Miami Magazine | Fall 2012

AIDS: 30 Years Later | Your Brain on Mindfulness | A Man, a Brand, the U

MIAMI THE UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI MAGAZINE | FALL 2012

The Great Divide As the 2012 candidates do all they can to woo voters to their side of the electoral aisle, UM insiders and experts share insights about Florida’s tricky political terrain.

The University of Miami’s $1.6 billion Momentum2 campaign, officially launched in February 2012, has attracted donations from more than 100,000 supporters.

We are deeply grateful for this generosity, which is making an enormous impact on the U: from the magnificent Student Activities Center now rising on the Coral Gables campus to pioneering Miller School of Medicine clinical trials that could one day help paralyzed people walk again.

Designed to enhance the University’s extraordinary academic offerings, foster beneficial breakthroughs, and advance lifesaving care, the Momentum2 campaign will also make the unique learning experiences and lasting benefits of a UM education available to many more deserving young students.

100,000 Reasons to Celebrate Momentum2 has already raised $976 million, and every gift is vitally important. Your campaign contribution in any amount fuels our continued ascent as a top-tier U.S. research university, highlights your lifelong ’Cane loyalty, and builds an even brighter future for the U and the many lives we touch every day.

And those are developments we all can celebrate.

For more information about Momentum2: The Breakthrough Campaign for the University of Miami, visit miami.edu/momentum2.

Contents Volume 19 Number 1 | Fall 2012

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D E P A R T M E N T S Inbox

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University Journal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 R+D Update . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Bottom Lines

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Faculty Files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 On Course . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Student Spotlight

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Alumni Digest . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Class Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37 In Memoriam . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 DateBook . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47 Big Picture . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48

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F E A T U R E S

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Turning Positives into Negatives New science, new funding, and new outreach—along with an NBA legend— boost the Miller School of Medicine into a new age in the ongoing fight to end HIV/AIDS.

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Florida in the Balance One the eve of Decision 2012, academics and insiders alike are sweating it out over the electoral fate of the nation’s hottest swing state of all.

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Boot Camp for the Brain A UM neuroscientist taps into an ancient Eastern practice to see if it can protect and even improve mental function amid the horrors of war and other highly stressful situations.

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Brand Ambition Student Lyssa Goldberg, ’15, documents the dramatic rise of the now-ubiquitous U from lowly logo to star player on the national scene.

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www.miami.edu/miami-magazine www.miami.edu/miami-magazine Fall 2012 MIAMI 1

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COMMENTS AND OPINIONS FROM UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI ALUMNI AND FRIENDS

and increase productivity.”

And to suggest that such a program would be “of no cost to them” is simply not the case.

Small business owners understand the need to reduce cost and increase efficiency. The problem is that government rules and regulations often make it very difficult to survive at all.

I am glad to read that current students recently had the opportunity to interact with President Obama (“Obama’s Energizing Visit,” Spring 2012), as well as former President Clinton (“A Presidents’ Day to Remember”). They had a rare chance to be in the company of someone who has held the most powerful job in the world.

I agree with President Obama that our country needs to rapidly press ahead with development of all forms of energy: oil, natural gas, coal, solar, etc. President Obama’s administration has tried to rely too much on government programs, such as loans to companies like Solyndra to accomplish this goal.

Unfortunately, the $1 million program described in the article is another example of an unneeded government program. The U. S. government does not need to teach university engineers how to teach small business to “manage energy requirements, reduce waste,

Retro Robot Revisited The letter from John Caldwell, B.S.E.E. ’60, in the Spring 2012 issue brings back memories of our Engineering

As a former infection control practitioner, I was intrigued by the research item “Dirty Birds?” in the Spring 2012 issue.

I would, however, question the assumption that carriage of an antibiotic-resistant strain of E.coli resulted from cross-species exposure to the bacteria. The resistant strain could have emerged in seagulls due to exposure to antibiotics in the environment.

I learned at last year’s Audrey R. Finkelstein UM Experience that the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science has discovered human drugs and

if seagulls selected resistant strains in their guts due to environmental exposure to antibiotics or due to ingestion of resistant bacterial strains originating from humans.

Ask a Professor: Fishing for Answers I am a serious recreational angler. Beginning as a young boy in the 1950s, I fished South Florida and east to the Bahamas, throughout the Keys and west to the Tortugas. I think I fished my first blue hole in 1992 and have since fished blue holes in the ocean a number of times. Some of these expeditions have resulted in an extraordinary fishing experience, sometimes angling at COURTESY ED ROBIN, B.S.E.E. ’57

Energetic Opinion

Michael D. Stone, A.B. ’73 Vice President, Big “6” Drilling Company Houston, Texas

Ask a Professor: Who’s Bugging Whom?

Club prank. Perhaps it was in 1957 (that’s the date on my photos) when we took EE North Campus student Stewart Abel’s (B.S.A.E. ’60) robot, named “Illye Vim” (we were in the space race with Russia at that time), to downtown Miami and got a ticket for jaywalking. This is a cherished memory from my UM scrapbook.

Ed Robin, B.S.E.E. ’57 Croton on Hudson, New York

2 MIAMI Fall 2012 www.miami.edu/miami-magazine

their metabolites in the waters of Virginia Key, and that these are affecting marine life there.

Could a similar situation have occurred with the seagulls?

Paula Zingula Hamelik, B.S.M.T. ’77, M.S.P.H. ’82 Pinecrest, Florida Associate professor of medicine L. Silvia Munoz-Price, who led the study, replies: At this time we are not certain

the surface and sometimes deep in the blue hole. The article “No Holes Barred” (Fall 2011) states that the oxygen void layer of a blue hole begins about 30 feet down. Is that only for blue holes found on land or is it also the case with blue holes that are in the ocean?

John David Dannelly Jr., B.B.A. ’71 Miami, Florida P.S. My UM experience served me very well.

Underworld Explorers In the pursuit of scientific riches, Abess Center director Kenny Broad

leads an extreme expedition of fearless explorers into the

legendary blue holes of the Bahamas.

Descending hundreds of feet down a blue hole By

Ana

Ma ri a

Lima

can be a risky P hpursuit, o t o s Bfrom y W mazes e s C . ofS murky k i l e s underwater passageways and violently shifting currents to layers of toxic water that burn the sinuses and churn the

Rizzle at dolizzle pizzle doggy tempus tempor nibh izzle i saw beyonces tizzles and my pizzle went crizzle izzle tortizzle pellentesque that’s the shizzle rhoncizzle da bomb.

stomach. For Kenny Broad, though, the lure of these submerged limestone caves, punctuated by miles-long corridors—some barely wide enough to accommodate a human body—is the chance to discover ancient fossils, rare creatures, and scientific treasures that reveal our climatic history.

“You really don’t know what you’re going to find when you go in there,” says Broad, professor of marine affairs and policy at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science and director of the Leonard and Jayne Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and

water chemistry varies considerably from hole to hole.

That said, ocean holes have cooler water coming out of them and different nutrient levels that often attract fish, thus the positive angling experience.

Policy. “And that’s the draw.”

MIAMI

The University of Miami Magazine

­ Assistant Vice President for Communications and Marketing

Todd Ellenberg

Executive Director for Communications and Marketing

Barbara Pierce, M.A.I.A. ’10

No Holes Barred Descending hundreds of feet down a blue hole can be a risky pursuit,

from mazes of murky underwater passageways and violently shifting currents to layers of toxic water that burn the sinuses and churn the stomach. For Kenny Broad, though, the lure of these submerged limestone caves, punctuated by miles-long corridors—some barely wide enough to accommodate a human body—is the chance to discover ancient fossils, rare creatures, and scientific treasures that reveal our climatic history.

24 Miami magazine Fall 2011

Professor Kenny Broad, who runs blue hole research dives, replies: In short, ocean blue holes do not have the stratified water layers,

By Ana Maria Lima

Photos By Wes C. Skiles Fall 2011 Miami magazine 25

and the oxygen is well mixed in the water column around the entrances to the holes.

Also, not all inland blue holes have low oxygen levels—the

WRITE TO US Letters should be fewer than 300 words and may be edited for length and clarity. Please include contact information.

WRITE TO: Inbox, Miami, P.O. Box 248105 Coral Gables, FL 33124 EMAIL: miami.editor@miami.edu.

From the Editor

Reboot, Refresh, Reconnect

Editor

Robin Shear Director of Creative Services and Art Director

Scott Fricker

Graphic Designers

Sau Ping Choi Kevin Corrales, B.F.A. ’05 Production Manager

Angie Villanueva, A.B. ’12 Editorial Contributors

Robert S. Benchley Erik Bojnansky Greg Breining Lyssa Goldberg, ’15 Robert C. Jones Jr. Catharine Skipp, A.B. ’79 Brett Sokol Robert Strauss Ivette Yee, B.S.C. ’97, M.A. ’98

­

I came to the University of Miami in 2008 at the height of U.S. election frenzy. Here we are four years later, with visions of political ads dancing in our heads again—and, as of press time, enjoying back-to-back campus visits from the two presidential contenders (more on that in our next issue).

Meanwhile, our current cover story tackles Florida’s key role in Election 2012. Many other stories in this issue also highlight a time of new beginnings and significant milestones.

“Boot Camp for the Brain” explores UM-based neuroscience research that may soon uncover ways to help the stressed-out human brain better adapt to turbulent times, while “Brand Ambition” takes a fun, perspective-filled look back at the 40-year history of the University’s split-U logo.

Another ongoing legacy the U continues to fortify is its progressive work in the field of HIV/ AIDS. Reporter Robert Benchley speaks with several Miller School of Medicine experts who are helping to steer efforts to end this global epidemic into a hopeful future despite significant challenges that remain more than 30 years after the devastating disease was identified.

Accompanying Benchley’s feature are profiles of three Hurricanes who, in diverse ways, span the past, present, and future of the AIDS fight: the late scientist William H. Prusoff, B.S. ’41; Eric Walsh, M.D. ’97, director of the Department of Public Health for the city of Pasadena, California; and School of Communication junior Danny Barry.

But you won’t find their stories in this print edition. They appear exclusively online at the Miami website, miami.edu/miami-magazine, which brings me to my last point.

Miami: The University of Miami Magazine is entering a new era as well. Thanks to your feedback and the yeoman’s work of creative director Scott Fricker and his team, we have hit the “refresh” button on both the print magazine and website. In the former we revamped fonts and styles, and added a few new features to better reflect your University on the move. Online we’re going dynamic, adding videos, blog capability, regular updates, and increased interactivity. Our goal is to create a virtual community where you can connect to your growing, global alma mater.

And though I’m not running for office, I did approve this message. Moving forward, the real question is: Do you? Feedback at miami.editor@miami.edu, 305-284-5500. ­ —Robin Shear, Editor

President

Donna E. Shalala Vice President for University Communications

Jacqueline R. Menendez, A.B. ’83 Senior Vice President for University Advancement and External Affairs

Sergio M. Gonzalez

Associate Vice President of Alumni Relations

Donna A. Arbide, M.B.A. ’95

­ Miami is published by the University of Miami Division of University Communications.

Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission is prohibited.

Distributed free of charge to alumni and friends of the University.

Postmaster and others, please send change of address notification to Miami, Office of Alumni Relations, P.O. Box 248053, Coral Gables, Florida 33124-3410; telephone 305-284-2872.

Contributions of articles, photographs, and artwork are welcome; however, Miami accepts no responsibility for unsolicited items.

The comments and opinions expressed in this magazine do not necessarily reflect those of the University of Miami or the staff of Miami.

Copyright ©2012, University of Miami.

An Equal Opportunity/Affirmative Action Employer.

www.miami.edu/miami-magazine

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NEWS, PEOPLE, CULTURE, AND RESEARCH FROM CAMPUS AND BEYOND

Cleared for Takeoff New initiative highlights excellence in humanities and arts at the U and international theater companies and the UM College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Theatre Arts in collaboration with the Department of Modern Languages produced five of Piñera’s plays and held a three-day international symposium exploring his legacy. A Theatrical Thunderbolt, an exhibit related to his work, is on view through December 15 at the University of Miami Libraries’ Cuban Heritage Collection.

Well-known figures in contemporary letters such as Temple

STEPHEN KNAPP

Grandin, an animal behavior expert and advocate for people with autism spectrum disorders who is slated to speak on January 31, are also on the “Taking

ROSALIE WINARD

ED TALAVERA

From visual arts to archaeology and author talks to avant-garde theater, “Taking Flight: The Year of the Humanities and the Arts at the University of Miami” comprises events, performances, and programs open to students, staff and faculty, alumni, and the greater Miami community.

