Garcia, “you get a good feeling. We get a lot done. We give back to the community.”

Dunn is well known in Overtown, a community of 9,000, many of them single mothers.

Driving around the neighborhood, Dunn stops often, waving to people, shaking hands and giving hugs.

But he too gets his hands dirty with the students. It’s work he is happy to do.

When he retires at the end of the 2005-2006 academic year, care of the gardens will be handled by Roots in the City, a non-profit foundation he established that employs peo-

ple from the neighborhood to maintain the garden. Dunn’s vision is to prepare the individuals, some of whom have prison records or past addiction problems, for steady work in Miami’s landscaping industry.

It’s unlikely Dunn’s retirement from FIU will mean retirement from the gardens.

“I’d rather do this than anything else,” Dunn said. “It’s my therapy.

It makes me feel like I have contributed something.”

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FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSIT Y MAGAZINE

In a twist of Panther synchronicity, three FIU alumnae with strong ties to the University will appear on the ballot this fall in bids for the

For FIU alumna Barbara Herrera-Hill ’95 ’97, the desire to serve in the Florida Legislature comes down to her infant daughter, Olivia Grace. Good government today is essential for the future of Florida’s children. “I owe it to my daughter,” she explains.

For Anitere Flores ’97, the call to state office grows from her strong connection to the people and institutions of this community, where she grew up. “The reason you get into politics,” Flores says, “is you want to be a voice for your community.”

Recent FIU graduate Lisa A. Sacco ’04 also wants to work on her community’s behalf in Tallahassee. “I am making a commitment to the community for which I feel great pride and connection with my Cuban heritage,” she says. “I will improve my area through the democratic process.”

All three women are seeking positions in the Florida House of Representatives this fall for the first time. Herrera-Hill is a Democrat running in Broward’s District 97, while Flores and Sacco, both Republicans, are vying for an open seat in Miami District 114, which includes the University Park Campus.

Both Herrera-Hill and Flores also are FIU staff members. HerreraHill works in the Office of Planning and Institutional Effectiveness, ensuring that the University meets state accountability requirements.

Flores is FIU’s director of State Relations. Until recently, Sacco worked as a student ambassador in the FIU Alumni Relations Office.

Herrra-Hill, 32, brings a unique combination of scholarship and real-world experience to her race. She is a political science instructor completing her dissertation at FIU. Her husband, Kevin Hill, is an FIU political scientist and expert in Florida politics. For the past three

Lisa A. Sacco ’04

Barbara Herrera-Hill ’95 ’97

by Deborah O’Neil

Anitere Flores ’97

Florida House of Representatives.

years, Herrera-Hill has served on the Weston City Commission.

“Most political scientists tend to not want to be politicians,” Herrera Hill concedes with a laugh. “I have the opportunity to be involved at a level that can actually help the quality of life not just to my district but to my state. How can I not try to do the right thing in a state where I choose to have my family?”

Flores, 27, is an attorney and represents Florida International University in Tallahassee, advocating for the University’s fair share of public resources. Her mother was in FIU’s first graduating class and her younger sister is in school here. If she is elected, Flores will continue working at FIU in the general counsel’s office but not as a lobbyist.

“I really love FIU,” Flores said. “If I am in Tallahassee I will represent all the community’s interests, and FIU is a big part of the community.”

Sacco, 22, graduated with honors this year with a degree in political science. She has worked in the offices of the governor of Nevada and Congresswoman Ileana Ros-Lehtinen and lobbied on behalf of FIU students in Tallahassee. Sacco’s mother earned a master’s degree at FIU in 1981.

“FIU is close to my heart,” Sacco said. “I am passionate about the people and community I will be serving.”

The women will face primaries August 31. If they win the November election, they join other FIU alumni in the State House: Ron Greenstein ’74, David Rivera ’86 ’94, Rene Garcia ’99, Rafael Arza ’85 and Juan Zapata ’94. FIU alum and current State Rep. Manuel Prieguez ’93 is retiring this year.

Going places: from left, Nika Stayline, a future master’s student in the management program; Regina Jue, a 2003 graduate of the College of Business Administration and currently a master’s student in the management program; and Michael Santana, a 2003 graduate who earned a bachelor's degree in management information systems.

A corporate pillar’s multim

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FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSIT Y MAGAZINE

19

million-dollar gift to the College of Business Administration will help prepare tomorrow’s leaders R. Kirk Landon made history earlier this year when he agreed to contribute the largest cash gift ever bestowed on FIU by an individual: $5 million to the College of Business Administration. As impressive as that figure sounds, the news gets even sweeter when another $5 million in qualifying state matching funds are added to the pot.

by Alexandra Pecharich

Young people aspiring to the highest ranks of corporate leadership can take R. Kirk Landon as a positive example. As the chairman and CEO of American Bankers Insurance Group, from which he retired in 1999 after 47 years, Landon understood that the true value of the company had as much to do with the loyalty and motivation of its employees as with hard financial figures. To that end, he was among the first in the nation to institute work-site childcare and helped develop a public elementary school on the property of the company headquarters in south Miami-Dade County, all in the name of reducing worker stress and drive time. That forward-thinking, peopleoriented strategy set the stage for American Bankers’ phenomenal growth from a small, family-owned business begun by Landon’s father into a multibillion-dollar corporation and the largest insurance firm in Florida.

No longer involved with the dayto-day routine of running a major company, the civic-minded Landon, 75, keeps busy by directing the two private charitable foundations he started several years ago. Having publicly stated that philanthropy will be his last career, he has for years actively contributed to myriad important causes. Locally, he has supported nursing education by providing funds to establish a clinical laboratory. He has contributed to the building of the Landon Family Garden on the grounds of the Miami Project to Cure Paralysis, and has furthered the

U.S. News & World Report in quality of life for Miami-Dade residents by donating to Community Partnership April rated the college among the Top for Homeless, the Miami Children’s 25 graduate business schools in the Museum and several arts organizations.

United States for excellence in internaHe is likewise known outside of Florida “Since FIU tional business, the only Florida for his generosity. school on the list. The same publicaThen in May, Landon—whose is producing tion last year ranked the college’s association with FIU goes back to its undergraduate international business the business earliest days, when he served on the program 14th in the nation. Business 1972 advisory board and the leaders of Week in late 2002 ranked the college among the best in the U.S., placing it University’s Founders Council—agreed to make a $5 million gift to the College tomorrow, in a group with American, Fordham, George Washington, South Carolina, of Business Administration and create it made Syracuse, Rutgers and Tulane. For the R. Kirk Landon Undergraduate sense to three years running, America School of Business. The gift represents the largest single donation from an give to FIU.” Economia, a premier pan-regional business journal, rated it among the individual in FIU’s 32-year history and top 50 international MBA schools in qualifies for State of Florida Matching the world for Latin American stuFunds, the addition of which will dou— ble the value of Landon’s contribution. R. Kirk Landon dents. And Hispanic Business in March on his recordranked the CBA among the top 25 “Since FIU is producing the busibreaking business schools for Hispanics. donation to ness leaders of tomorrow, it made sense College of FIU President Modesto A. to give to FIU,” says Landon matter-of- theBusiness Maidique, a professor of management factly, adding that in his day American Administration at the college, considers the contribuBankers employed “a ton” of graduates tion both kind and savvy. from FIU. As with his support of the “A member of our family has arts and other activities, he explains furcome forth to help us solidify our ther, “I’m trying to make South Florida position as an internationally commore world class.” petitive business school,” Maidique says. “We are grateful for his genAdvancing the Momentum erosity and his vision.”

The gift represents an important As its record of achievement boost for the College of Business attests, the college has set its sights Administration, a rapidly rising instihigh, and Landon’s support will tution with an increasingly internaits continued growth and ensure tional presence. With a current influence. enrollment of about 6,000 under“His gift will just make an incredgraduates and more than 800 master’s Executive Dean Joyce ible difference,” students, the college turns out more investing in the says.

“He’s Elam graduates than any other local busiof South Florida and investing future ness school and continues to earn in the potential of our students.” wide recognition.

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FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSIT Y MAGAZINE

Carlos Migoya, ’74 ’76, the regional president overseeing MiamiDade and Monroe counties for Wachovia Bank, who is also an alumnus of the college and the incoming chairman of the FIU Foundation, similarly views the donation as significant to the local area, which draws upon the college’s graduates and resources.

“The business school is extremely important to the South Florida community and its people,” he says. “[This] is a gift to South Florida. Having a quality business school at FIU, like we do today, is extremely important.”

One of the original academic units established by the University at the time of its opening in 1972, the college has long maintained a strong network of corporate benefactors and individual supporters who recognize the critical need to promote quality business instruction.

Previous major gifts have made possible the establishment of 10 eminent scholars chairs—more than in any other college or school within

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FIU and a critical component in attracting some of the mostrenowned, research-oriented faculty; the founding of six research centers, among them the Ryder Center for Supply Chain Systems and the Knight-Ridder Center for Excellence in Management; and the creation of undergraduate scholarships and graduate fellowships totaling more than $2 million.

Other contributions have funded research by faculty, an annual business-plan competition for students and appearances by noted guest speakers.

Landon’s contribution will strengthen the college’s existing activities even as it supports the administration’s ongoing work with alumni and the business community to remain in the forefront of business education.

“Our vision is to prepare leaders and entrepreneurs for South Florida, the Americas and beyond,” Elam says. “We will continue to develop new programs that serve that end. We see ourselves as the business school of South Florida.”

An International Outlook Buttressed by a strong research faculty with an equal commitment to teaching, the college has focused on programs and activities that bolster students’ global competitiveness. Its Center for International Business Education and Research operates study abroad programs that provide immersion opportunities in Japan and throughout Europe. The selective, limited-admission International Business Honors Program provides undergraduates a combination of rigorous courses in international business, regional studies and foreign languages. And its general academic course offerings include titles such as International Capital Markets, Latin American Financial Markets and Institutions, International and Comparative Industrial Relations, and dozens of similar others in any given semester.

The college is closely associated with FIU’s Global Entrepreneurship Center, which last December received a $3 million grant from the prestigious Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation.

The center provides expert advice, networking and learning opportunities to those involved with or wanting to start family businesses and focuses more generally on the development and growth of new ventures that will

WORDS FROM THE WISE: LANDON ON CAREER SUCCESS

A meeting of the minds: from left, Damian Santo, an accounting major; Nathalie Durozel, an international business major; businessman and philanthropist R. Kirk Landon; and Heather Freeland, a 2003 graduate of the International Masters of Business Administration program.

R. Kirk Landon for nearly five decades worked to turn American Bankers Insurance Group (sold to Assurant, formerly Fortis, in 1999) into the largest insurance firm in Florida.

Today, he oversees two private charitable foundations from his eighth-floor office in Coral Gables and continues to serve as a sought-after consultant and mentor to many. Able to connect easily with students some fifty years his junior—to whom he dispenses spot-on job advice that they eagerly accept—the seasoned, charismatic businessman enthusiastically discusses hard-learned business lessons and offers commonsense wisdom.

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make South Florida companies more competitive in the global marketplace.

In Miami, the U.S. city that perhaps best exemplifies the trend toward a global marketplace—an international center of banking, tourism and telecommunications, among others, it is often referred to as “the crossroads of the Americas”—industry has come to rely heavily upon the college’s more than 25,000 graduates to fill muchneeded entry-level jobs as well as to take on prominent leadership roles in a variety of enterprises.

Multiple alumni currently work at companies as diverse as Abbott Laboratories, Accenture, Banco Internacional de Costa Rica, Burger King Corporation, Carnival Cruise Lines, Citibank, IBM Corporation, Johnson & Johnson, Merrill Lynch and Motorola, to name just a few.

Additionally, many are employed by smaller firms where they are tasked with wearing many different hats, while still others have started their own businesses. The consensus is that students leave the college ready to succeed.

At Ocean Bank, which operates branches in Miami-Dade and Broward counties, FIU graduates hold 62, or nearly 16 percent, of approxi-

FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSIT Y MAGAZINE

mately 400 professional staff positions. The company annually visits campus to recruit graduating seniors.

“They come in very well prepared and what we do is develop them on the job,” says Benigno Aguirre, human resources director for Ocean Bank, which hires primarily finance majors. “They traditionally have had very good careers with us.”

What’s in a Name?

With the College of Business undergraduate Administration’s school to be named for Landon, the respected businessman will share billing with another admired icon, the man after whom the graduate school is named: Alvah H. Chapman Jr., an ex-chairman of the KnightRidder newspaper company, formerly headquartered in Miami.

“How many business schools carry the names of two of the most pivotal business leaders of the twentieth century?” Elam asks.

“We’re incredibly honored to have [Landon’s] name associated with us,” she says, citing Landon’s far-sighted concern for employees and his desire to give back to the community in addition to his obvious business acumen.

“He represents the values that we want to instill in our students.”

What is your business philosophy?

What we found early in my business career was that if there were more than four major players in any market, they quickly drove the profit margin down to zero. So our philosophy at American Bankers was always to stay out of the mainstream of competition and try to excel in marketing.

What are you most proud of in your career?

Our tag line was innovations in insurance. We developed many different distribution systems for our products, and we developed a number of unique products. And I think I’m most proud of that. For instance, we did some work through regular insurance agents, but also we did it through many other sorts of retailers. If a retailer had anything to do with consumer credit, we taught him to sell our product along with his consumer product, so that places like Goodyear and Best Buy and Circuit City and many others—who

21

Likewise Chapman applauds Landon’s high-profile connection to the college.

“I can’t think of anyone else whose name I’d rather have alongside mine,” says the 83-year-old Chapman, a former member of the FIU Board of Trustees, an emeritus member of the FIU Foundation “We’re Board of Directors and for years incredibly one of the University’s staunchest honored to advocates. Chapman and his wife Betty funded the creation of the have college’s eminent scholars chair in [Landon’s] leadership and ethics.

“He’s a dear friend, a good name example of a successful businessman, associated someone who cares about the comwith us. He munity,” says Chapman, who represents recalled specifically Landon’s association with Community Partnership the values for Homeless, which Chapman that we want helped found. “He’s a successful businessman with a good civic spirit to instill in our and a good sense of ethics.”

Calling Landon’s unprecedented students.” gesture a “milestone” for FIU, Vice President for University Advancement — Howard Lipman believes a gift from College of someone of Landon’s stature could Business have ripple effects.

Administration Executive Dean “I hope it will inspire others to supJoyce Elam port quality and access in their public university,” he says.

had never really distributed insurance before to protect their customers and create more income—were our distributors.

What was the most important lesson that you learned during your career?

The most important lesson is probably to develop an environment where people achieve.

At American Bankers, we did this by saying you only get in trouble for doing nothing. You don’t get in trouble for doing anything that was wrong.

We found that most people had very good judgment and if they understood overall where you were trying to go, they could get you there.

Any disappointments?

When you’re an innovator like we were, and you’re trying so many things that are new, quite a few don’t work out. So we had our share of disappointments and losses over 40 some years.

You can’t let it stop you.

What is the best advice you could give a young person entering the business field?

There are four things that you have to look at when you’re looking at a future assignment. They are the money that’s going to be paid, the job and what it is, the opportunity and, finally, the company. But people look at them in that order, and that’s exactly the order they shouldn’t. What you should look at is first the company. If the company is successful, you have a chance to be successful; if it isn’t, you don’t. Second is the opportunity.

Unless you have an opportunity for growth, you’re soon going to get bored with the situation. Third is the job itself: Will you be happy with it? And finally, fourth, it’s the money or package that is offered. If students, or anybody, will approach a new assignment in that way, they will find they will be very, very much more successful in life.

profile

Lehane Dennis

’01

SUMMER 04

FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSIT Y MAGAZINE

CATCHING with Dennis Lehane ’01

by Lyn Millner

Four years ago, Dennis Lehane ‘01 was headed to a movie with friends when his editor called with fantastic news. That Sunday, Stephen King’s review of “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire” would appear in The New York Times Book Review. In it, King mentioned that the Potter series and “the superb detective novels of Dennis Lehane became a kind of lifeline” as he recovered from the accident that almost killed him.

Already, Lehane was established and highly respected. King’s comment would launch his career into the stratosphere.

How did Lehane respond?

“I got to leave,” he told his editor.

“I’m going to see The Perfect Storm.”

It’s not that he didn’t care. He cared very much. In fact, when he got to the movie, he couldn’t concentrate. But his natural instinct, his first reaction, was to keep moving.

It shows in his writing. Each new book departs from the one before–even within his five-book series featuring detectives Patrick Kenzie and Angela Gennaro. He introduced the series with “A Drink Before the War.” Of the ones that followed, he says: “Darkness, Take My Hand” was “an attempt to really blow the doors off the genre.” “Sacred” was “wink-wink post modern,” and in “Gone, Baby, Gone,” Lehane says he “swung for the fences.”

That’s what is happening in contemporary noir–writers are bending the form. Critics say Lehane is at the fore-

“If you’re writing for the money, you should get your head examined.

Be a stock broker.

There’s a lot of easier ways to make money.”

— Dennis Lehane ’01

front, along with James Ellroy, George P. Pelecanos, Michael Connelly and others.

After his fourth book, Lehane was ready to break from the private-eye series and write “Mystic River.” But his publisher and friends put on the brakes.

You can’t do that to your fans, they said. It’s too evil. At the end of “Gone, Baby, Gone,” the detectives had broken up, they had lost the case and everything had gone to hell. So Lehane slowed down long enough to write “Prayers for Rain,” the fifth and final (he thinks) installment.