Throughout the academic year, the initiative is spearheading presentations by guest scholars, authors, and artists while highlighting the breadth, quality, and adventurous spirit of the University’s ongoing programs.

The recent kickoff event, “Absurd Celebration,” revived the literary legacy of controversial Cuban playwright Virgilio Piñera on the centenary of his birth. Several national

Events exploring what it means to be human abound with films such as the premiere of Sanjeev Chatterjee’s On Cities, exhibits like Stephen Knapp: New Light, and noted speakers such as Temple Grandin.

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“Taking Flight” celebrates the work of Cuban playwright Virgilio Piñera.

Flight” calendar as part of the Center for Humanities’ Stanford Distinguished Professor lectures.

Ongoing humanities and arts activities that are part of the “Taking Flight” lineup include book talks by faculty authors; the Frost School of Music’s Festival Miami; Lowe Art Museum’s busy calendar of events and exhibitions; art films, film festivals, and filmmaker appearances at the Bill Cosford Cinema; and the multidisciplinary endeavors of academic units, faculty, and students that contribute to a rich intellectual and college life.

“The humanities and arts are integral components of life at UM, creating a vibrant mosaic of perspectives that enriches our students’ educational experience in countless ways,” says UM President Donna E. Shalala, a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Commission on the Humanities and Social Sciences. “This initiative will allow us to showcase the University’s profound commitment to the humanities and the arts, which explore and build on the achievements and insights of the past to imagine and enhance the future.”

More at miami.edu/takingflight.

M. Brian Blake: Engineering Change more students into computing careers from other disciplines.

“The next major advancements in all fields will require a community of scholars with the broadest array of backgrounds that reflect diversity in every sense of the word,” he says.

Blake, a first-generation college graduate, earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering before completing his Ph.D. in information and software engineering at George Mason University. He investigates ways to integrate Web-based systems and

“ I have always seen the University of Miami as an excellent university with limitless potential. I could not imagine a more attractive place to define the future of graduate education.”

Prior to Notre Dame, Blake was a department chair and director of graduate studies in computer science at Georgetown University, where he created a program to attract computer science students from the Washington, D.C., metro area. He also initiated computer science courses aimed at drawing

is most known for his contributions to the areas of adaptive workflow and software-as-a-service on the Web. He has authored or co-authored more than 150 publications.

UM Executive Vice President and Provost Thomas J. LeBlanc says Dean Blake “will help to unify our efforts

to diversify our faculty and graduate students, focus attention on the research mission and needs of the faculty on the Coral Gables campus, and bring new perspectives to the critical role of graduate education at the University.”

He and his wife, Bridget Blake, a mechanical engineer and project manager, are parents to Brendan, 7, and Bryce, 1.

Remembering Paul Dee, 1947-2012

JC RIDLEY

M. Brian Blake, the University of Miami’s new vice provost for academic affairs and graduate school dean, arrived July 1 from the University of Notre Dame, where he was a computer science and engineering professor and an associate dean of engineering for research and graduate studies.

“I have always seen the University of Miami as an excellent university with limitless potential,” Blake says.

“I could not imagine a more attractive place to define the future of graduate education.”

On May 17, hundreds gathered at the Newman Alumni Center to remember Paul T. Dee, M.S.Ed. ’73, J.D. ’77, UM director of athletics from 1993 to 2008 and, previously, vice president and general counsel since 1981, who died suddenly on May 12 at age 65.

“The entire University of Miami community is saddened by the loss of Paul Dee,” said President Donna E. Shalala. Dee, a UM Sports Hall of Fame and Iron Arrow Society inductee, was a current School of Education and Human Development faculty member and School of Law adjunct professor. During his 15-year tenure as athletic director, UM won two national championships in baseball and one in football. He led successful efforts to raise student-athletes’ academic performance, helped to spearhead UM’s move to the Atlantic Coast Conference, and oversaw major improvements to athletic facilities such as the building of BankUnited Center. “Paul Dee was as generous, kind, and patient as anyone I’ve ever met in athletics,” said women’s basketball Head Coach Katie Meier. “His vision for intercollegiate athletics was based on integrity and equality.” The Paul T. Dee Fund for the University of Miami Athletics Department and the School of Law has been established in his memory.

More at miami.edu/miami-magazine.

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Watershed Storm Hurricane Andrew: 20 years later On August 24, 1992, Hurricane Andrew, packing up to 175-mile-per-hour gusts, slammed through southern MiamiDade County like a locomotive cutting through cardboard. Its Category 5 winds struck on the University of Miami’s first day of freshman orientation. As a result, some 5,000 students, parents, and visitors rode out the hurricane in UM’s residence halls.

Pat Whitely, vice president for student affairs, was associate director of residence halls back then. She remembers the hurricane sounded like a freight train from her office, where she slept for three weeks after the storm struck. “The palm trees were leaning over, and the wind was howling,” she recalls. “We had no electricity for four or five days.”

The University had to push back the start of the fall semester by more than two weeks, sending students home and reimbursing their travel expenses. David Diamond, B.S.C. ’94, a broadcasting and

Hurricane Andrew’s Category 5 wind gusts led to $14 million worth of property damage on the Coral Gables campus.

“ We’re at a point where there need to be dedicated people who are always looking at how to plan for emergencies.” political science major from Cherry Hill, New Jersey, was student body president at the time. “After the storm, I was very eager to assist in any way that I could,” recalls Diamond, now a management consultant. “But with safety being the key issue at the school, the top priority was to evacuate the students, including me, in order to secure and repair the campus.”

The powerful cyclone, the first named storm of the season, devastated the southern part of the county, claiming

lives, destroying homes, knocking out power, and causing more than $30 billion in damages. The Coral Gables campus suffered almost $14 million in damage.

Rebuilding efforts began almost immediately. The School of Architecture helped lead a collective effort known as the New South Dade Planning Charrette out of which the school’s Center for Urban & Community Design was born.

Twenty years later, the University is squarely focused on prevention and

Global Recognition From a Nobel Fellowship to a $3 million inaugural physics prize, University of Miami faculty garner prestigious accolades and awards around the globe.

Get the scoop on some of these “Honorable Mentions” at miami.edu/miami-magazine.

6 MIAMI Fall 2012 www.miami.edu/miami-magazine

mitigation. Numerous buildings were retrofitted to meet hurricane codes. The Office of Emergency Management, created in 2010, coordinates safety initiatives related to any conceivable crisis.

An Emergency Notification Network is in place in the case of a significant threat on campus, as is a crisis decision team and the capacity to take over cable television access in emergency situations.

“We’re at a point in society where there need to be dedicated people who are always looking at how to plan for emergencies,” says the office’s director, Scott Burnotes, who has worked in crisis management from Kosovo to Miami-Dade County. “We can’t stop hurricanes from coming, but we can put things in place to limit their destructive impact.”

Voices of Andrew: digital.library.miami. edu/andrew/index.html

R+D Update Flying High Now The “Supersonic Bi-Directional Flying Wing” (featured in Miami—“Innovation on the Rise,” Fall 2009, miami. edu/miami-magazine/ fall2009/featurestory4. html) definitely isn’t flying under the radar. The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program awarded a $100,000 development grant to a team led by aerospace engineering associate professor Ge-Cheng Zha from the College of Engineering. Designed for “superior performance at both supersonic and subsonic speeds” with zero sonic boom, the key is the wing’s ability to rotate 90 degrees. If initial tests succeed, NASA may put another $500,000 toward development, and in 20 years or so, Zha says, the space-age craft could make four-hour flights between cities as distant as New York and Tokyo.

Culture Counter Most of us learn to count early on, but in cultures with no words for numbers—a very few exist—people have trouble completing quantitative

epidemiology and public health José Szapocznik, A.B. ’69, M.S. ’73, Ph.D. ’77, as well as two Yale University professors.

Hearing Aid

tasks, reports a study published in the journal Cognitive Science.

The study, “Quantity Recognition among Speakers of an Anumeric Language,” shows that language is a key component in mental processes.

Its author, Caleb Everett, an assistant professor in the Department of Anthropology at the College of Arts and Sciences, studied the Pirahã people of the Amazon. This seminomadic group of around 700 have just three quantitative words: hòi, “small size or amount”; hoì, “somewhat larger amount”; and baàgiso, “cause to come together, or many.” Without number words, Everett found, they couldn’t represent exact amounts or solve even the simplest quantitative problems. But in cases where they’d been introduced to number words, their performance improved, “so,” he notes, “it’s clearly a linguistic effect, rather than being due to a general cultural factor.”

Young Hearts Pediatric researchers at the Miller School of Medicine have received two multicenter NIH grants totaling more than $14.2 million to identify genetic mutations associated with pediatric cardiomyopathy and develop better, more targeted treatment for children diagnosed with a rare but devastating disease of the heart muscle.

For decades, associate professor Xue Zhong Liu, director of research for the Department of Otolaryngology at the Miller School and an associate member of the John P. Hussman Institute for Human Genomics, has investigated genetic causes of human hearing loss. Recently the National Institutes of Health reinforced his lab’s long-standing research with a $3 million grant renewal and awarded another $1.8 million grant

Rehab Analysis A professor of management science at the School of Business Administration wants to better understand the effectiveness of drug rehabilitation treatment.

Funded by a $350,000 National Institutes of Health grant, Yongtao Guan’s study will employ statistical methods to investigate, interpret, and categorize data related to patterns of cocaine use before, during, and after rehab treatment.

He is collaborating with Miller School of Medicine professor and chair of

based on the discovery of new genes involved in hereditary hearing loss.

“Completion of our new grant’s proposed aims will increase our understanding of the biology of hearing and deafness and will be highly translational by increasing availability of genetic testing, improving molecular diagnosis, and, consequently, genetic counseling,” Liu says.

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UM Leads Study to Track Path of Pollutants The University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science is home to one of the largest, never-before-attempted experiments of its kind—an investigation of the transport and fate of pollutants in the Gulf of Mexico. The study is being conducted by one of the eight research consortia funded as part of the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative (GoMRI), the $500 million independent research program funded by BP in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon incident.

GoMRI’s stated goals include improving the “fundamental understanding

of the dynamics of such events and their environmental stresses and public health implications.”

Rosenstiel School professor Tamay Özgökmen is director of the Consortium for Advanced Research on Transport of Hydrocarbon in the Environment (CARTHE). “The task ahead is the oceanographic equivalent of the moon mission—an important and challenging scientific problem with immediate social impact,” he says.

Custom-made buoys and a newly acquired supercomputer aid the CARTHE effort.

Made up of 26 principal investigators, half from UM and the other half from 11 national and international universities and research institutions, the CARTHE team investigates where and how fast pollutants travel in the ocean. Inaugural fieldwork included this summer’s Grand Lagrangian Deployment (GLAD), which released an unprecedented 300 custommade buoys known as “drifters” from the University of Miami’s R/V F. G. Walton Smith in the Gulf of Mexico. This experiment, the largest of its kind ever attempted, provided a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to collect valuable data as Hurricane Isaac crossed over the GLAD instruments, which measure oceanographic currents, winds, and meteorological conditions. A key resource is CARTHE’s newly acquired global supercomputer, the Cray XE6m, which is housed at the Rosenstiel School.

Data collected will help to shed light on how pollutants may behave in normal and hurricane weather events.

“Understanding the various scales of oceanic currents and flows lies at the very heart of being able to improve our understanding and prediction of oil spills,” says Özgökmen. CARTHE shares data with the U.S. Coast Guard to assist its search and rescue operations.

More at carthe.org or Facebook.com/ carthe.gomri.

Ad It Up: Streak Continues at U.S. Competition The School of Communication followed its 2011 National Student Advertising Competition championship with a fourth-place showing this year for an innovative and high-tech campaign to help Nissan attract multicultural consumers ages 18 to 29. The “Miami Collective” won its district for the second year, becoming Florida’s only team to advance to the finals. It also received an award for best use of market research. “To place in the top four two years in a row is an amazing feat that has rarely been accomplished by any other school,” says Alyse Lancaster, Department of Strategic Communication chair and team coadvisor. More than 150 schools vied in The UM team accepts its the highly competitive event hosted by award at the finals in the American Advertising Federation.

Austin, Texas, in June.

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Bottom Lines “This is not a manifesto for you to log off, but an invitation for you to think before you click.”

Elias Aboujaoude, Stanford University psychiatrist and author of Virtually You: The Dangerous Powers of the E-Personality, at the New Student Convocation on August 17

“It’s a matter of whose ox is being gored.”