An Education Lehane chose noir because he had always written about violence and because it spoke for the underclass. He grew up in blue-collar Dorchester, Mass.

Noir also gave him a structure. (He claims to be terrible at plot.)

He came to FIU and the Creative Writing program from Eckerd College, already having written a draft of “A Drink Before the War.” “You could tell from the beginning that Dennis had a plan,” says Les Standiford, who directs the Creative Writing program. “He was quite talented. What you do with somebody who is obviously self-directed is stay out of the way and provide them with an arena where they can do their best work.”

“FIU gave me two years to hide from the world,” Lehane says. “And I had astonishing teachers.”

While hiding from the world, he began “Mystic River.” It was a novella

23

UP and part of his master’s thesis. The weakest part, according to his thesis committee. They asked for revisions, and he remembers feeling like he’d bitten off too much.

“I [still] had to teach myself things,” he says. “Each of my series books was very much a case of me building the muscles necessary to write a ‘Mystic River.’”

During his last semester at FIU, his first book (“A Drink Before the War”) sold. He moved to Boston and began work on the second. As his career took off, revising his thesis fell down the list of priorities. Keep moving.

In the Fast Lane There’s an odd thing Lehane does when he reads to an audience. Every so often, he looks up–not at the crowd, but above it and to the side. It’s the way a driver glances in the rearview mirror.

At the Seaside Writers Conference two years ago, he read “Until Gwen,” a short story that will appear in The Atlantic in June 2004. He took the audience on a break-neck ride, sneaking quick looks in the rearview.

Afterwards, he stepped outside for a breather, leaned against a railing and said, “I don’t think I’ll ever try to read a 20-page story again.”

The people beside him expressed amazement that the story had been long. Lehane looked amazed, too, and exhausted, like he’d outrun something wild.

“FIU gave me two years to hide from the world,” Lehane says. “And I had astonishing teachers.”

—Dennis Lehane ’01

TRUTH:

Mystic River Returns

Almost as Good as Fiction

RUMOR: Lehane writes constantly. When he was in school, he would write at parties. He even left his own parties to write.

TRUTH: “Once,” he says, “we had a party, and everybody seemed to be having a fine time. I got an idea and wrote two paragraphs. But now, I’m legendary for writing during parties.”

RUMOR: He wrote his second novel in a limo.

TRUTH: From the front seat. After graduate school, Lehane moved to Boston and took a job driving a limo. He spent hours on “sits,” waiting for people, and he used the time to write “Darkness, Take My Hand.”

RUMOR: Lehane didn’t pass his thesis defense.

TRUTH: “He definitely passed his thesis defense,” says Les Standiford.

“But it was the longest pending defense ever scheduled.”

1994 “A Drink Before The War”

1996 “Darkness, Take My Hand”

1997 “Sacred”

2001 “Mystic River”

2003 “Shutter Island”

Some of Lehane’s works:

OF ALL THE WRITERS WHO HAVE COME THROUGH FIU’S CREATIVE WRITING PROGRAM, DENNIS LEHANE IS THE MOST MYTHIC. MENTION HIS NAME AT FIU, AND THE STORIES SWIRL. (WHAT DO YOU EXPECT FROM A BUNCH OF WRITERS?) HERE ARE THE MOST FAMOUS RUMORS, ALONG WITH THE TRUTH.

If anyone can track him down, it’s his characters.

“Mystic River” gently rapped on the window for five or six years, he told Terry Gross in a National Public Radio Fresh Air interview.

In 1999, it began banging on the door.

“What was the message as it was banging?” Gross asked.

“Make a hole, make it wide, let us in,” Lehane said.

He wanted “Mystic River” to be a tragedy of epic proportions about regular people–the kind of story he loves to read–epics like “One Hundred Years of Solitude” or “The Count of Monte Cristo.”

The book, set in working-class Boston, begins in 1975 with three boys fighting in the street. Two men claiming to be cops stop to break up the fight. They are actually child molesters, and they abduct one of the boys. He returns home four days later, traumatized.

The story picks up again in 2000, when a terrible event reunites the childhood friends.

“I wanted [the book] to be a hybrid of my major influences, which are really the extremes of high art and low art. Jim Thompson, James M. Cain, Elmore Leonard, way too much Shakespeare, the Russians. And then I wanted to pay tribute to my literary giants—Richard Price, William Kennedy, Pete Dexter

and James T. Farrell. Also, when I was little, I used to watch Jimmy Cagney double features, the old Warner Brothers gangster melodramas of the ’30s.

“So it was all that, thrown into a pot,” Lehane says, with the deadpan delivery of one of his characters.

“Mystic River” became a bestseller.

It was a finalist for the PEN/Winship Award, and it won both the Anthony Award and the Barry Award for Best Novel, as well as the Massachusetts Book Award in fiction. It became the now-famous film by Clint Eastwood, which won Oscars for Sean Penn and Tim Robbins.

When Lehane finished the book, he sent it to FIU’s John Dufresne, his thesis advisor, and said, “Will this do?”

What’s Next Lehane never expected to make a decent living at writing.

“I thought it would be kind of cool to make enough money to buy a small house. But if you’re writing for the money, you should get your head examined. Be a stock broker. There’s a lot of easier ways to make money.”

He writes full-time now and teaches a class at Harvard. His next project is “either a trilogy or a quartet” that begins in 1918 with the Red Sox winning the World Series and covers the Boston police strike of 1919.

He penned an episode for the HBO series “The Wire,” which will air in October. And his seventh book, “Shutter Island,” came out last year. It’s a psychological thriller, completely different from anything he has done before.

“It truly felt diabolical,” he says about “Shutter Island.” “But I’d never do it again.”

Somehow, that seems exactly right.

SUMMER 04

FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSIT Y MAGAZINE

25

THE WOLFSONIAN-FIU: AT

H OME

IN THE

N EIGHBORHOOD

Children who participated in the Wolfsonian-FIU’s Artful Citizenship program view an exhibit of their own artwork at the Miami Beach museum.

by Alexandra Pecharich

A

10-year-old public schoolchild discusses in class what it means to be an active, contributing member of society and constructs an art project around the topic. A sixth grader learns to recognize how advertisers use slogans and characters to create the desire for products. Local residents meet in an auditorium to listen to a lecture by a noted London architect. Out-oftown visitors stroll galleries featuring electrical cooking appliances and tableware that illustrate early-20thcentury kitchen innovations.

These examples represent just a few of the ways that the Wolfsonian-FIU

has had an impact on South Florida in recent years. Opened in 1995, the decorative- and propaganda-arts museum, along with the Mediterraneanrevival building in which it is housed, came to FIU seven years ago by way of a $75 million gift—the largest in history to a Florida university and the fifth largest to a public university anywhere in the United States— from founder Mitchell Wolfson Jr.

facts in the world. Primarily of North American and European origin and collection dating from about 1885 to 1945, the that deals objects include, among others, furniwith the arts ture from the British Arts and Crafts of daily life. movement, Depression-era prints, mural studies by WPA artists, World It’s providing War II propaganda from both sides of a vocabulary the Atlantic, archival material from to undercompanies such as the one that built stand the the Orient Express as well as ceramics, works in glass and metal, textiles, world in A One-of-a-Kind Collection maps and rare books. The museum which we The 100,000-plus items that make employs the pieces to explore the live.” up the museum’s holdings were gathways that design reveals and shapes ered by Wolfson during years of human experience. world travel and represent the largest “It’s a collection that deals with the — Cathy Leff arts of daily life,” says Director assemblage of modern-design arti“[We have] a

Wolfsonian-FIU director

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FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSIT Y MAGAZINE

Artful Citizenship project: Fienberg Fisher Elementary School student artwork

Cathy Leff. “It’s providing a vocabulary to understand the world in which we live.”

Situated in Miami Beach’s famed Art Deco section—“in the heart of an architectural district that mirrors the period the collection covers,” Leff adds—the museum reflects and attempts to explain its surroundings.

“The collection really is interested in cultural history,” says Leff, who points to South Florida’s relative youth and ethnic diversity as providing the perfect environment for the museum’s work. The convergence of specific educational goals with a unique local setting, she explains, has helped the Wolfsonian-FIU “define the role of a museum in both an urban and an academic context.”

SUMMER 04

Page at a Time project: South Pointe Elementary School student artwork

“His vision has never been for this to be just a museum,” says Glenn Kaufhold, associate director for marketing and development. Rather “His vision than simply display beautiful things, has never Kaufhold adds, Wolfson has sought been for this to engage the world in a dialogue to be just a that touches on subjects such as history, politics and sociology. “He has museum. always seen the museum as an educa[Founder tion center and a research center.”

Mitchell To those ends, the staff runs an Wolfson] has active K-12 program that has seen always seen 14,000 youngsters pass through its the museum doors, regularly hosts family days and as an educa- week-long teacher workshops, annually brings in as many as six internation center tionally renowned scholars to deliver and a public talks, publishes an award-winresearch ning design journal and scholarly center.” books, and maintains a library and A Research and Education Center archive that attracts researchers from Designated a Major Cultural around the world. It also presents two — Institution by the Miami-Dade Glenn Kaufhold original exhibitions and at least one County Department of Cultural Wolfsonian-FIU visiting show annually that draw associate Affairs—one of fewer than two some 35,000 visitors and serve as the director for dozen cultural organizations among Marketing and thematic foundation for invited lecthe county’s more than 1,200 that Development tures and outreach projects. can claim such status—the fully Curatorial staff have organized accredited Wolfsonian-FIU remains exhibits around subjects as diverse as true to Wolfson’s desire to stimulate progress in transportation, the histointellectual curiosity. ry of public art in the United States

and Dutch posters that promoted design reform in the 1920s.

Educating Our Youngest Citizens Prominent among the WolfsonianFIU’s recent efforts to educate the public about the influence that art and design wield in the modern world: two grants to help promote “visual literacy” in the elementary schools. The first, from the Florida Department of Health, funded a program called Artful Truth, which teaches fourth through sixth graders to identify and understand how advertisers, particularly tobacco companies, rely on logos and other graphics to generate interest in their goods.

Boxes of the colorfully packaged curriculum have been distributed to every school within the state for use in visual arts, language arts, health and other programs.

In 2002 the museum took on helping educators instruct youngsters in concepts such as cooperation, tolerance and community involvement in a program known as Artful Citizenship. A $1 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education is funding the project, currently in the testing phase, which again empha-

SUMMER 04

Artful Citizenship project: Miami Gardens Elementary School student artwork

sizes the ability to “read” and analyze visual imagery.

Just as they did with Artful Truth, the staff works closely with outside experts and are collaborating with FIU College of Education researchers, public school teachers, independent evaluators and others.

The objective is to create a curriculum that engages both high- and low-performing students, as well as the many in Miami-Dade who enter school as non-native English speakers, in a way that many current textbooks do not.

“It just seems like such a natural thing for us to do this,” says Educational Programs Manager Kate Rawlinson, who emphasizes the university connection and the visual nature of the museum’s collection, items from which appear in slides and student workbooks. The images serve as the catalyst for student discussions, essays and artwork on a variety of topics—some as heady as mass production and consumerism—that ultimately concern basic human values.

Those kinds of clever connections and out-of-the-frame thinking are emblematic of the Wolfsonian-FIU’s approach in general.

FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSIT Y MAGAZINE

27

Artful Citizenship project: Miami Gardens Elementary School student artwork

“Arts museums have a sort of long history of not seeming open to the layman. We’re trying to break that down,” Rawlinson says. “Museums must be “Arts muserelevant to their community. They’re ums have a not just ivory-tower institutions that exist for the care and feeding of objects.” sort of long

In addition to a gala and other events, the featured exhibit is already being organized: a spotlight on the rise of American luxury hotels. The show will draw from the museum’s archives of the firm Schultze & Weaver, which built the Biltmore history of not Hotel in Coral Gables, the Breakers Upcoming Projects seeming in Palm Beach and the Waldorf Ongoing efforts to remain on the open to the Astoria in New York. pulse will further expand the And just as the Wolfsonian-FIU’s layman.

Wolfsonian-FIU’s reach. Mindful of reason for being has much to do We’re trying their mission’s emphasis to interpret with its physical locale, so too does advances in technology as a spring- to break that the choice of the anniversary exhidown.” board for learning, the staff look forbition’s subject have an important ward to making digitized images of connection to Miami Beach with its some of the collection available online. high-profile tourism industry.

— Later this year, the museum will pres“It’s not only a celebration of this Kate Rawlinson ent a series of lectures and round-table Wolfsonian-FIU incredible collection that we own,” Educational discussions on the subject of “green Leff says, “but also this community Programs building,” a nod to Miami Beach’s in which we live.” manager increasingly crowded development.

The Wolfsonian-FIU is located at 1001 The museum will work with the local Washington Ave. in Miami Beach. Summer building council and architecture club hours: Thursday 11a.m. - 9 p.m.; Friday and to get folks talking about a new moveSaturday 11a.m. - 6 p.m.; Sunday noon ment in design that takes into account 5 p.m. In October the museum will reinstate natural resources such as water, energy Monday and Tuesday hours, 11 a.m. - 6 p.m.

Closed on Wednesday. Admission: $5 for and air. And next year in the fall, the adults; $3.50 for seniors, students and chilstaff plan to add to their already full dren 6-12; free for members, children under lineup of regular programming several six and employees of the Florida State activities related to the institution’s University System. For more information, call milestone 10th anniversary.

305-531-1001or visit www.wolfsonian.fiu.edu

ACROSS THE UNIVERSITY, HUNDREDS OF FIU FACULTY AND STUDENTS ARE MAKING A DIFFERENCE EVERYDAY. ALLOW US TO INTRODUCE YOU TO A FEW.

Michelle Cleary

STUDENTS LEND HEALING HANDS TO HIGH SCHOOLS IN NEED Thanks to a relatively new master’s program in the FIU College of Education, high schools lacking athletic trainers to administer medical treatment now have certified professionals to lend a hand.

“Athletic trainers are allied medical professionals — we prevent, treat and rehabilitate athletic injuries,” says Michelle Cleary, director of FIU’s Athletic Training/Sports Medicine graduate program and an assistant professor in the College of Education’s Department of Health, Physical Education and Recreation. “We’re like physical therapists for athletes and other physically active individuals.”

Cleary recruits athletic trainers who are certified by the National Athletic Trainers’ Association for the advanced degree program. Students go to class and gain clinical experience in schools all while having their tuition paid and receiving a small stipend. Participating schools have embraced the partnership because their institutions would not have athletic trainers were it not for the FIU program.

“We’re really filling a void in the provision of athletic training services,” says Cleary. “The really important thing is that there has been this push for appropriate medical coverage in secondary schools.” The program, which began in cooperation with four private schools in Miami-Dade and Broward Counties, has added eight Broward public high schools.

Graduate student Olivia Dukes is the only athletic trainer for Hallandale High School’s 80 athletes. She evaluates athletic injuries, assists in the prevention and rehabilitation of athletic injuries, provides referrals to orthopaedists, serves as a liaison to parents and coaches and is the first line of defense in a sportsrelated medical emergency.

Dukes, whose undergraduate degree is from Western Michigan University, says the FIU program is one of only a “few” in higher education that provides advanced athletic training. And she enjoys the opportunity to serve as a potential role model to the teenagers.

“A lot of the kids here Charles Green have never had an athletic

trainer and don’t know what they do,” says the AfricanAmerican Chicago native. “Seeing what I do might encourage other minorities to get into this. I think that’s one of the more important aspects of this job—to encourage other minorities.”

PROFESSOR PROMOTES FREEDOM OF PRESS, ANTI-CORRUPTION Charles Green is fluent in Spanish and spends as much as half his time in Latin America. Yet the U.S.born director of FIU’s International Media Center (IMC), headquartered in the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, concedes he is Hispanic “only in spirit.”

Having secured millions of dollars in grants for the IMC since its inception in 1987, Green has helped elevate journalism practices throughout the region. A former bureau chief for the Associated Press in Mexico and Caracas, for a decade Green ran FIU’s Latin American Journalism Program. The program hosted dozens of seminars and workshops throughout Latin America on a variety of topics, published 10 journalism textbooks in Spanish, offered a six-week course for Latin American journalists and created a Spanish-language journalism review and Latin American media directory that are still active today.

(The program has since morphed into a center operated in Panama by a board of journalists.)

More recently, Green has provided training sessions for Supreme Court justices in El Salvador and Paraguay, where he instructed them in freedom-of-thepress issues and ways to speak with the media about what is happening in the courtroom. Likewise, he helped journalists there understand newly implemented legal systems.

“The countries are all going through judicial reforms,” Green explains. “In some cases, the reforms are really radical, [going] from the Napoleonic code to trial by jury.”

Currently, Green is overseeing efforts to curb widespread corruption in Paraguay. His investigative reporting workshops for journalists prompted a 500percent increase in the number of published and broadcast stories exposing bribery and fraud.

Green has also laid the foundation for a network of not-for-profit community radio stations and even commissioned the writing and recording of a successful pop tune in attempts to help citizens better under-

stand the consequences of rampant corruption. Those endeavors paid off, in part, during the run up to the 2003 election for president.

“This became suddenly a big issue in the presidential campaign last year,” Green says with pride. “In a way we were responsible for getting anti-corruption on the national agenda.”

MENTORING EXPERIENCE BENEFITS ALL INVOLVED The first time FIU senior Arthur Kozicki faced a classroom of high school juniors, it was a bit overwhelming. Under the guidance of College of Business Administration (CBA) Professor Robert Hogner, Kozicki and a group of FIU Business majors took on the challenge this year of mentoring students at Miami Jackson High School.