June Teufel Dreyer, political science professor, speaking figuratively in the Wall Street Journal on diverging reactions to China’s growing investment in Latin America

“This is truly one small Schwann cell for a human, and one giant leap for humankind and the search for cures for paralysis.”

Pascal J. Goldschmidt, senior vice president for medical affairs and dean of the Miller School of Medicine, CEO of UHealth-University of Miami Health System, on FDA approval for The Miami Project to Cure Paralysis to begin the nation’s only Phase 1 clinical trial to evaluate the safety of transplanting human Schwann cells to treat patients with recent spinal cord injuries

“I wanted to show the world that even the ‘B-team’ for America is really, really fast.”

Lauryn Williams, B.B.A. ’05, anchor of the women’s 4x100-meter relay team that won a London Olympics preliminary heat in 41.64 seconds. Williams didn’t run in the final event but left London with gold after her teammates won in a world-record-setting 40.82 seconds. Track and field Head Coach Amy Deem was Team USA’s women’s coach.

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Years of service being celebrated by the flagship Otto G. Richter Library

$976 million

Total commitments to Momentum2 as of press time, representing 61 percent of the campaign’s total goal and up $70 million since the launch in February

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Student admission selectivity ranking in U.S.News and World Report—up three points from 42 last year

1315

Average SAT score of freshman class— an all-time high, up 20 points from 1295 last year

60th

Anniversary of the Miller School of Medicine and The Pap Corps, Champions for Cancer Research, as well as the Lowe Art Museum and Beaux Arts Foundation

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The University of Miami story, told in 165 photographs and “muralized” on a section of vinyl longer than an NBA basketball court, graces a wall at the heart of the Coral Gables campus. “The U: Dynamic History, Vibrant Traditions” adorns the Whitten University Center’s west wall, starting from the entrance by the WVUM radio station. The 10-footby-108-foot work reflects the student experience dating back 85 years and continuing through each of UM’s five presidential eras—from Bowman Foster Ashe to Donna E. Shalala.

“Everyone from students and staff to visitors and prospective students will be able to go back in time and see what it’s always been like to be a Miami Hurricane,” said last year’s Student Government president, Brandon Mitchell, B.S.Ed. ’12, who came up

JENNY ABREU

Once upon a Mural

The halls of Whitten University Center are alive with history, thanks to an expansive mural installed last year.

with the idea, along with other student leaders. They collaborated with the Division of Student Affairs, Real Estate and Facilities, Athletics, University Communications, the Richter Library,

and Campus Planning and Development Department. Arquitectonica, the firm behind UM’s new Student Activities Center and the UC’s interior renovations, designed the project.

Judge’s Gift Supports Bankruptcy Clinic At age 83, Judge A. Jay Cristol, A.B. ’58, J.D. ’59, Ph.D. ’97, chief judge emeritus of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of Florida, maintains a full calendar in his downtown Miami courtroom, and, after 27 years on the bench, still finds bankruptcy law fascinating. At Miami Law, he teaches the Reorganization in Bankruptcy seminar, which studies principal issues raised by Chapter 11 of the Bankruptcy Code.

To support his love of bankruptcy laws and honor his love for his late wife, Eleanor Rubin Cristol, who also attended UM, the judge made a sizeable donation to support the School of Law’s bankruptcy clinic, now named the Eleanor

R. Cristol and Judge A. Jay Cristol Bankruptcy Pro Bono Assistance Clinic.

Recounting a story from his wife’s brief Internal Revenue Service career, Cristol says, “One day they sent her out to report on a lady they suspected of not reporting her tips. The lady rode a bike to work and was living in a broken-down trailer. When she offered Elly a glass of water, there was nothing in her little

10 MIAMI Fall 2012 www.miami.edu/miami-magazine

refrigerator but a bottle of water. Elly was so distressed she resigned the next day.”

Through this clinic, established by the Bankruptcy Bar Association of the Southern District of Florida, law students spend two semesters supervised by practicing lawyers working with lowincome clients facing bankruptcy.

More at miami.edu/miami-magazine.

Top-Tier Tradition The University of Miami again ranked in the top ten schools for “Race/Class Interaction” in The Princeton Review’s “The Best 377 Colleges” for 2013 and was included in its “Guide to 322 Green Colleges: 2012 Edition.” Bascom Palmer Eye Institute is the number one ophthalmology program nine years running, according to U.S.News & World Report’s “Best Hospitals” issue. And for the fourth year in a row, UM is solidly in the top tier and Florida’s topranked school in the U.S. News “Best National Universities” 2013 edition.

Peak Performance

Much was made about whether the high-tech prostheses used by South African sprinter Oscar Pistorius, also known as Blade Runner, would give him an unfair edge against Olympic runners with biological legs. In the end, the Court of Arbitration for Sport ruled that they would not, ultimately clearing the path for Pistorius to make history in London this year.

What might seem an unusual debate to some was quite familiar to Bob Gailey, B.S.Ed. ’82, M.S.Ed. ’85, a professor in the Miller School of Medicine Department of Physical Therapy who also works at the Miami VA Healthcare System. As the athlete’s physical therapist, Gailey not only worked with those who fitted Pistorius with custom-built carbon-fiber blades; he helped convince the court to overturn the International Olympic Committee’s earlier decision to ban Pistorius from the 2008 Games.

In August, Pistorius became the first doubleamputee Olympian, making it to the 4X400 relay final and individual 400 semifinal before going on to win gold with his team in the 4x100 relay at the Paralympic Games.

The success Pistorius has achieved, dating back to his first gold in the 2004 Paralympics, has exponentially increased the

GLYN KIRK/GETTY IMAGES

UM Therapist Helps Athlete Make History

number of amputees who “want to get out and compete in sports like Oscar,” says Gailey.

Because his amputations resulted from congenital deformity, Pistorius developed the kind of neural connection with his prosthetic limbs other amputees may not be able to, notes Gailey. “His hips

function like our ankles,” he adds. “When he runs, he’s in synch with the bounce of the blades.”

While Gailey enjoys the occasional opportunity to work with elite athletes such as Pistorius, he notes, “There’s really no difference between watching Oscar compete on television in London and seeing

Club Leaders Rolling Admission The Hurricanes roller hockey club skated off with its firstever Division II title, defeating Florida Gulf Coast University, 4-3, in double overtime at the 2011 National Collegiate Roller Hockey Championships in Madison, Wisconsin. The team also froze out Florida International University, 11-3, during last season’s ice hockey exhibition match.

Oscar Pistorius and Bob Gailey, B.S.Ed. ’82, M.S.Ed. ’85, flanked

by Paralympian Brian Frasure and prosthetist Francois van der Watt. Above, Blade Runner.

tears of joy because a husband and wife can go out dancing again, even though he’s wearing a prosthesis.”

In addition to hosting summer running camps for amputees, in 1986 Gailey launched the annual Hurricane Challenge, a fun-filled day on the Coral Gables campus for public schoolchildren with disabilities. He is also director of rehabilitation at Project Medishare in Haiti, where he’s been tireless in his efforts to fit victims of the 2010 earthquake with prosthetic limbs and is even teaching some of them to play soccer.

More at youtube.com/ watch?v=Y86bDBCfo9g.

Look Sharp

UM’s 2011 National Collegiate Roller Hockey Division II champions

This past April, the UM fencing club placed second in the the U.S. National Club Fencing Championships women’s epee competition, held in Connecticut.

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UniversityJournal

Stewards of the U After her first year of law school, Susan Fleischner Kornspan, J.D. ’90, almost had to give up her dream of becoming an attorney. But an anonymous donor loan enabled her to continue. “I was very thankful to whoever those people were, and I was hopeful that I could do that same thing for others some day,” she recalls. “I feel I was just the custodian of that money we should all keep passing forward.”

Today, Susan and Scott Kornspan, A.B. ’86, J.D. ’90, who met at the University of Miami School of Law, are excited to be able to pay their success forward. Besides contributing to the building of the UM Student Activities Center by establishing its Law School Students Center, the Boca Raton-based attorneys have made a bequest in their wills that, on their passing, will fund scholarships for UM student leaders.

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Heritage Society: Scott Kornspan, A.B. ’86, J.D. ’90, and Susan Fleischner Kornspan, J.D. ’90

“ I was hopeful that I could do that same thing for others some day.”

“The little bit we can do to make a student’s life better or improve the University, which is already improving by leaps and bounds, is really rewarding for us,” Susan says. Scott, a former Student Government president, adds, “We’re both certainly very pleased with

our UM experience, so it’s appropriate that we help others enjoy an even better University of Miami.”

The Kornspans were among 93 philanthropists—living and deceased— inducted into the University’s Heritage Society in May. Established in 1988,

the donor recognition group comprises more than 1,500 faculty, staff, alumni, parents, and others who have made planned gifts to UM. Planned gifts can range from those that provide the donor a guaranteed income for life to real estate donations to simple bequests in a will or trust.

More than $141 million in planned gifts have been secured during the $1.6 billion Momentum2 campaign.

Among those are recent bequests from Margarita, M.P.A. ’86, and Rick, M.B.A. ’84, M.P.A. ’85, Tonkinson, and Susan and Victor D. “Vic” Wortmann, B.B.A. ’59, as well as a retirement plan gift from clinical psychology professor Michael Alessandri, executive director of the UM Center for Autism & Related Disabilities.

Cynthia Beamish, B.S. ’82, executive director of Estate and Gift Planning, says her office helps donors support UM in a tax-savvy manner while taking their financial goals and philanthropic causes into account. “Gifts can be structured to help reduce taxes and benefit their estate,” she notes. Such gifts also enable the University to budget for future monies—an invaluable institutional benefit.

More at miami.edu/plannedgiving or 800-529-6935.

Mystery in the Making It may not be so difficult to recognize this scene from a recent historic U.S. achievement, but can you also name the ’Cane (pictured) who played a role in this landmark team effort? Email answers to miami.editor@miami.edu and find out if you had the right stuff in our next issue, when we’ll profile this stellar Citizen ’Cane.

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[ Name that ’Cane ]

DONNA VICTOR

Faculty Files

Saving Lives in Little Haiti Soon after joining the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center in 2004 to lead a community outreach program, epidemiologist Erin Kobetz noticed an unusually high rate of cervical cancer in a small pocket of Miami-Dade County. Because annual Pap smear tests help prevent the disease, the finding suggested a major health disparity. Though a Miami native, Kobetz didn’t recognize the area by its cross streets, so she hopped in her car to investigate.

Signs in Creole revealed it to be Little Haiti—the nation’s largest enclave of Haitian-Americans.

Women there, Kobetz

learned, got Pap smears at less than half the rate of the U.S. black population at large. To find out why, she reached out to area leaders, then obtained federal funding for a participatory research study. Launching a community partnership was slow going—until Kobetz herself was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. “At the time, a lot of people in Little Haiti saw cancer as a death sentence,” she recalls.

“Community leaders may have been more open to the collaboration because they felt they should give a dying girl her wish.”

But Kobetz survived— and her vision for helping Little Haiti did too.

Academic investigators, community groups, and residents partnered to identify and surmount barriers to cancer screening such as a distrust of Western medicine, lack of insurance, and even fear of deportation.

Their strategy, providing educational presentations and a free self-testing device for in-home screenings, proved highly successful.

Today Patnè in Aksyon (Partners in Action) oversees six initiatives engaged in lowering Little Haiti’s cervical, breast, and colon cancer burden. It is also a model for programs in other underserved Miami neighborhoods and Haiti.

Kobetz’s pivotal efforts

earned her the Returned Peace Corps Volunteers of South Florida’s Spirit of Service Learning Award for 2012 and a health leadership award from Little Haiti in 2011.

“We have a responsibility to learn how to deliver health services in a way communities can actually use,” says Kobetz, recently named director of the Miller School of Medicine’s Jay Weiss Center for Social Medicine and Health Equity. “For me, the biggest success is that the community has taken on cervical cancer as its own issue, even holding an annual conference on the subject.”

—Barbara Pierce

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UniversityJournal

The Height of Fulbright: More Students Being Tapped A few years ago, Rachel Libby, A.B./ M.A. ’11, then in University of Miami’s Latin American Studies program, was taking a summer semester in Havana when she was in a terrible bus accident. “A lot of people were hurt,” she recalls. “Some passed away.” Her own

DOD/FRED W. BAKER III

Marvin Alfaro, B.S.M.A.S. ’11

Rachel Libby, A.B./M.A. ’11, on the U.S. Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort in Nicaragua, 2009.

injuries were minor, but the traumatic event opened her eyes to a future she’d never envisioned. At the local hospital, Libby watched a physician “holding his patients’ hands and advocating for them because there weren’t enough supplies.”