It wasn’t long before the mentors and students discovered they had much to learn from one another.

“Over time we got to know them and they were a very good group of kids,” said Kozicki, who graduated in April and served as the coordinator for the mentoring team. “They were very interested. I had a great experience.”

A few years ago, Hogner wanted to implement a mentoring program, so he began looking at MiamiDade schools. At the Academy for International Business and Finance, a magnet program at Miami Jackson High School, Hogner found a school that shared the goals of the CBA. “The long-term goal is to strengthen and broaden this partnership in a manner that Miami Jackson and its students, the CBA and its students and faculty all realize enhanced benefits from the project,” Hogner said.

“I’d like to get additional faculty input, perhaps collegelevel courses there or here.”

The 12 undergraduates mentor a classroom of students at Miami Jackson every week on such subjects as SAT preparation, finding financial aid, identifying colleges and finding internship opportunities.

The program benefits everyone, Hogner said. For the FIU students, “We hope there’s a deeper understanding of the material. This isn’t just doing good, it’s pedagogically sound and classroom based,” Hogner said.

The high school students increase their chances of getting a better SAT score, become acquainted with the college experience and gain general life lessons.

Both the University and the CBA benefit by the reputation the program builds in the community. And for the first time, FIU has attracted one of the highly sought-after graduates of Miami Jackson’s International Business Academy.

Said Kozicki: “FIU is really trying to be part of the local community and to make the community a better place.”

A HEART’S CALLING FIU Dance Professor Leslie Neal muses about her inspiration to bring the therapeutic power of the arts to women in prison. She had no connection to the prison system when the calling came in her sleep 10 years ago.

“Literally, I had a dream. I sat up in bed and said, ‘I’m going to dance in prisons,’” she said. “It was just this voice that commanded me to do this. Two months later I was sitting in a maximum security prison.”

Today, ArtSpring, the non-profit Neal founded, is thriving and has touched the lives of hundreds of incarcerated women and adjudicated girls Robert Hogner with its two programs: Inside Out and Breaking Free. The programs promote personal growth, problem solving, positive social skills and self-esteem development through dance, theatre, drawing and creative writing. Classes are led by facilitators and by Neal herself, who is continually impressed by the women’s imagination and creativity.

“They face degradation and dehumanization on a daily basis, moment to moment. I don’t know how they rise above that and they do,” Neal said. “Their spirits are amazing.”

Neal never asks what landed the women in prison. It doesn’t matter. In the program, many of the women reveal their own sexual, physical or emotional victimization. Some of the women are incarcerated from a time when Florida did not have self-defense laws protecting battered women.

To skeptics who question the value of helping convicts, Neal can point to statistics on the financial impetus to reduce recidivism. But the true reasons spring from Neal’s heart: “This is such an invisible population. These people are really forgotten.”

Core values shape the programs: Self-expression is essential to the realization of every person’s potential. People who have been institutionalized can recover and lead healthy lives.

Justice demands that every person has the right to participate fully in society.

ArtSpring operates programs at the Broward Correctional Institution, Dade Correctional Institution, Pinellas County Jail, Florida Department of Juvenile Justice Facility and at Wings for Life, a County facility for girls.

“There was really fertile soil for this to be planted,” Neal said. “I believe it really was blessed.”

Leslie Neal

When the Golden Panthers unleash their pent-up energy in The Cage (Community Stadium) on September 2 against Jacksonville in the 2004 season football opener, they will be sporting a retooled defense, a new defensive coordinator and an intensity that has grown with every season.

“All of our games this season are key games,” says Head Coach Don Strock, in addressing the upcoming season. “We declared for Division I-A status last December and will be in a transition year this fall.

Our schedule is much tougher than last year’s and will be a measuring stick for our squad.”

It was a productive spring for the team, despite the fact that several starting offensive linemen missed the entire spring season due to injuries.

“Our team is stronger, faster and improved in not only stopping the run and third-down offense and defense, but, as a team, in understanding our overall concepts,” says Strock. “We have installed a different variation of the 43 defense under new Defensive Coordinator Bernard Clark and have worked hard on using a variety of formations on offense which will cause defensive problems.”

The addition of “Tiger” Clark to the coaching staff is yet another milestone for the young program. The former University of Miami (UM) linebacker who was a member of UM’s 1987 and 1989 national championship teams is the first defense coordinator in Golden Panther football history. Formerly a member of the Liberty University football coaching staff in Virginia, Clark was impressed early in the spring practice season with the team’s overall speed and dedication.

“The school I came from was more of a disciplined team, but this team has unbelievable team speed,” Clark said in an earlier press release. “A lot of these guys are hungry. They’ve been working hard and I think we’ve been getting a lot out of them. I’ve seen improvement.”

Strock is anticipating big things from Clark’s young charges this fall.

“I expect great improvement from our defensive line, linebackers and running-back position. We have recruited and signed nine defensive linemen and four running backs who we feel will contribute immediately,” says Strock. “Our young linebacker corp can only improve with experience under the guidance of Coach Clark.”

One question that remains to be answered is who will start at quarterback on September 2. After a stellar freshman campaign in 2002 that earned him national honors, FIU quarterback Jamie Burke tore his right anterior cruciate ligament in last season’s opening loss to Indiana State. Redshirt freshman Josh Padrick ably filled in for the remainder of the season, earning his own accolades by season’s end.

“At this time, Josh Padrick is obviously the frontrunner at the QB position, but we’ll have to wait and see how Jamie Burke responds to the rehabilitation of his knee,” says Strock.

“With David Tabor a solid back-up and a healthy Jamie Burke, we will be much better this year at the QB position.”

2004 Football Schedule September 2 September 11 September 25 October 2 October 9 October 16 October 23 October 30 November 13 November 20 November 27

Jacksonville Youngstown State Western Kentucky Louisiana-Lafayette Stephen F. Austin Louisiana-Monroe McNeese State New Mexico State Georgia Southern* Florida Atlantic Florida A&M

8 p.m.

5 p.m.

6 p.m.

6 p.m.

8 p.m.

TBA 6 p.m.

8 p.m.

11 a.m.

4 p.m.

TBA

Home Away Home Home Away Away Home Away Home Pro Player TBA

*Homecoming All games are played on Saturdays except the season opener, on Thurs., Sept.2.

Don’t miss out on FIU’s drive to Division I-A football—tickets are on sale now!

Phone 305-FIU-GAME or visit www.fiusports.com for a complete list of ticket

SUMMER 04

FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSIT Y MAGAZINE

ALUMNI

31

Feel the Pride!

Ty Javellana

Message from FIUAA President Dear Fellow Alumni,

“In 20-plus years, I find myself coming full circle…life has a funny way of doing that.”

—Ty Javellana, CPA ’88 ’98

Recently, many of us celebrated the Fourth of July…a time for family, frolicking and fireworks. For immigrants like me who have embraced the American dream, it was a day for us to pay tribute to this great nation for having provided us with more opportunities than may have been available in our homeland. Miami is a long way from Manila!

In 20 plus years, I find myself coming full circle…life has a funny way of doing that.

From my early FIU days as the founding president of Tau Kappa Epsilon, one of FIU’s first Greek organizations, to serving with great pride as your new president of our Alumni Association, I dared to dream!

How did this presidency come to be after graduating 16 years ago with my first degree from FIU? While FIU has always been a short drive away (depending on the traffic on the Palmetto or Dolphin expressways!), like many of you, I quickly got caught up in life away from campus after graduation. But all it took to reignite my passion for our University was an unexpected phone call from Mary Tuttle, a fellow peer advisor leader with whom I had not spoken in years, inviting me to join our Alumni Association. The rest is history.

Thank you, Mary.

The FIU Alumni Association can provide you with many avenues for staying connected with your University. Whether it’s volunteering

for a board committee, participating in one of our programs such as mentoring or joining fellow alumni at our golf and fishing tournaments, tailgating parties and Torch Awards Gala, there’s bound to be something for you—something that will stir the FIU pride within you.

If you are not a member of your FIU Alumni Association, I invite you to join our alumni family. Please take a moment to fill out the enclosed membership form or join online at www.fiualumni.com. Your support will help the Association provide student scholarships plus many of its programs and services.

For those Golden Panthers (or Sunblazers, if you’re from my era) whose paths have taken you to more remote destinations, we hope this quarterly magazine and our website www.fiualumni.com bring you a little closer to your alma mater. Hope to see you in the fall for Homecoming!

It is more than likely that you and I have yet to meet, but I would like to pay forward a favor by inviting you to email me at tjavellana@nextreamfx.net and share with me your favorite FIU experience. Feel the pride!

Ty Javellana, CPA ’88 ’98 President FIU Alumni Association

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FLORIDA INTERNATIONAL UNIVERSIT Y MAGAZINE

SUMMER 04

ALUMNI FIUAA past presidents enjoyed reminiscing at the FIUAA Meeting: (l to r) Chuck Martinez ’87; Gerald Grant ’78 ’89; FIUAA Executive Director Bill Draughon; Steven Liebowitz ’77 ’91; Paul L. Jones, CPA ’78; front row, Gayle Bainbridge ’75; and Barbara Cilik ’76 ’79.

FIUAA President Ty Javellana ’88 ’98, Patrick Mason ’74, FIUAA Senior Director Duane Wiles and Barbara Cilik ’76 ’79 share a moment at the FIUAA Annual Meeting.

Members-at-Large:

New Board Introduced at Annual Meeting More than 200 members of the extended Golden Panther family convened at University House on May 27 for the FIU Alumni Association’s annual meeting. The Association introduced its 2004-05 Board of Directors at the event and discussed its exciting plans and programs for the upcoming year.

Executive Committee: Ty N. Javellana, CPA ’88 ’98 President William R. Trueba Jr. ’90 President-Elect George B. Brackett Jr. ’76 ’77 Secretary Raul Perez Ballaga ’97 Treasurer Jose M. Perez De Corcho ’93 Parliamentarian

Chapter Representatives: Miguel A. Horvath ’99 College of Business Administration Chapter President Kirill Reznik ’95 Washington, D.C. Chapter President James Suarez, Esq ’96 Honors College Chapter President

Kelsey Vaughan ’04

Your 2004-05 Board of Directors:

Sergio Abreu ’94 Gayle Ann Bainbridge ’75, Past President Stewart L. Appelrouth ’80 James K. Beard ’88 Irma Becerra-Fernandez ’94 Jorge Bofill ’78 Jose C. Bofill ’90 Joseph L. Caruncho, Esq. ’81 Slenda C.M. Chan ’94 Raymond del Rey, ’97 Jose Manuel Diaz ’86 Ralph A. Espinosa ’89 ’94, Past President Carlos H. Hernandez ’97 Lisa Peniche ’90 Justo L. Pozo ’80 Jose R. Riguera ’86 Estelle Vera ’88 Susan Webster ’87

Kelsey Vaughan ’04, graduate of a small private high school in New Hampshire, heard from many that her opportunities in higher education would be limited. So what if she was the valedictorian of her high school? Her graduating class only had 26 students. After she decided to delay attending college for one year to participate in a student exchange program in Bolivia, she heard from some that she was “throwing her life away.” When she announced her intention to attend FIU, she heard one question over and over again: Why? As FIU’s first Harry S. Truman Scholar, however, the only comments Vaughan hears these days are congratulatory in nature.

FIUAA Executive Director Bill Draughon (center) with Alberto Padron ’99 (left) and Gerald Grant Jr. ’78 ’89 (right) at the FIUAA Annual Meeting.

Working For You The Office of Alumni Relations exists for you, an important member of the Golden Panther family. Please don’t hesitate to contact us for any reason!

Bill Draughon Associate Vice President & Executive Director 305.348.3334 draughon@fiu.edu Duane Wiles Senior Director 305.348.4213 dwiles@fiu.edu Sean Kramer, '95 Assistant Director 305.348.2238 sean.kramer@fiu.edu Heide Dans Assistant Director 305-348-1009 heide.dans@fiu.edu Joan Casanova, '00 Assistant Director 305.348.3623 casanova@fiu.edu

Alina Alfonso Office Manager 305.348.7271 alina.alfonso@fiu.edu Silvia Infante Senior Secretary 305.348.3334 silvia.infante@fiu.edu Marlon Font Student Assistant 305.348.3334 marlon.font@fiu.edu Myriam Polo Student Assistant 305.348.3334 myriam.polo@fiu.edu Javier Rodriguez Student Assistant 305.348.3334 javier.rodriguez@fiu.edu

“I’m receiving emails from people I’ve never even met before,” says the Honors College graduate. “Everyone is so happy for me. It’s great.”

An International Relations graduate, Vaughan was awarded the prestigious and highly competitive scholarship after a successful interview in Boston. She is one of only two winners from schools in the state of Florida, and nationally, she is one of 77 award recipients selected from 609 nominations and 200 finalists.

“I still can’t believe it. I don’t think it’s sunk in yet,” she said. “When I went to Boston and met some of the other finalists, I didn’t think I had a chance.”

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Feel the Pride!

Tournament staff (front row) pose with (back row, from left): Ty Javellana ’88 ’98, tournament chair; winners Roy Flores, Carlos Ramirez, Tony Cordova and Roberto Moya; and Jim Beard, tournament co-chair.

FIU 2004 Alumni Association Golf Tournament Alumni showed their true blue and gold colors in support of the Alumni Association Scholarship Fund as 120 golfers came out on Sat., May 22, to play the Blue Monster at the Doral Golf Resort & Spa. Organized

by FIU Alumni Association President Ty Javellana and his committee of wonderful volunteers, a terrific time was had by all.

Thanks to our presenting sponsors–Aflac, Nextream and the Doral Golf Resort and Spa–for their generous support.

Hope you can join us next year!

International Panther Day The Alternative Spring Break Alumni Chapter is planning its second annual International Panther Day this October–a day for FIU alumni across the globe to give back to their community.

The chapter will be coordinating a large effort in Miami-Dade and Broward Counties and encourages its alumni around the world to organize an event in their respective areas as well. Efforts last year included volunteerThe Truman scholarship recognizes juniors and third-year seniors (like Vaughan) with exceptional leadership potential who are committed to careers in government, the non-profit or advocacy sectors, education or elsewhere in the public service. Students are selected on the basis of intellectual ability and the likelihood of “making a difference.” Winners are provided $24,000 for graduate study.

Vaughan participated last summer in an internship with the U.S. Embassy in Bolivia. The opportunity to make a difference in the tiny country appealed to Vaughan, who “fell in love” with Bolivia and its people on her first visit to that country in high school. As part of her internship, she worked on issues of human trafficking

Go Greek: Members of the FIU Greek community relived old times and made new memories at the Greek Alumni Reunion.

ing for Habitat for Humanity and Treemendous Miami!

The group is also organizing an overnight community service project for this December.

To participate in an event or become an active member of the chapter, please call Sean Kramer at 305-348-2238 or send him an email at kramers@fiu.edu.

Greek Alumni Reunion Resounding Success

Shining Stars: Twenty-two of the University's best and brightest student leaders were inducted into the Order of the Torch last fall.

ers of FIU as alumni,” said Bill Draughon, executive director of Alumni Relations. “The University appreciates their active participation.”

The event was so successful that planning has already begun for next year’s reunion.

Order of the Torch Inducts Founding Members Into Society

“The Greek community is an integral part of campus life and continues to be active support-

Twenty-two of the University’s best and brightest student leaders were inducted into the Order of the Torch, FIU’s new honorary leadership society. The inaugural induction ceremony took place last October at The Biltmore Hotel with 20 inductees present. In alphabetical order, the inductees were: Sergio Balsinde, Jamie Burke, Mariela Campuzano, Omar Castillo, Maria D. Garcia, Christine Denton, Sanjay Dhawan, Damion Dunn, Marlon Font, Desiree Galvez, Ron Hollis, Alexander Lewy, Ana M. Manrara, Kadian McIntosh, Samir Qureshi, Lindsay Rigby, Chris Scalfani, Mark Silver, Clayton Solomon, Jacqui Sosa, Tania Varela and William Wilson.

and underage prostitution (prostitution is legal in Bolivia for women 18 years of age and older).

“The embassy had never examined the issue before. We had thought that approximately 1,000 girls under the age of 18 were involved in underage prostitution,” says Vaughan. After her research, which included a night of visiting brothels with other officials, the group found it necessary to revise its estimates. “We think it’s at least double that figure. Worse, we were able to document that children as young as six years of age are being forced into prostitution.

“As long as there is poverty in Bolivia, there will be underage prostitution,” she continues.

“The larger issue is really the poverty.”

A transfer student from the University of

Southern Maine, Vaughan graduated with a 3.96 grade point average despite taking 18 credit hours per semester and working part-time for her entire college experience. Most recently, she worked 25 hours per week as a program officer in the Miami regional office of the U.S. Department of State’s Office of Foreign Missions.

Vaughan is taking a year off before pursuing a graduate degree in International Development Studies and hopes to work for a development organization after completing her master’s.

“Development is one field in which individuals with training and ambition can have a very real impact,” she says. “I’m eager to help improve the quality of the lives of people victimized by poverty.”

More than 400 fraternity brothers and sorority sisters came out to the second annual FIU Greek Alumni Reunion held in June at Oxygen Lounge in Coconut Grove.

“It was a great opportunity to see old friends and reminisce about classic FIU memories,” said Joan Casanova ’00 of Phi Sigma Sigma.

The Greek community continues to raise its profile at the University with construction of the University’s second fraternity house, Pi Kappa Alpha, well underway at FIU-University Park.