The experience helped her decide she wanted to become a doctor.

Before applying to medical school, Libby earned a Fulbright U.S. Student Program grant to study the effect of community-based health education programs on Haitian migrant workers in the Dominican Republic.

Another scholar, Marvin Alfaro, B.S.M.A.S. ’11, earned a Fulbright to track the Arctic Polar Front, following it up with a Thomas R. Pickering Graduate Foreign Affairs fellowship.

“The Fulbright program can be a

springboard to many other opportunities,” says Kefryn Block Reese, director of Prestigious Awards and Fellowships since 2009, whose services range from group presentations to one-on-one advising.

At UM’s Office of Academic Enhancement, founded in 2007, Reese says she’s seen the number of UM students receiving Fulbrights go from a total of two between 2006 and 2009 to three in 2010 to six grantees and one alternate in 2011—when UM student applications tripled for the U.S. government’s flagship international exchange program. This year, a record seven students from four UM schools and colleges received Fulbright scholarships to conduct research and teach in South Korea, Malaysia, Turkey, Russia, Italy, and Germany.

Another reason to like this growing Fulbright connection: The program was launched in 1946 by then-Arkansas Senator J. William Fulbright, whose youngest daughter, Bosey, happens to be married to former UM President Edward “Tad” Foote.

The 2012 Election A new tradition, launched four years ago, is back: a course that revolves around the presidential election—as it’s happening. If the 200-plus students who enrolled in “The 2012 Election” this fall weren’t political junkies already, they’re sure to be by semester’s end. At least that’s the hope of co-faculty Casey Klofstad, Christopher Mann, and Joseph Uscinski, from the Department of Political Science. “Young people tend to be fairly civically engaged,” says Klofstad, “but they often don’t see politics as a viable venue for expressing their concerns over what’s going on in the world.” Aiming to change that perception, he and his colleagues are offering a dynamic schedule of speakers, from political commentator Bernard Goldberg to former Republican presidential candidate Herman Cain, as well as other faculty, such as UM’s own commander in chief, Donna E. Shalala. As the class tracks the candidates and issues to Election Day and beyond, it will tackle Herman Cain speaks to students during the 2012 Election course. key topics like voter mobilization strategies, the effect of media and religious beliefs on the political process, debates, polls, and, of course, the impact college-age voters like themselves are having this time around. Participants are also being encouraged to take part in democracy-related activities on campus and use the social media tools that have become a campaign mainstay. “If we can imprint these students with a sense of political engagement while they are at UM,” says Klofstad, “they’re more likely to carry those habits on as they leave and become full-fledged members of society.” And that, he contends, will make us all winners.

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On Course

RICHARD PATTERSON

Student Spotlight Senior Nawara Alawa felt forced into becoming a Hurricane.

She was raised by conservative Syrian parents who expected her to commute to a school near her Miami Lakes home.

Longing for a 24-7 college experience, though, Alawa applied to 15 out-of-state schools, hoping to use an Ivy League acceptance as a bargaining chip.

Now this once reluctant ’Cane proudly serves as the University of Miami Student Government president. “I’m that girl who wears half-orange, half-green Converse that say ’Canes on the back, and I’m screaming at every game,” she laughs. “It’s such a ‘180’ from where I started.”

The change came after a scholarship and her parents’ wishes led Alawa to enroll at UM. At Great Start, an overnight preorientation program where commuter students stay in residence halls, an alumna spoke about making the best of the non-residential experience. It motivated Alawa to get involved.

She quickly fell in love with the University, finding a family in the Association of Commuter Students and Butler Center for Volunteer Service and Leadership Development.

Working with the Butler Center as a freshman, she brought an ex-neo-Nazi to campus for the “Turning Away From Hate” event.

More recently she helped devise and administer a public health survey in one

Madame President Elected on the ‘Inspired by U’ ticket, newly inaugurated Student Government President Nawara Alawa is ready to lead.

of Miami’s poorest neighborhoods, developing close ties in the community. And then there’s her campaign win.

“Nawara makes a very concentrated effort to get to know people, and she never thinks she’s above someone else,” says Jake Krupa, B.S.B.A. ’12, who was chief of the Iron Arrow Honor Society last semester, when Alawa was tapped as a member.

Alawa calls her openness “WOO,” or winning over others. “I tend to introduce myself to complete strangers,” she says.

“I love people.”

Often on campus for more than 16 hours a day, she also maintains the family life her parents value highly. “My mom and my dad keep me on track with regard to school,” she says. That’s key for Alawa, who spent her summer studying for the Medical College Admission Test.

As a civic leader double majoring in microbiology and immunology as well as religious studies, she effortlessly unites what some might view as disparate worlds. “Whether we are religious or not,” says Alawa, who is a Muslim, “religion ties into culture and politics, literature, and art. I’ve been able to tie these aspects of my life to medicine too. There’s a very human element to medicine, and I think that will end up being my biggest strength as a doctor—my ability to connect to individuals.”

—Lyssa Goldberg, ’15

An earlier version of this article ran in The Miami Hurricane.

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TURNING POSITIVES INTO NEGATIVES

BY ROBERT S. BENCHLEY

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BIG TROUBLE COMES IN TINY DOSES.

HUMAN IMMUNODEFICIENCY VIRUS,

roughly spherical in shape and about 120 nanometers in diameter, is large for a virus, but minuscule—60 times smaller than a red blood cell—compared with just about anything else that enters the body. In fact, viruses aren’t even cells; they’re just particles of trouble looking for cells to break into and inhabit. Once hidden inside, they’re protected from the proteins that cruise our bodies Pac-Man style, seeking out invaders to destroy.

In the world of viruses, HIV is espe-

cially insidious, targeting the immune system cells, known as T-lymphocytes or CD4-positive, charged with protecting our bodies from infections and various types of cancer. From its cellular lair, a virus tricks its host into replicating it until the body’s natural immune system is overwhelmed. That’s how HIV, left unchecked, blooms into full-blown Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome, or AIDS, increasing susceptibility to cancer and other opportunistic diseases.

At the U.S. epicenter of the HIV/AIDS crisis, a Miller School of Medicine ‘Dream Team’ turns up the heat on a widespread disease that’s preventable, treatable, and closer than ever to being cured.

For 30 years this microscopic sphere has ravaged humanity. Thirty million people have died of AIDS since its earliest recorded cases. In the U.S., the epidemic has hit South Florida particularly hard. According to the most recent CDC data, the metropolitan area of Miami has the nation’s highest rate of people living with HIV and its highest rate of new HIV infections per capita.

Fort Lauderdale ranked second highest for new HIV infection rates, and Florida reported the second-highest rate of new infection among 46 states in 2010.

But renowned scientists and physicians at the Miller School of Medicine are on the path to discovering a cure and even a viable vaccine while innovating strategies to control the spread of this disease.

In recognition of their

work, the federal government has designated the school a major center for AIDS research, boosting its active funding for HIV/AIDS-related research to $50.6 million, with another $16 million expected.

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lobally renowned virologist Mario Stevenson, chief of the Division of Infectious Diseases and professor of medicine, arrived at the Miller School a year and a half ago after directing a similar research center at the University of Massachusetts for 15 years. Stevenson has been looking for ways to defeat the HIV virus for a long time. He has as much knowledge about—and respect for—his opponent as anyone. “We noticed something peculiar about cells infected with the HIV virus,” he explains.

“HIV walks in the door, then locks the door behind it. It makes sure that once

immunologist David Watkins, who is trying to develop an AIDS vaccine using the existing yellow fever vaccine as a delivery device. A $10 million grant from the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, announced in July, is supporting this research.

“HIV has enormous variability,” says Watkins, a professor and vice chair of research in the Department of Pathology. “What we need is a vaccine that elicits a cellular response, in which the cells induced by the vaccine prevent the virus from multiplying.”

Watkins and Stevenson, who also do research and teach together in Brazil,

the infection are in this geographic location.”

Recognizing the Miller School’s significant contributions since the beginning of the crisis, in May the National Institutes of Health designated it one of only 21 Centers for AIDS Research (CFAR) in the nation, adding $7 million in funding over the next five years. This comes at a time when one in five of this nation’s 1.2 million HIVpositive people are unaware of their infection.

“We are being counted on to make even greater strides toward the control and eradication of HIV/AIDS, and that’s what we’re prepared to do,” says Miami

the cell gets infected, it won’t get reinfected by other viruses.”

Noting HIV’s tendency to hide from attack, Stevenson explains that trying to cure HIV is a bit like hunting a sleeping bear in a cave. “The prevailing view is that the virus infects cells and then goes into hibernation,” he says.

“For drugs to attack it, the virus has to be active. That means coaxing it out of hibernation.” Stevenson calls it “poking the bear.”

For some time now, he and other researchers have been turning their focus from developing HIV-suppressing drugs for treatment (estimated to cost $600,000 per person over a lifetime) toward finding ways to kill the virus outright. “There are 20 existing FDAapproved compounds that work very well at treating HIV,” Stevenson offers.

“But they don’t cure—and you have to be on them for the rest of your life.

That’s a status quo but not a solution.”

Stevenson’s lab is working on minuscule chemical compounds that would keep HIV from being able to get inside cells in the first place or, once in, prevent it from accessing the cellular materials it needs to multiply and thrive.

One of Stevenson’s newest partners in the fight against HIV/AIDS is

RICHARD PATTERSON

“ HIV walks in the door, then locks the door behind it.”

Chief of infectious diseases Mario Stevenson, left, recently joined the Miller School Center for AIDS Research from the University of Massachusetts, where he was CFAR director.

came to Miami from separate institutions to unite along the front lines of the war on HIV. “Miami is really the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic in the United States,” says Stevenson. “And some of the greatest disparities that are standing in the way of effectively controlling

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CFAR director Savita Pahwa, professor of microbiology and immunology, pediatrics, and medicine. “Prevention, treatment, and cure are intertwined and need to be targeted aggressively. The CFAR award has given the University an exciting opportunity to make a real change in the epidemic.”

Stevenson, also a CFAR co-director, calls this University-wide and, ultimately, national network, a “1+1=3” equation.

The Miami CFAR knowledge base runs deep. Co-director Margaret Fischl, B.S. ’72, M.D. ’76, a professor of medicine who directs the AIDS Clinical Research Unit, investigated some of the earliest U.S. cases of the disease and pioneered AZT trials. Today, Fischl says, her patients no longer flush pills down the toilet because of terrible side effects, but their treatment still requires constant monitoring. Within just five days of them stopping their medication, for example, she can show them detectable levels of the virus in their blood again. On the flip side, faithful compliance not only keeps patients healthier, it makes the disease nearly impossible to transmit to others. “If we get to everyone infected and treat them, then we stop the epidemic,” she says.

Fischl’s Miller School colleague Gwendolyn Scott, a pediatrics professor and director of the Division of Pediatric Infectious Diseases and Immunology, pioneered the use of AZT to prevent perinatal infection. She says the U.S. has all but eliminated HIV transmission to infants through their mothers.

“We’re putting ourselves out of business, which is great,” she says. “We hope we can do this around the world.”

Miller School HIV/AIDS experts, from top, immunologist David Watkins and physicians Margaret Fischl and Gwendolyn Scott share news of their latest advances with visiting foreign journalists.

PHOTOS: JORGE PEREZ/MILLER SCHOOL

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dding momentum to the CFAR elevation is the Miller School’s role in a high-profile multidisciplinary partnership to address the holistic needs of people living in areas hardest hit by HIV/AIDS. At a press conference held at the Miller School in June, Clear Health Alliance CEO Miguel B. “Mike” Fernandez, a former UM trustee, explained that he looked all over the country for the right partner to coordinate leading research and treatment options for a specialized Medicaid HIV plan. His company has committed $100 million to the project. “As often happens, they were in our backyard,” he said, acknowledging Miller School Dean Pascal J. Goldschmidt. Fernandez added that he found the venture’s “heart and

soul” in Magic Johnson, who announced his HIV-positive status to the world at the peak of his NBA career 21 years ago.

Today his Magic Johnson Foundation runs urban HIV/AIDS awareness and prevention programs around the nation.

Johnson said this new “Dream Team,” as he calls it, “will bring a comprehensive approach to caring for many Hispanics and African-Americans affected by HIV/ AIDS who, up until now, may have not had access to adequate care.” In Miami, and nationwide, these communities disproportionately represent the majority of people living with HIV/AIDS.