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SUMMER 04

>>>>UPCOMING EVENTS FOOTBALL KICK-OFF 2004

When:

Sat., Aug. 21, 2004

Where:

FIU Football Stadium

Students enjoyed meeting other members of the Golden Panther family at Dinner with 12 Strangers.

were invited to tailgate at Pro Player Stadium and show their FIU support.

Contact: Heide Dans, 305-348-1009 or heide.dans@fiu.edu

Begin planning now for the next FIU Night at the Marlins vs. the Chicago Cubs on September 3rd!

Get Ready to Roar: Join felllow alumni in a blow-out event celebrating the upcoming 2004 football season. Details to follow.

For more information, please call Sean Kramer at 305-348-2238 or send him an email to kramers@fiu.edu.

GOLDEN PANTHER FOOTBALL HOME GAMES 2004 When:

Thurs., Sept. 2, Jacksonville Sat., Sept. 25, Western Kentucky Sat., Oct. 2, Louisiana-Lafayette Sat., Oct. 23, McNeese State Sat., Nov. 13, Georgia Southern* Sat., Nov. 27, Florida A & M*

* Homecoming 2004 TORCH AWARDS GALA When:

Sat., Nov. 6, 2004

Where:

Doral Resort & Spa

Contact: Heide Dans, 305-348-1009 or heide.dans@fiu.edu Glowing Reviews: One of the signature events of the Alumni Association, this year’s event promises to be the best one yet! Plan now to honor outstanding alumni and faculty and spend an evening meeting old friends and making new ones.

ALUMNI HOLIDAY BASH When:

December 2004

Where:

TBA

Contact: Heide Dans, 305-348-1009 or heide.dans@fiu.edu Ring in the Holidays: Celebrate the holiday season and a year of accomplishments with your friends at the Alumni Association. Details will follow about what promises to be an evening filled with good times and laughter.

Dinner with 12 Strangers Twelve FIU students who did not know one another gathered last April in the home of Marjorie Keane, a Council of 100 member, for one of the Alumni Association’s most unique programs, “Dinner with 12 Strangers.”

It’s a recipe that has worked well for other alumni associations across the country, and the dinner at Keane’s home was no exception.

Organized by the FIU Student Alumni Association, the event works to bring alumni, professors and students together in an informal dinner environment at the homes of our alumni. It’s a wonderful opportunity for Golden Panthers to celebrate their FIU pride together in a casual, relaxed setting. For the students, the dinner represents a chance to gain a feel for the extended Golden Panther family. For the alumni and professors, the dinner offers an opportunity to share perspectives, compare notes on “then” and “now” and enjoy the energy that the college students bring to the table, so to speak.

To host a dinner, please contact Sean Kramer at 305-348-2238 or send him an email to kramers@fiu.edu.

FIU Night at the Marlins It was a sell-out crowd that watched the Florida Marlins take on the Atlanta Braves in April at the 2nd Annual FIU Night at the Marlins!

More than 500 FIU supporters arrived armed with blue-and-gold pom-pons, thundersticks and banners! All were totally energized cheering on FIU alumnus Mike Lowell ’97.

Two hours prior to the game, FIU alumni, friends and family

CBA Honors Entrepreneurial Alumni

Joseph L. Caruncho ’81

Since 1999, the FIU College of Business Adminstration (CBA) has recognized the success of its many accomplished alumni through its annual Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony and Luncheon. To date, seven alumni have been inducted into the Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame.

In May, CBA hosted its fifth annual ceremony and luncheon at Parrot Jungle Island.

Justo L. Pozo ’80 More than 400 alumni and members of South Florida’s business community gathered to celebrate the excellence of FIU, CBA and the many alumni creating vibrant workplaces in our community.

Joseph L. Caruncho (BBA ’81) and Justo L. Pozo (BBA ’80), founders of Preferred Care Partners, were this year’s inductees into CBA’s Hall of Fame. Honored as the alumni recipients of the 2004 South Florida Entrepreneur of the Year were Roberto Capo (BBA ’93), vice president of Advertising at El Dorado Furniture, and Andrew P. Yap (BBA ’91, MBA ’97), senior vice president and CEO of Leasa. Keith St. Clair, CEO of TraveLeaders, was named the 2004 South Florida Entrepreneur of the Year, given each year to a supporter of FIU who is not a graduate of the University.

Now CBA’s largest and most celebrated alumni gathering of the year, the Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame event is sponsored by SunTrust Bank, Miami, and supported by media partners NBC 6, Telemundo 51 and South Florida CEO magazine. To learn more about the program or view the list of inductees, please visit http://cba.fiu.edu/web/ehof or call Monique Catoggio at 305-348-4227.

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Feel the Pride!

CLASS NOTES 1970s Danny C. Price ’74, head coach of the FIU baseball team, agreed to a new, five-year contract. Price, 52, owns a 978-514 (.655) career record over 25 seasons as the Golden Panther head coach. He ranks among the top-20 in wins and winning percentage among all Division I active coaches and has more victories than any other head baseball coach in the Sun Belt conference. Since becoming the Golden Panther head coach in 1980, at least one FIU player has signed a professional contract evey year.

Olusoji O. Olukolu ’77 recently received his Juris Doctorate from Madison University in Mississippi.

Olukolu, the owner of Home Inspection and Pest Exterminator Company, is a licensed mortgage broker and a registered appraiser.

Gabriel M. Bustamante ’78 is managing director of RSM McGladrey, Inc. David O. Smith ’78 was recently named vice president for the state of Florida by Information Leasing Company, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Provident Financial Group, Inc., a 100-year-old, $20 billion bank and financial services organization. Smith, who has spent 25 years in the equipment leasing industry, will represent the eighth largest bank-affiliated leasing company in the nation in Florida.

1980s Stuart D. Galup ’82 was promoted to the rank of associate professor and granted tenure at Florida Atlantic University.

Rolando A. Alvarez ’84 has been appointed commercial regional director of Coldwell Banker Commercial NRT in Miami. He will oversee the brokerage division as well as recruit and coordinate the delivery of resources and services to associates throughout the Miami-Dade County region. He has more than 20 years experience in the commercial real estate industry.

Jeffrey W. Singletary ’86 currently represents clients in the purchase and sales of single-family homes, townhouses, condos, vacant land, investment and rental properties in the greater Orlando area.

Debra L. Aleman ’87 graduated from St. Thomas Law School in 1990. Aleman married her husband Ruben, a Miami-Dade Police Department sergeant, in 1994. The couple has two daughters—Emily, 7, and Gianna Sylvia, 15 months. Aleman is chief title examiner for Qualified Title Services, Inc., in Miami Lakes.

Elcira A. M. Gonzalez ’95 pursued a master’s degree in reading education at Loyola College in Maryland after graduating from FIU and now teaches eighth grade at Rockway Middle School. She has increased her focus on staff development by mentoring several teachers.

Marc D. Alpert CPA ’87 is president of a closely held real-estate investment company that specializes in residential properties. He is married and has three children.

Barbara Viniegra, Esq. ’95 studied law at George Washington University in Washington, D.C. After a stint working at a large intellectual property law firm in New York City, she returned to South Florida and is currently an associate at the law firm of Gunster, Yoakley & Stewart, P.A.

Olga K. Mendez ’88 and husband John E. Mendez ’90 are the proud parents of twins. The children, who will be 3 years old in October, are named Alexandra and Max. Mary F. Arnold ’89 has taught at St. Bonaventure for the past six years, having developed and taught the program for special-needs students in grades K-8.

Actively involved in school activities, Arnold is the school’s assistant principal. She says her love of teaching is second only to her beautiful family of two children and five grandchildren.

1990s Maria V. Marce’ Farrar ’90 has recently accepted a position as marketing coordinator with Home Financing Center, the largest independent and privately owned lending institution in South Florida. She is responsible for the creation of advertising and marketing materials and the coordination of promotional activities for the company.

Eduardo M. Balcazar ’91 has been name senior vice president and middle market lending manager for Union Planters Bank in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties.

Leila G. Presner, Esq. ’93 recently returned from living in Switzerland to resume legal practice in Florida.

Presner’s office is now located in Miami Beach.

Timothy A. Rubin ’93, CPA, has joined Rachlin, Cohen & Holtz as audit manager for its Business Assurance Group.

Ted A. Berger, D.C. ’94 graduated from chiropractic college in Marretta, Georgia, and has an office in Broward County.

Christina M. Escudero ’98 is owner of Montessori Children’s Academy.

Paul C. Huizenga ’98 started an electrical contracting company after graduation, Fibercom Electric Inc. The company specializes in the low-voltage electrical field—computer cabling, fiber optics, security cameras and fire alarms, among other items, and continues to do well. Huizenga and a partner now buy, rent out and develop commercial warehouses. Huizenga married his high school sweetheart Adrienne Napoles ’00 on Nov. 3, 2001.