The partnership’s day-to-day liaison will be Michael A. Kolber, M.D./Ph.D. ’83, professor of medicine, director of the Miller School’s Comprehensive AIDS Program, and clinical director of the Adult HIV Section for Infectious Diseases. Like Johnson, Kolber also has experience raising public awareness. In 2009 he launched the Grandmothers Project, a multi-year endeavor that employs community role models who belong to African-American churches in South Florida to educate people in the community about HIV/AIDS prevention and testing. “We had more than 1,000 contacts last year through just eight churches,” he says. “Now we’re expanding into barber shops to check out the sustainability of the model.”

Johnson emphasizes the need for grassroots efforts like these. “In urban America, the problem is the education part,” he says. “They think Magic didn’t really have HIV or that he got cured.”

He is quick to debunk those myths, letting people know he hasn’t received any “magical pill” and that he’s taken antiretroviral meds daily “with a smile” for two decades.

But in the fight to eradicate this costly disease, the human equation is as variable as the virus. Scientist Mario Stevenson’s endpoint is a cure, but he knows the real deathblow to HIV lies beyond the lab.

On the heels of July’s International AIDS Conference—held in the United States for the first time in 22 years—a delegation of journalists from 25 countries spanning Africa, Asia, Europe, and Central America visited the Miller School.

Despite tremendous pharmacological successes and a cure expected in the coming decades, AIDS continues to thrive on “fear, suspicion, and uncertainty,” Stevenson told the reporters.

“There’s no better weapon to fight against it than education.”

Additional reporting by Maya Bell and Robin Shear.

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Which party will come out on top as the political seesaw teeters in the nation’s juiciest electoral region?

UM alumni and faculty talk strategy in the Sunshine State.

BY BRETT SOKOL

e c n a l a B e h t n i a d i r o l F After the presidential

election in 2000, the word Florida

became synonymous with everything that’s perceived as dysfunctional in the American political system. More than a decade later, with another presidential contest looming, it seems as if little has changed.

Ever-shriller partisan voices are driving the debate on a host of contentious issues, from immigration reform and health care law to America’s place in the global economy, reducing complex affairs to glib sound bites. Yet rather than wade into this din and offer up meaningful analysis, media outlets often seem to be simply an arena for dueling sets of talking points.

Even the physical act of voting appears politicized, with the specter of hanging chads and the U.S. Supreme Court’s hearing of Bush v. Gore still on the minds of poll watchers across the nation.

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ES

economic conditions. That’s why you saw President Obama winning states that in recent elections would have gone Republican.” This time out, Wallace, the CEO of United Against Nuclear Iran, sees the lingering recession playing in Romney’s favor. “If you believe the James Carville maxim that ‘It’s the economy, stupid’,” he says pointedly, “then Florida is a purple state trending red.”

Most Democrats disagree—especially

AG

RNC Chair Reince Priebus, J.D. ’98, opens the GOP convention.

IM

be Florida this year.” Hill’s concern is based on Florida Republican Governor Rick Scott’s effort to purge the state’s voting rolls of “who knows whom,” she notes, by flagging 182,000 names as potential noncitizens and sending an initial 2,600 of those to county election supervisors for investigation. “I don’t want your sacred right as a voter to be diluted by an individual that doesn’t have the right to vote,” Scott told National Public Radio.

With a disproportionate number of those flagged names belonging to Latinos and Democrats—and one so-called noncitizen turning out to be a 91-year-old decorated Battle of the Bulge veteran— civil rights groups cried foul. Amid a rash of lawsuits, Democrats and Republicans alike angrily accused each other of trying to throw the election before a single vote had even been cast.

“We’re talking about Florida here,” says assistant professor of political science Christopher Mann, who codeveloped a course being taught this semester titled “The 2012 Election.” “If there’s any state in the union that ought not to mess with its voter rolls, that ought not to shake the very confidence of its citizens in the electoral system, it’s Florida.”

All this aggressive posturing stems from the realities of electoral math.

“There are a variety of pathways to

in the wake of Obama’s pledge to stop enforcing deportation orders against some younger illegal immigrants brought to the United States as children. Despite Republican charges that Obama is simply pandering, most fans of the decree couldn’t care less whether he’s following his heart, a strategist’s advice, or his horoscope. Moreover, it isn’t just Latinos who are relieved. “The pundits keep saying Hispanics, but it’s an issue for many foreign-born children,” says Miami Democratic Congresswoman Frederica Wilson, M.Ed. ’73. “I have a lot of Russians in my district. I also represent a large community of people of Caribbean descent,” all of whom, Wilson adds, just got much more excited about re-electing the president. “The Republican Party is a party of basically white males. The Democratic Party is an inclusionary party that has a multiplicity of bases, and [Obama] must solidify it base by base.”

Miami-based consultant Sylvia Garcia, A.B. ’97, a former staffer for GOP leader Newt Gingrich and current editorin-chief of the online Hispanic news source The Americano, sees the immigration issue in Florida as being trumped by jobs—or the lack thereof, given the national Hispanic unemployment rate of 11 percent. “When you don’t have enough money for the supermarket or for gas, when your wife or husband gets laid off, these are the things that are more E I/G important with the SK OW IAL SM Latino vote,” Garcia N A ND BRE counters. “Latinos gave Obama a chance and they’re hurting!”

Is it a case of once bitten, twice shy for many of Obama’s 2008 supporters— not just Latinos but African-Americans, as well as the hordes of younger voters who fanned out across the country as fired-up field workers? “The enthusiasm issue is a national reaction to a re-election versus a historic election,” Y

Miami Congresswoman Frederica Wilson, M.Ed. ’73, supports Obama’s re-election.

270 [electoral votes], and Florida is in most of them,” explains former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Mark Wallace, A.B. ’89, J.D. ’92. Counting to 270 was a big part of Wallace’s job as deputy campaign manager for George W. Bush’s 2004 re-election and as a senior advisor for John McCain’s 2008 presidential run.

“If you’re looking at an Electoral College strategy—which is what anyone involved in national politics does—you don’t look at this as a national election.”

That logic explains why the bulk of both Barack Obama’s and Mitt Romney’s resources are focused only on Florida and 17 other “battleground” states. To hear Wallace tell it, however, far fewer than 17 states are truly up for grabs.

“This is still a center-right country,” he insists. “President Obama was a historic, incredibly compelling candidate seeking office in a perfect storm of

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Treading bravely into these murky tropical waters, UM faculty and alumni share their insider and expert insights.

“Election lawyers ask every year, what state is going to be the next Florida?” states School of Law Professor Frances R. Hill, the Dean’s Distinguished Scholar for the Profession. “The answer is: Florida is determined to

explains Washington, D.C.-based consultant Art Collins, ’97, who studied at the law school and served as an advisor to presidential hopeful John Kerry in 2004 and Obama in 2008. “You can only elect the first African-American president of the United States once,” but with Republicans on track to spend upwards of $1.6 billion on Romney’s behalf, “you have to put together an unprecedented ground game, target voters, and message to them at a micro level, using all the new mediums we have.”

In the balance, he says, is nothing less than the future of America itself.

Eric Kriss couldn’t agree more. But as entrepreneur-in-residence at the School of Business Administration, he draws a radically different conclusion: Obama’s current economic course is simply unsustainable. “Europe is a time machine,” he warns, pointing to the dire economic straits and civil unrest across much of the European Union. “If you like the way the United States is going, then please enjoy what’s happening in Greece right now.” The only solution? Forcing a dangerously bloated federal government to relax what he sees as a death grip on private enterprise.

Kriss is hardly a disinterested academic when it comes to discussions about tax policy and regulating Wall Street. As a founding partner of the Bain Capital private equity firm alongside Mitt Romney, Kriss has been vilified by both Democrats and Republicans. During his failed presidential run, Newt Gingrich produced a 28-minute “King of Bain” attack ad against Romney, portraying Bain as capitalism run amok and a destroyer of entire communities.

“I don’t take it personally,” Kriss says. “Political campaigns are caricatures of ideas; they’re cartoonish.” But he’s not shy about defending his legacy as an entrepreneur at Bain: “What’s the alternative? Would you prefer to have the economy run by federal bureaucrats? Have them everywhere, on Main Street, watching everybody, logging everything, making sure we know where all the citizens are? Let’s have some drones up there to keep track of things!”

Joaquín Roy, Jean Monnet professor of European Integration and director

The (Not So) Great Debates Everything you know about this month’s televised presidential debates is wrong, at least according to Communication Studies lecturer David Steinberg.

“The media coverage acts as if they are, in fact, debates. They’re not,” bristles the director of University of Miami’s debate team since 1990. “They’re dual press conferences” that display little of the incisive back-and-forth in which Steinberg coaches his undergraduates. The presidential debate moderators often fail to ask follow-up questions, he notes, while the candidates themselves usually agree beforehand not to address each other directly. The net result sees reporters judging not who “won” a battle of ideas, but who best delivered their talking points.

And even that is rarely agreed upon.

“Rather than watching Walter Cronkite as my father might have, or getting news as a community, we crawl inside our Fox/MSNBC bubble, or our favorite place on the Internet, where everything we read is already consistent with what we believe.” Still, Steinberg points out, this sort of fragmentation is nothing new. “When Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas debated in 1858, journalists made no bones about being partisan. You would have two versions of the transcript, depending upon the bias of the transcriber,” he says. Based on your newspaper of choice back then, Lincoln was either a sensible moderate or a fire-breathing radical—an exaggerated dichotomy all too familiar to today’s media consumers.

“Having said that, it’ll be the largest audience ever for Obama and Romney,” Steinberg adds. “Sixty to 70 million people will watch the debates—more than the conventions, more than any campaign commercials.”

It’s the final opportunity to convince undecided voters, as well as motivate disaffected followers. So what exactly should viewers expect? Nothing on the order of the “oops” moment suffered by onetime presidential hopeful Texas Governor Rick Perry.

“With so many primary debates, Romney will go to the table with more than 20 practices,” predicts Steinberg. “In 1976 Gerald Ford made the fatal claim that Poland was not under the domination of the Soviet Union— those kind of gaffes are really unlikely to happen. They’re so polished now; they have a team of professionals working with them.” For proof, he adds, just look at the difference between vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s much-lampooned 2008 interview with Katie Couric and her subsequent drama-free debate with Joe Biden.

Which makes one wonder: Given the scripted nature of the debates, should we even care about their outcome? “It’s a question of degree,” Steinberg replies with a chuckle. “This is Florida. It doesn’t take too many votes to sway things here.”

—Brett Sokol

www.miami.edu/miami-magazine Fall 2012 MIAMI 23

of UM’s European Union Center, offers an alternative. “The solutions involve a partnership between private enterprise and the government,” says Roy. Moreover, while many American politicians would prefer to throw their hands up when it comes to even thinking about helping to bail out Greece or Roy’s native Spain, he argues that we spurn the EU at our own peril: “Western civilization is still based on the alliance of Europe and the progressive countries of the Western hemiSchool of Law professor Frances Hill

sphere.” Remove Europe from that equation, Roy cautions, and only China is poised to fill the resulting power vacuum. “If someone really believes Western values are going to be upheld by China—an autocracy with a political system worse than the old

right now and say these are people of good intent. But if you look at the grassroots level, I’m very optimistic,” Sekoff insists. Many may still see the cacophony of the Internet as part of the problem, but just wait, he adds. “There is hope to be found in this greater power of communication. If we can utilize these tools for good instead of, not evil but banality, there is hope.”

And as this brave new political world sorts itself out, what can Floridians expect? “It’s going to be a frenzy of money and controversies over allegations of voter fraud,” cautions law professor Hill. Even baseball is getting pulled into the morass. Hill is already steeling herself for a barrage of campaign commercials during the World Series: “Any time you turn your television set on, you’re going to see even more ads from groups you don’t recognize under the generic name of Americans for Good American Things for America. We’re not going to look back on this election with any fondness, regardless of who wins.”

Soviet Union—they’re kidding themselves.” And what of some Republican claims that President Obama is already instituting European-style socialism on these shores? Roy says such charges make most Europeans scratch their heads in confusion: “When I tell my colleagues at universities in Spain what universities in America charge, they don’t believe me. They couldn’t imagine going into debt to receive an education, which is expected to be heavily subsidized in Europe.”

Roy’s frustration with the overheated rhetoric of American electioneering is echoed by Huffington Post founding editor Roy Sekoff, A.B. ’81, whose own website now draws more monthly visitors than that of The New York Times. “There’s no way you could look at what’s happening in Washington

The Cuban Vote: Color by Numbers

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Why Won’t Little Havana Turn Blue?” (co-written with Every four years a swarm of presidential campaign former UM professor Benjamin Bishin), 90 percent of analysts descends on Miami and predicts that, finally, Cubans who settled in Miami before the Mariel boatlift the Republican Party’s iron grip on the Cuban-exile of 1980—a demographic renowned for both its vote is loosening, resulting in the softening of conservative politics and consistent turntraditionally hard-line attitudes toward out—are citizens, while nearly half of relations with Cuba. all Cubans who arrived after that Yet despite strong local name recogniwatershed event—a demographic seen tion and national financial support, as more moderate in their beliefs— Cuban-American Democrats Joe Garcia, have yet to become citizens, which A.B. ’87, J.D. ’91, and Raul Martinez means they can’t vote. went down to resounding defeats in “Cuban exiles have most of the 2008, while 64 percent of Miamitrappings of citizenship without Dade’s Cuban-Americans voted for the franchise,” says Klofstad. “They Republican presidential candidate John can stay here; they can work. Why go McCain—nearly 18 percent more than through all the machinations of hiring a the rest of the county and considerably lawyer and spending thousands of dollars above their Clinton-era support of the GOP. AN T S Casey Klofstad, an associate professor of when you’re already good to go? You can political science at the College of Arts and put that money toward paying for your kids’ Sciences who is co-teaching a course on the education, starting a small business, or sendSenator Marco Rubio 2012 election this semester, doesn’t see this ing remittances back home. Those activities (R-FL), J.D. ’96, the trend changing any time soon. For one thing, Miami-born son of Cuban are likely to be higher on the priority list than Klofstad explains in his 2011 report “The naturalization and voting.” immigrants, introduces Political Incorporation of Cuban Americans: —Brett Sokol Mitt Romney in Tampa.

24 MIAMI Fall 2012 www.miami.edu/miami-magazine

Tech Turnout

Students encourage students to play a role at the polls.

Student leaders share information about the nonpartisan Web-based service TurboVote while hosting on-campus voter registration drives.

PHOTOS: MICHAEL STRADER MARKO

THE UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI STUDENT GOVERNMENT IS FINDING more ways to rock the vote for Decision 2012. In addition to its Get Out the Vote (GOTV) initiative, SG has partnered with the nonprofit Web-based service TurboVote, co-founded by recent Harvard graduate Sam Novey, to encourage civic engagement.

Students can’t vote online, but they “can request voter registration forms, absentee ballots, and even email/text notifications about upcoming elections all through one website, umiami. turbovote.org,” explains Alessandria San Roman, executive secretary for UM Student Government, which is coordinating the effort with support from the Division of Student Affairs.

Novey says UM was one of the earliest adopters of TurboVote, which now has 45 higher education partners. A $250,000 grant from the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation covers fees related to the service through June 2013 for UM, Miami Dade College, and Florida International University, according to a July Chronicle of Higher Education article.

Weekly events on the Coral Gables campus offer in-person voter registration as well. As an official voter registration organization, UM must turn in voter registration forms within 48 hours to comply with new Florida election regulations.

As of press time, Student Government had helped to register more than 586 voters through TurboVote and more than 200 through physical forms, reports San Roman, a political science major who became eligible to vote in 2010.

“We plan to surpass our record of 2,000 registered voters in the 2004 election. Of those 2,000, 62 percent made it to the polls. We plan to increase the turnout percentage this year by using social media, having our volunteers on the field the day of elections, and having our professors encourage students to make it to our local precinct, BankUnited Center.”

San Roman adds that the initiative is strictly nonpartisan.

—Robin Shear

More at miami.edu/vote or www.facebook.com/UM.GOTV.TurboVote.

www.miami.edu/miami-magazine Fall 2012 MIAMI 25

26 MIAMI Fall 2012 www.miami.edu/miami-magazine

Research suggests practicing mindfulness can build “mental armor,” even under extreme stress.

BY GREG BREINING

Boot Camp for the Brain

PICTURE A GROUP OF COMBAT-READY MARINES IN BATTLE

fatigues: Rifles slung across their backs, they sit at attention, focused on the sound of their own breathing.

Can this kind of meditative training make for better military service members? It’s a question University of Miami neuroscientist Amishi Jha and her colleagues are investigating.

Mindfulness, explains Jha, “has to do with paying attention in the present moment, without the story line, without emotional reactivity or judgment about what you’re seeing.”

The concept of mindfulness isn’t new. During the 1960s, restless students such as Jon Kabat-Zinn traveled to India seeking enlightenment, finding it in the form of ancient meditation techniques. Kabat-Zinn’s mindfulness training protocol is now used by more than 750 medical centers, hospitals, and clinics worldwide to manage pain, depression, and anxiety.

But twining mindfulness with military operations has certainly attracted attention.

“It’s been a source of debate and contention among the mindfulness community,” acknowledges Jha, an associate professor in the College of Arts and Sciences’ Department of Psychology. “I’m grateful to the people who are trying to defend our nation’s interests. So when people from the mindfulness community challenge me by claiming that I

DAVID POHL/iSPOT

want to make ‘super soldiers,’ my answer is, Yes, I want to make the kind of soldier who is most discerning and least likely to make careless or reactive mistakes.”

www.miami.edu/miami-magazine Fall 2012 MIAMI 27

Elizabeth Stanley, a one-time Army intelligence officer, had already recognized the potential of mindfulness training in a military context. The associate professor of security studies at Georgetown University designed an eight-week Mindfulness-Based Mind Fitness Training (MMFT) for soldiers.

She and Jha teamed up in 2008 to test its effectiveness.

Jha and Stanley theorized that the stress of pre-deployment training, deployment, and combat may deplete working memory and lead to breakdowns in focus, discipline, verbal ability, and mental health of the kind that has been exhibited by soldiers returning from Iraq.

To see if mindfulness training might provide a kind of “mental armor” to protect working memory, they recruited two groups of Marines preparing for imminent deployment to Iraq, as well as a civilian control group. They tested all three groups in standard exercises— remembering letters while performing simple arithmetic—to determine working memory.

Among the Marines who took part in MMFT was Marine reservist Major Jason Spitaletta. He recalls watching as his fellow service personnel, scattered across a lawn, engaged in yoga poses.

In addition to yoga-like postures, their mindfulness exercises included concentrating on breathing to the exclusion of all other distractions, “body scan”

Neuroscientist Amishi Jha investigates the effects the practice of mindfulness has on brain functionality.

DOD/FRED W. BAKER III

That’s the crux of Jha’s research and other mindfulness work at the University—to understand how mindfulness training can help the brain operate better under stress, bolster working memory and attention, and improve the performance and emotional lives of people in all kinds of pressure-cooker professions, from the battlefield to the courtroom.

Jha says a great deal of interest in mindfulness training has come from the military. “The interest is in figuring out if it is a viable solution to many challenges the military faces, with so many service members coming home with PTSD and depression, committing suicide, and suffering from a host of other psychological diseases,” she says.

The key is to improve a significant component of cognition—working memory. “Working memory is the ability to maintain and manipulate information over short intervals,” she explains. “It is critical for decision making, regulating emotions, and being able to know what your current state of mind is. Because stress and overuse degrade working memory, we are particularly interested to see if working memory can be strengthened in people facing high-stress, high-stakes situations. That could be law enforcement, combat soldiers, highperformance athletes—a whole range of people could benefit from training to improve their working memory.”

The Department of Defense is interested in learning whether mindfulness-based exercises such as yoga can help soldiers before, during, and after deployment.

28 MIAMI Fall 2012 www.miami.edu/miami-magazine

exercises that had them shifting their attention to various parts of the body over a 20-minute span, and 30 minutes of “homework” exercises daily.

“The goal is to get to the point where you’re able to identify when your mind is wandering, when the attention to the task at hand starts to slip,” says Spitaletta. “Then you can bring yourself back to a state of heightened awareness.”

Jha’s research found that, compared with the civilian control group, both groups of Marines tended to perform poorly on working memory tests as stress mounted and deployment grew closer. But in the group that received mindfulness training, performance improved among those who consistently practiced the exercises.

Some Marines resisted the mindfulness training, but others, such as Spitaletta, reported that they continued to practice mindfulness, even in Iraq.

Spitaletta says he found the skill of snapping his mind to attention useful, especially during boring hours on patrol, often in stultifying heat.

“It provided me with a different approach to introspection,” offers

MEG PUKEL

emotional resilience.

“Our research suggests this type of training is protecting people against the kind of degradation and mental decline that happens as a result of being in a very high-stress situation,” says Jha. “The most encouraging part of the study was that the more people practiced, the more they benefited. It’s not an inordinate amount of practice. The people who benefited were practicing an average of 12 minutes a day.

“The takeaway is that, just like the body, the brain can be trained to be healthier and stronger. Mindfulness training exercises are showing promise as tools to build more attentive, less emotionally reactive brains.”

Another population Jha is focusing on is students. Since 2007 she has been a scientific advisor to the Hawn Foundation, created by actress Goldie Hawn to help children cultivate the social and emotional skills to reduce stress and improve academic performance.

In a collaboration of her lab and

really angry. We know we want to act honorably,” he adds. “Yet things happen. Thoughts, feelings, and sensations take us by surprise, and we get caught and become reactive. All of a sudden our intentions seem to fly out the window.”

Mindfulness training, explains Rogers, “offers this wonderful opportunity to notice what is arising inside of us so that we gain more mastery over what we do about it.” He and Jha have founded the Mindfulness Research and Practice Initiative, a multidisciplinary academic community of those interested in mindfulness training at UM. Jha’s mindfulness research has attracted interest not only from Hawn, but the Dalai Lama, leaders at the Pentagon, and members of Congress.

Yet it represents only part of her role at UM. In 2010 Jha was recruited here from the University of Pennsylvania to help spearhead the development of a 37,700-square-foot neuroscience facility, slated for completion in summer 2013 on the Coral Gables campus.

“ Mindfulness training exercises are showing promise as tools to build more attentive, less emotionally reactive brains.”

Spitaletta, a researcher in the Advanced Concepts and Irregular Warfare Analysis Group at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. “I would anticipate my reactions to different things and be able to better manage different frustrating stimuli.”

It was often necessary to keep a tight rein on emotional outbursts in Iraq, he adds, because “Americans and Iraqis respond and react in different ways and at different speeds. Interactions were somewhat stressful for many people.”

Jha and Stanley will continue their military work with more than 200 Army soldiers in Honolulu. With a $1.72 million Defense Department grant, the four-year project will compare the effectiveness of four versions of mindfulness training to the “positive psychology” training the military currently employs to build mental and

Hawn’s foundation, she will be researching the effects of mindfulness training on working memory and academic performance in selected MiamiDade County public schools.

Mindfulness is already proving useful in another academic setting— law school. One of Jha’s collaborators at UM is Scott Rogers, director of the Mindfulness in Law Program and author of three books on mindfulness for law students and lawyers.

Lawyers have many legal responsibilities—to their clients, opposing attorneys, and others, says Rogers, who teaches “Professional Responsibility and Mindfulness” and “Mindfulness in the Law.” “Attorneys can, from time to time, not do what they’re supposed to do because they may be afraid, may feel they’re going to lose, or may be really,

Jha says the new neuroscience building, funded with a $14.8 million grant from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act awarded by the National Institutes of Health, will put the University among the ranks of just a few other top-flight U.S. institutions investigating the brain’s ability to change itself using contemplative techniques such as mindfulness.

“We’re bringing wisdom traditions and cutting-edge neuroscience together to see if we can help make the brain healthier,” she says. “My goal is to build a University-wide center with a research emphasis on mindfulness, paired with training opportunities for students and the broader University community, South Florida residents, and people from around the world who are interested in optimizing their ability to pay attention and be calm.”

www.miami.edu/miami-magazine Fall 2012 MIAMI 29

Brand Ambition

How the split-U got its groove

BY LYS SA G O L D B E R G , ’ 1 5

There are thousands of universities across the nation, but only one gets to be “the U.” Here’s a look at how U logos and traditions have evolved into an internationally recognized brand identity.

1973

A Logo Is Born University of Miami Athletics had gone through several years of uniform and helmet changes, with inconsistent logos ranging from an “M” to “UM.” In the early 1970s, the Athletic Federation (now the Hurricane Club, the studentathlete scholarship fund) was seeking a new graphic identity that would symbolize the University of Miami, notes Evelyn Schwartz, a former assistant athletic director of the organization.

They commissioned a logo redesign, which was introduced in 1973.

The letters “UM” could have represented many other schools besides the University of Miami, so publicist Julian Cole, A.B. ’49, the first graduate of the University’s radio and television department, worked with local graphic artist Bill Bodenhamer to develop the green and orange split-U mark. In the middle of the U, images to represent each sport were inserted—a baseball player, a football player, or a tennis player.

The U was then used for slogans like “U gotta believe,” “U is great,” and “U is moving forward.”