James R. Bussey ’99, executive assistant to the dean of FIU’s College of Business Administration, has achieved recognition for his work with InternetCoast and the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce. He is part of the regional project to create a global and technology hub in South Florida.

2000s Sergio Llopiz ’00 graduated from Nova Southeastern University Law School in December 2003 and passed the February 2004 Florida Bar Exam.

Maria T. Perez-Arche ’01 has been promoted to vice president of operations for the Home Financing Center. In her new role, she will supervise accounting and operations in branch offices and maintain relationships with title agencies.

Jeffrey D. Nunez ’02 has been commissioned as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force after graduating from Officer Training School (OTS) at Maxwell Air Force Base in Montgomery, Alabama. Nunez is an acquisions officer assigned to the electronic Systems Center at Hanscom Air Force Base in Bedford, Massachusetts.

IN MEMORIAM The Golden Panther family mourns the loss of the following individuals whose presence shall be missed: James Alton Chaffin ’77 passed away Oct. 4, 2003, from cancer. He was raised in the Carolinas and Winter Haven, Florida. He was a retired major of the U.S. Marine Corps Reserves and a Vietnam War veteran. An Eastern Airlines pilot for 30 years, Chaffin loved to travel and spend time on the ocean. He is survived by his wife Lili Ruga Chaffin, originally from Cuba, and daughters Lisa Ann Kiss and Nancy Elizabeth Chaffin.

Muriel Friedman ’73 passed away in November 2003. She was FIU’s first degree recipient and went on to establish a private psychotherapy practice. In 1949 she married Larry Friedman and the couple settled in Miami Beach at the Amsterdam Palace Apartments, which they owned. The property later became the “Versace Mansion.” The couple had three children, Stephen, Hilary and Ann. Friedman had a love of the arts and reading and co-founded the Dante Group, which still meets regularly to discuss literature. After she was widowed, she met her companion of 14 years, Irving Epstein, and is survived by many family and friends.

Susan B. Katz ’75 passed away April 13 from complications of ovarian cancer.

She was the mayor of the city of Pembroke Pines and was active in politics for many years. Katz was particularly proud of her role in building the new stadium at Flanagan High School and getting funding for the Arts Park. She earned a bachelor’s degree in business management from FIU and was active in the local chapter of the National Council of Jewish Women. She is survived by her daughter Lauri Bontjes, son-in-law David Bontjes and grandchildren Jackie and Martin Bontjes.

Maria A. Orth ’78 ’81 ’83 passed away Dec. 20, 2003, from complications of diabetes. During her 25-year career in education, she was a teacher, assistant principal and, for the last 13 years, principal of Gratigny Elementary. Above all, she was a concerned and caring educator. Orth will be missed greatly by her mother, Amelia Orth, family, friends, students and colleagues.

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donor profile FLORIDA’S LEADING HEALTH INSURER

Safeguards Nursing Students’ Futures School of Nursing Dean Divina Grossman visits with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida’s Shelly Spivack and Rona Levitt at a March reception honoring community partners and supporters.

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida’s establishment of a $150,000 endowment in support of School of Nursing scholarships was a welcomed booster shot to efforts to help relieve this nation’s nursing crisis.

“In response to the acute and continuing nursing shortage, the School of Nursing has increased capacity in all programs by 40 percent and in the generic Bachelor of Science in Nursing program alone by 237 percent in the last three years,” said Divina Grossman, dean of the School of Nursing. Overall, those figures translate into about 262 new undergraduate and graduate spots, bringing total available slots to approximately 735.

The numbers represent FIU’s positive efforts against the looming nursing crisis.

The National Center for Health Workforce Analysis forecasts a deficit of 275,000 nurses nationally by 2010, when the first 78 million baby boomers turn 65. In the state of Florida, with its older-than-average population, the Florida Hospital Association estimates that 34,000 new nurses will be needed by the year 2006.

Help from companies like Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida will ensure that those who seek a career in nursing do not give up because of financial difficulties.

“A key focus in our philanthropic investments over the past year has been to nursing programs,” said Shelly Spivack, manager of government and public relations for the insurance

provider, the largest in the state. “Blue Plenty of Opportunity to Go Around Cross and Blue Shield of Florida is com- Philanthropic opportunities are many and varmitted to promoting improved health ied for corporate donors and include: • SCHOLARSHIPS and wellness for all Floridians.”

Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida’s • GRADUATE FELLOWSHIPS $100,000 gift qualified for a State of • ENDOWED PROFESSORSHIP CHAIRS/SUPPORT OF FACULTY Florida matching grant that increased its value to $150,000. All monies will be held • PROGRAM SUPPORT in perpetuity in an endowment account, • CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT the interest from which will support four Partnerships with corporations play an imporannual scholarships. A great investment in tant role in advancing FIU’s mission. To learn more about how to partner with FIU, please FIU, the impact of the gift will resonate for contact John Engen, associate vice president of Development, via telephone 305-348-1923 generations to come.

The gift to FIU is significant also in or email engenj@fiu.edu. that FIU educates a higher-than-average number of minority students, a popula- Cross and Blue Shield of Florida tion that has typically been under-repre- Auditorium, is part of the second phase of the new $38 million Health and Life sented among registered nurses.

Sciences Complex at University Park, Generous Donor scheduled for completion shortly. The Made Previous Gift complex will house the School of Nursing, This is not the first time that Blue Cross the School of Health Sciences and the and Blue Shield of Florida has come to the Dr. Robert R. Stempel School of Public aid of students in the College of Health and Health, among other programs.

Urban Affairs (CHUA). Thanks to a “Blue Cross and Blue Shield’s investment $450,000 gift last fall from the insurer, in health education is a direct investment in CHUA students will have one of the our community,” said FIU President nation’s premier lecture facilities.

Modesto A. Maidique.

The contribution qualified for an equal Added Ken Sellers, group vice presiamount of state funds, bringing its total dent for Blue Cross and Blue Shield value to $900,000. The monies are ear- of Florida, “We feel this donation will marked for the construction of a state-of- further the health and well being of the-art auditorium to be outfitted with the Floridians by giving future health practilatest wireless communication technolo- tioners the facilities and resources gies. The auditorium, to be named the Blue needed to enhance their education.”

800-FIU-ALUM – 305-348-3334 – www.fiualumni.com

Nuria Feria ’76 Profession Owner and president of interior design firm Design Perceptions, Inc., since 1978 FIU Degree Bachelor of Science in Interior Design FIU Affiliations Lifetime Member, FIU Alumni Association Annual designer participant in FIU Festival of Trees Favorite memories of your time at FIU? Lots of learning opportunities and great teachers.

How has this FIU experience helped you in life? In business?

My experiences at FIU taught me the technical, as well as relationship, skills needed to embark in my field. And I graduated from the University with a respected degree.

Any advice you would offer to FIU students?

A degree in today’s world is essential to succeed in any field, but especially in interior design. Press on and never give up.

Why do you think it is important to be a member of the FIU Alumni Association?

To stay in touch with others and be empowered by each other’s successes.

Proudest accomplishment?

Having my two children. I’m also proud that I was the recipient of the School of Architecture’s Outstanding Alumni Achievement Award in 1997, which was the school’s silver anniversary.

VIPs are FIU Alumni Association members recognized for their commitment to FIU and the community.

GET READY TO ROAR at the 2004 FIU Alumni Association Panther Pit pre-game tailgate parties and cheer the Golden Panthers on to victory! The air-conditioned Panther Pit tent is the “coolest place to be on game day” with fun activities for everyone. n GOLDEN PANTHER DJ, KARAOKE, DANCING,

GAMES AND GIVEAWAYS

n BOUNCE HOUSES AND FREE FACE PAINTING n TOUCHDOWN BUNGEE, VELCRO WALL AND BULL RIDE

(VARIES AT EACH TAILGATE PARTY)

n HUDDLE WITH THE PANTHERS GAME PREVIEW n VISITS FROM LA BANDA DEL SOL, THE CHEERLEADERS

AND THE FIU MASCOT ROARY

n SPECIAL ATHLETIC GUESTS

For information on becoming a member of the FIU Alumni Association, call 305-348-3334 or send an email to alumni@fiu.edu.

To Purchase tickets, Please visit www.fiusports.com or call 1-866-FIUGAME

Great Fun for the Whole Family >> Panther Pit tailgate parties will

begin two hours prior to kick-off at the following home games:

SEPT. 2 . . . . .

SEPT. 25 . . . .

OCT. 2 . . . . .

OCT. 23 . . . .

NOV. 13 . . . .

NOV. 27 . . . . *Homecoming

Jacksonville Western Kentucky Louisiana-Lafayette McNeese State Georgia Southern* Florida A&M** **Orange Bowl

NONPROFIT ORG US POSTAGE PAID MIAMI FL University Advancement and Marketing University Park, MARC 510 Miami, FL 33199-0001 Address Service Requested

PERMIT NO 3675