“If you think about it, it was quite a stretch,” said Lisa Cole, one of Julian Cole’s daughters. “They took the U and said, ‘This is the University.’”

The Athletic Federation hoped

people who saw the split-U would automatically think of the University, recalls Schwartz. “Beyond our wildest dreams, this is what happened,” she says. Fueled by excitement about a growing sports program, there was a hype surrounding the U that stuck. Without this logo’s creation, she adds, people probably never would have thought about calling Miami “the U.”

distinguish Miami. But students protested, launching a “Save the U” campaign. Also vocal about saving the U was then-alumni board of trustees member Walter Etling, A.B. ’48. (Read the article at http://merrick.library.miami. edu/cdm/compoundobject/collection/ hurricane/id/23046/rec/9.)

1980s

It’s All about the U

1979

The Great Logo Debate According to an August 1979 article in The Miami Hurricane, UM President Henry King Stanford set up a committee to find a replacement for the U logo.

Among those in favor of replacing the U at that time was the chair of the graphics department, who felt the single letter didn’t properly symbolize or clearly

30 MIAMI Fall 2012 www.miami.edu/miami-magazine

Today the phrase “It’s All about the U” can be seen on T-shirts and overheard daily, but it originated in Athletics.

John Routh, known for his role as both Sebastian the Ibis and the baseball team’s Miami Maniac, arrived at UM in 1983. He says Athletics coined the phrase, but for a very different purpose. Athletics employees who felt they worked hard and for little pay would express their dedication to the athletes by saying, “It’s all about the U,” explains Routh, now executive director of the UM Sports Hall of Fame.

Years later, the slogan was adopted University-wide.

1992

Throwing Up the U The U hand gesture first emerged in 1992 for a home football game against Florida State. Former UM cheerleader Bill Tigano, B.S.C. ’93, created the symbol for football fans to use as the Band of the Hour played the Star Wars “Imperial March.”

“FSU has the chop, and the Gators have their chomp,” Tigano told Miami magazine in 2007. “So I wanted to come up with something to identify us.”

“Over the years, it grew and grew,” Routh adds. “Now when you do the U, everyone knows exactly what you’re talking about.”

well recognized the U brand was, says Joanne Leahy, executive director for the Office of UHealth/Miller Marketing.

Study results indicated that people, including those beyond the local community, who saw the U thought of the University of Miami, not just its athletics program. In fact, notes Leahy, almost 40 percent of people in the Northeast United States also recognized the U. “People just knew what the U was, and they not only knew what it was but also thought very highly of it,” she explains.

2009

Brand on the Run Prior to the prevalent split-U, the University of Miami used the Miami “bar” logo on University documents and supplies. But in 2009 the split-U

became UM’s new brand identity.

Adopting an athletics logo as an institutional brand is an unusual move for a university, but the administration made the leap successfully after the academic marketing firm they’d hired for the study surveyed high-achieving high school students as well as parents, alumni, and high school guidance counselors during focus groups in Los Angeles, Chicago, and New York. The verdict: The split-U is one of the most recognizable collegiate marks nationally and may be the most pervasive graphic symbol in South Florida.

2012

Putting the U in Momentum2 When it came time to announce the University’s new $1.6 billion capital fundraising campaign this year, UM President Donna E. Shalala emphasized the University’s pride in the split-U, selecting it as Momentum2’s official logo.

An earlier version of this article first appeared in The Miami Hurricane.

2006

UPolice UM Chief of Police David Rivero recognized the importance of the U as a symbol for the whole University when he arrived in 2006, establishing a UPolice logo for business cards, memos and letterheads. Then, in what he calls a risky move, Rivero says he ordered all squad cars repainted and the U added to their sides. By 2007 UMPD badges incorporated the U.

2008

A Healthier U The University of Miami Health System adopted the UHealth name and logo after a market research study showed how

The Man Behind the U William “Bill” Bodenhamer dreamed up the Miami Dolphins logo for $250 in 1965. Giving that iconic mammal a run for its money is the bold but underappreciated letter of the alphabet he developed for the University of Miami Athletic Federation (now the Hurricane Club). Bodenhamer passed away in 2000, but the symbols he created have stood the test of time. His son, William S. Bodenhamer Jr., confirms that the 1973 split-U remained one of his father’s favorite creations. “That U meant something to my father and my family—and certainly meant something to the University,” he says.

A University of Arkansas graduate, Bodenhamer Sr. was a designer for the U.S. Air Force before moving to Miami with his wife in 1957 and starting his own firm in 1962. He also designed logos for Capital Bank, Calder and Tropical Park racetracks, and the Lighthouse for the Blind. Although Bodenhamer suffered from glaucoma in his later years, his son says he kept working and mentoring students until his death at age 72.

www.miami.edu/miami-magazine Fall 2012 MIAMI 31

Alumni Digest

Let’s work together to make a difference.

Every Gift… Every Donor…

Makes a Difference at the University of Miami Imagine the impact alumni can have working together to enhance learning and transform students’ lives by making a gift each year to the University of Miami.

Regardless of your gift amount or the area you support, be a part of the team that helps to make a difference in the lives of our students.

Join the team today! Support the University by making a gift online at www.miami.edu/alumni/giving or by mailing your gift to: Annual Giving University of Miami P.O. Box 248053 Coral Gables, FL 33124-9972

To learn about additional annual giving opportunities, visit www.miami.edu/alumni/giving.

Any gift to the University of Miami is fully tax-deductible to the extent allowed by law. For more information about giving to the University of Miami, call 305-284-4443, email give@miami.edu, or visit www.miami.edu/givetoum.

32 MIAMI Fall 2012 www.miami.edu/miami-magazine

Alumni Digest

NEWS AND EVENTS OF INTEREST TO UNIVERSITY OF MIAMI ALUMNI

Hurry for Hollywood Entertainment executives hobnobbing poolside over cocktails at the home of a big-name producer might seem like a Hollywood cliché, but for students at the University of Miami, such a scene sets the stage for success.

For nearly a decade, John Pike, A.B. ’71, former president of Paramount Pictures Television, and his wife, Vicki, have collaborated with School of Communication Professor Paul Lazarus to host an alumni reception at their Brentwood, California, residence as part of what Lazarus calls the L.A. Experience.

“This was a banner year,” enthuses Lazarus. The open-air event, blessed with sunny skies for the ninth year in a row, drew 150 ’Canes as well as a visit from UM President Donna E. Shalala and School of Communication Dean Gregory Shepherd.

The L.A. Experience, launched as a spring break expedition soon after Lazarus joined UM in 1987, has blossomed into a six-credit summer session based at UCLA for 20 fortunate students in the Cinema and Interactive Media Program (formerly Motion Pictures). Lazarus co-teaches it with

DON MILICI

The L.A. Experience helps put students on the fast track to Tinseltown

School of Communication Dean Gregory Shepherd, UM President Donna E. Shalala, Professor Paul Lazarus, John Pike, A.B. ’71, and Vicki Pike enjoy a UM gathering in L.A.

former student Michael Lent, M.F.A. ’93, bringing in guest speakers and taking students to meet professionals at major studios. “They get pragmatic advice they can’t get in books,” says Lazarus.

Alumni Survey Says Earlier this year the University of Miami Alumni Association conducted a comprehensive survey on a host of issues—from the UM student experience to future directions being considered by the Office of Alumni Relations and the University. A full 13 percent of alumni surveyed responded to the online questionnaire. “Given how busy we all are, we’re extremely pleased with this above-average response rate,” says Donna Arbide, M.B.A. ’95, associate vice president for alumni relations.

“The results offer invaluable messages regarding how alumni feel about their alma mater and what they expect from us.” The next step, an email to alumni offering a direct link to those results, is planned for January 2013.

Information will be available via other formats as well.

Plus, he notes, UM’s West Coast contingent is growing stronger every year. He rattles off the names of professionals from across the entertainment industry spectrum: among them, director David Nutter, ’83, who’s had a remarkable 16 of 17 pilots picked up; Anne Parducci, B.B.A. ’82, an executive VP at Lionsgate Entertainment; Mary Viola, B.S.C. ’98, head of film production at Wonderland Sound and Music; gaming story developer James Waugh, M.F.A. ’02, of Blizzard Entertainment; reality TV casting entrepreneur Doron Ofir, B.S.C. ’00, M.F.A. ’02; and Smallville editor Andi Armaganian, M.F.A. ’96.

“We are showing students different paths through the industry,” explains Lazarus, who was himself an attorney, talent agent, and movie producer before joining academia. “We’re preparing them in a real sense for work.” www.miami.edu/miami-magazine Fall 2012 MIAMI 33

Alumni Digest

Stories of U: James Jones ties to the U also include an aunt, Lisa Gutierrez, A.B. ’89, and cousin Mionsha Gay, A.B. ’97, both of whom played basketball for the Hurricanes.

It’s safe to say the 6’8” Jones stood out in his classes at the U. “I was an honor student,” he recalls during a video interview for the UM Alumni Association’s Stories of U project.

“The majority of [my classmates] weren’t athletes, so I was like a tree amongst [them].”

NBA PHOTOS

Before the Miami Heat became the 2012 National Basketball Association champions, there was the little matter of a lockout. In addition to contributing three-pointers to his winning team, Heat guard-forward James Jones, B.B.A. ’03, played a key role during the fivemonth standoff, serving as secretarytreasurer for the Players Committee and working on the Negotiation Committee.

“My focus is to get a deal done here,” he told ESPN760 in August 2011, a

“ My focus is to get a deal done.” few months before an agreement was reached. “We’re all anxious about getting back to work, but it’s going to take some time and some collaboration with the owners.”

Jones’s business acumen is rooted in a finance degree from the University of Miami, where he met his wife, Destiny Jones, B.S. ’01, M.S.Ed. ’04. His family

Now, after winning the NBA’s AllStar Weekend Three-Point Contest and making a career-high 123 three-pointers last year, the 32-year-old free agent is heading into his tenth NBA season following a summer of working out, spending time with his and Destiny’s three children, and running camps for local kids in his native Miami.

Add Wings to Your Wheels

More at storiesofu.com/videos/ james-jones-b-b-a-03.

Sebastian takes your trip to new heights In the sea of standard Florida license plates, yours can be one that turns heads. The UM plate is available at any Florida tag agency for just $25 above the cost of a regular plate.

Best of all, the extra $25 funds University of Miami Alumni Scholarships for UM students.

The only requirement is that you must be a Florida resident with a vehicle registered in the state. So go ahead and let your tag tell the world you’re a ’Cane.

Get the University of Miami License Plate

www.miami.edu/alumni

34 MIAMI Fall 2012 www.miami.edu/miami-magazine

Writer Cynthia Cidre, A.B. ’78, and director Michael M. Robin, B.S.C. ’85, are executive producers of the return of Dallas. Their update of the prime-time ’80s drama about the powerful Ewing clan debuted on TNT June 13 with a reported 6.9 million viewers. The muchheralded premiere—including original cast members Larry Hagman as J.R., Patrick Duffy as Bobby, and Linda Gray as Sue Ellen—brought audiences back into the Ewings’ intrigue-filled oil empire 20 years later.

Though both Cidre (Cane, The Mambo Kings) and Robin (Nip/ Tuck, The Closer) are School of Communication graduates with awardwinning Hollywood careers, they’d never worked together before Dallas.

“We’ve tried to make sure that, as we’ve brought this forward and freshened it with all these new faces, you get to watch the real generational fight within the family,” notes Robin.

Cidre says her writing team had no trouble conjuring the drama’s trademark suspense, explaining in an interview: “We worked backwards from cliffhangers because we knew there were certain reveals that would just be deliciously fun.”

Adding to the excitement on and off the set was the chemistry of the returning actors, who had remained close since their original series went off the air in 1991. Setting the scene, Cidre shared an incident from a dinner she and Robin had with the stars: “Larry [Hagman] put a piece of bread pudding on a fork and flung it, and Patrick [Duffy], who is sitting on my right, is supposed to catch it, because they’ve done that before—it’s a routine, but Mike [Robin] and I didn’t know that.

So we see this piece of food fly over, and Patrick misses it because Larry

COURTESY TNT

L.A. Alumni Add Sizzle to Record-Hot Summer

Cynthia Cidre, A.B. ’78; Michael M. Robin (in baseball cap), B.S.C. ’85; and the cast of Dallas.

overthrew it. It landed at a table across the restaurant where two women were eating, and the piece of bread pudding fell between them. Mike and I just can’t believe this is happening, but Larry got up very calmly. He has these $10,000 bills he carries around that have his picture on them and say, ‘This is not worth the paper it’s printed on.’ He signed the bill and introduced himself. He took his hat off, apologized, took back the piece of bread pudding, and came back to our table. And that was our first dinner

with the three of them.”

Cidre traces the foundation for her current endeavor back to the scriptwriting skills she gained at UM: “No matter what job I’m doing on Dallas, whether it’s writing a script, giving notes to another writer, sitting behind the director on set producing the show, or cutting the film in an edit bay, I am using the structural skill I learned from writing.”

Season two of Dallas is set to air in January.

www.miami.edu/miami-magazine Fall 2012 MIAMI 35

Alumni Digest

An Account of Character Newly named University of Miami trustee Joseph J. Echevarria Jr., B.B.A. ’78, became one of a select number of Hispanic CEOs at major U.S. companies last year, when he took the helm of accounting giant Deloitte. He shared hard-won wisdom from what he called his “long, long journey” during the School of Business Administration and College of Engineering commencement ceremony in May. An excerpt adapted from his address follows.

JENNY ABREU

I’m a Puerto Rican from the South Bronx, and that matters. It has a lot to do with who I am today. I came from a single-parent household, grew up in the projects. My first job I got at a gas station. Fifty cents an hour was more money than I ever thought I could make in my life, and I was pretty fired up. The manager says, “Let me show you your office.” Now I’m feeling really good—I’m like 14 years old. He brings me over to the side of the gas station, opens the door, and it’s the bathroom. Have you been in a bathroom at a gas station?

Not exactly the start I had in mind. I wanted to be out front, pump gas, be a mechanic. But I talked to my mom, and she said, “You go back there and you finish what you started.” I know that sounds like a cliché, but in the 35 years I’ve been at Deloitte, the very first thing that distinguishes people is being able

Deloitte CEO Joseph Echevarria, B.B.A. ’78

to finish. So I said, you know, I’m going to have to become the greatest bathroom cleaner in the history of Exxon Mobil to get to the front. I went in there every day, and after three weeks, he put me out front pumping gas. I was on my way.

And it’s then that this giant beautiful white El Dorado strolls in, and I put some gas in it. I learned that the man who owned it made about $50 every hour or two as an accountant. And I

said, “That’s what I want to become, an accountant,” because I saw that as a way out. So lesson one: Finish, really finish. And number two: All great things in life are accomplished by people who have passion, so whatever you decide to do, do it with passion. That’ll be the next thing that distinguishes you.

Watch Echevarria’s full address at www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lLIbyD7PCc.

Advancement Advocate

CASE Summit: Rita Bornstein, Ph.D. ’75, center, with Linda Steckley, M.B.A. ’87, vice president, UM Alumni Association, and Sergio Gonzalez.

Rita Bornstein, Ph.D. ’75, president emerita of Rollins College and a former vice president for development and research professor at the University of Miami, received the E. Burr Gibson Lifetime Achievement Award from CASE (Council for Advancement and Support of Education) at the CASE Summit 2012 in Washington, D.C., this past July. CASE trustee Sergio M. Gonzalez, senior vice president for university advancement and external affairs at UM, thanked Bornstein for her more than 35 years of distinguished service to higher education. “Rita has been

36 MIAMI Fall 2012 www.miami.edu/miami-magazine

an exemplary role model and mentor for academic leaders and advancement professionals throughout her career,” he says. “She has demonstrated how the advancement function can be pivotal in the success of leaders in higher education.” As president of Rollins in Winter Park, Florida, from 1990 to 2004, Bornstein led a $160 million campaign for academic programs, scholarships, faculty chairs, and facilities. From 1985 to 1990 at UM, she helped former President Edward T. Foote II and the late James McLamore run a campaign that raised more than $517 million.

Class Notes 1950s

Daniel A. Wick, B.B.A. ’51, J.D. ’53, a WWII veteran and former Navy commander, united three generations of Hurricanes for a photo with President Donna E. Shalala at the Newman Alumni Center’s Sebastian statue. With him was his son, Daniel Wick Jr., B.B.A. ’76, and granddaughter Mary Wick, a UM biology major.

James F. Pollack, A.B. ’53, J.D. ’55, received Florida Bar’s Tobias Simon pro bono service award for Miami-Dade County. A Legal Aid volunteer, he also leads jazz and current events classes for seniors. He won the 2011 Positive Living Award from the Alliance for Aging, legal category.

John Softness, A.B. ’55, wrote the script for “Jazz Meets Gershwin,” a star-studded evening at Miami’s Adrienne Arsht Center, featuring Frost School of Music Dean Shelly Berg, Michael Feinstein, Dave Grusin, Terence Blanchard, opera star Denyce Graves, and many others.

Shelly Frome, A.B. ’56, has released his latest book, Twilight of the Drifter, “a Southern gothic crime-and-blues odyssey” (Sunbury Press, 2011).

Betty Castor, M.Ed. ’58, was appointed to the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board in 2011 by President Barack Obama.

1960s

Miette Korda Burnstein, J.D. ’61, is the author of the mystery Dead Man’s Tattoo (e-published, 2011).

Leon J. Hoffman, A.B. ’61, is a clinical psychologist in Chicago eager to hear from classmates.

Allan Rosenbaum, A.B. ’62, was elected vice president of the American Society for Public Administration. He is a professor

of public administration and director of the Institute for Public Management and Community Service at Florida International University.

Arthur “Art” Serio, B.B.A. ’64, was inducted into his high school hall of fame by the Independence High School Alumni Association in Ohio for excelling in football, basketball, and track and field. At UM he lettered in track and field four years. He plans to compete in the U.S. Tennis Association League Nationals in the 70-plus age group.

John Atlas, A.B. ’65, is co-producing a documentary based on his book about anti-poverty group ACORN. The project received a grant from the International Documentary Association.

Robert A. “Bobby” Schatzman, B.B.A. ’67, J.D. ’71, of the Miami office of GrayRobinson P.A., was elected to the board of directors for the American Jewish Committee.

Michael Litow, B.B.A. ’68, executive director of The Education Center of Developmental Resources, offers free academic counseling and tutoring to veterans and their families.

Thomas P. Rebel, B.S. ’69, M.S. ’73, M.Ed. ’74, J.D. ’78, was named to the 2011 Georgia Super Lawyers list. The employment expert at Fisher & Phillips LLP was appointed managing partner of the firm’s Atlanta headquarters, overseeing 48 attorneys and 77 staff members.

1970s

Dianne Collins, A.B. ’70, is the author of Do You Quantum Think?: New Thinking that Will Rock Your World (SelectBooks, 2011).

Louis J. Tripoli, A.B. ’70, joined Albany, New York-based civil litigation and general practice

Citizen ’Cane Mechanical Engineer Nets Win-Win Career Even in his 40s, Jeff Benck, M.S. ’94, loves his pickup basketball games—a holdover from his undergraduate years playing varsity at Rochester Institute of Technology.

Basketball bespeaks Benck’s strengths, both in business and pleasure. He’s technically savvy—at least he can still make the occasional outside jump shot—but as president and chief operating officer of Emulex, a $452.5 million technical networkingsolutions provider, he knows that getting his team to work efficiently and with enthusiasm is what will satisfy him in the end.

“I enjoy making everyone feel good about being part of the team and celebrating their accomplishments together,” says Benck, who started out as a worker bee at IBM in Boca Raton, Florida.

Initially he focused primarily on the PS-2, Big Blue’s first big-selling personal computer, and then the early Think Pad—a precursor to today’s tablet computers. Benck’s name is on six patents through his work at IBM, but he knew he wanted more from his career.

When the chance to study management of technology at UM’s College of Engineering arose, he went all in. “This was going to be prestigious, a new program modeled after the one at Sloan, the MIT business school,” he recalls. “I knew I was a good engineer, but my strength, I thought, would be in managing a group of engineers to develop and market products.”

For the last few of his 18 years at IBM, Benck led teams working on the company’s blade servers, a more efficient and stripped-down version of large-capacity computers—essentially the flat-screen of servers. “My greatest successes,” he notes, “have been team efforts where I had the opportunity to lead others.”

Taking notice was Emulex. The maker of server components called on Benck in 2008 to become its second in command.

He jumped at the offer and now resides in Southern California with his wife and two daughters.

“The degree from Miami was perfect for this path,” says Benck, who is as energized off the court as he is on. “I am super-competitive and have always wanted to win, but I have always wanted to win as a team. There is no greater joy than having others with you on that road.” —Robert Strauss www.miami.edu/miami-magazine Fall 2012 MIAMI 37

Class Notes firm Maguire Cardona as managing attorney.

Harry R. Duncanson, B.B.A. ’72, of Tallahassee, Florida, is a semi-retired certified public accountant, a member of the Florida Judicial Qualifications Commission, and chair of the Florida Early Learning Advisory Council.

Marcella Auerbach, A.B. ’73, received the 2011 Lawyer of the Year award from Taxpayers Against Fraud Education Fund in Washington, D.C. Retha Boone-Frye, A.B. ’73, Miami-Dade Black Affairs Advisory Board executive director, was recently honored for her accomplishments by ICABA (Identify, Connect, and Activate the Black Accomplished).

Paul Levine, J.D. ’73, is the author of Lassiter (Random House, 2011), the eighth in his series of legal thrillers about a former Miami Dolphins linebacker who goes on to UM law school

and becomes a trouble-prone trial lawyer. His newest caper is Paydirt (Nittany Valley Productions, 2012).

Jonathan “Jack” Lord, B.S. ’73, M.D. ’78, is chief operating officer of the Miller School and UHealth-University of Miami Health System.

Katherine Fernández Rundle, B.Ed. ’73, received the UM School of Law Center for Ethics and Public Service’s 10th annual William M. Hoeveler Award. She has been the state attorney for Miami-Dade County since 1993.

Sandy B. Muller, B.Ed. ’74, of Pinecrest, Florida, launched the Sandy B. Muller Breast Cancer Foundation to help Miami-Dade County residents with treatment and basic living expenses in 2009. She is a breast cancer survivor.

Suzanne Migdall, A.B. ’75, president of a Fort Lauderdale-based film and television company, was

honored at the Sawgrass Mills Role Models event in Broward County.

Charles W. Rice, J.D. ’75, had his article “The Submarine Chaser Training Center: Downtown Miami’s International Graduate School of Anti-Submarine Warfare During World War II” published in Tequesta, the journal of the Historical Association of Southern Florida.

Raymond Angelo Belliotti, M.A. ’76, Ph.D. ’77, has published his 11th and 12th books, Dante’s Deadly Sins: Moral Philosophy in Hell (Wiley-Blackwell, 2011), and Posthumous Harm: Why the Dead Are Still Vulnerable (Lexington, 2011).

David Hartman, B.S. ’76, M.B.A. ’79, is a visiting assistant professor of management at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut.

Roney J. Mateu, B.Arch. ’76, was elected to The College of Fel-

lows of The American Institute of Architects. He also received the University of Florida School of Architecture 2012 Design Excellence Award and an Award of Excellence in Architecture at the 57th Annual Design Awards Gala highlighting architecture and design in South Florida for his firm’s Best Friends Pet Hotel at Disney World in Orlando, Florida.

Cary Tennis, A.B. ’76, writes the Salon.com advice column “Since You Asked.” His latest book is Citizens of the Dream: Advice on Writing, Painting, Playing, Acting, and Being (Cary Tennis Books, 2011).

Jay Yourist, M.S. ’77, Ph.D. ’81, is CEO of Nuovo Biologics. He founded the Florida-based biopharmaceutical company in 2010 with former Miller School of Medicine faculty Kent Miller.

Stuart Rose, B.B.A. ’69, is vice president for business develop-

Build Your

Hurricane Heritage Make a UM education part of your family tradition

There’s no greater expression of Hurricane pride than when alumni show interest in sending their children and grandchildren to the U. The UM Alumni Association returns the favor by offering these information sessions exclusively for legacy applicants during Alumni Weekend and Homecoming.

Med U: 12 Steps to Get into Medical School

Undergraduate Legacy Admission Forum

Thursday, October 18, 2012 6 p.m.

Friday, October 19, 2012 2 p.m.

Newman Alumni Center Bruce and Robbi Toll Alumni Library 6200 San Amaro Drive Coral Gables, Florida For UM legacy students who are considering applying to medical school

Otto G. Richter Library Third-Floor Conference Room 1300 Memorial Drive Coral Gables, Florida

RSVP by October 10, 2012 to Erica Arroyo, B.S.C. ’03, M.A.L.S. ’08, at earroyo@miami.edu, 305-284-1724, or miami.edu/alumniweekend.

38 MIAMI Fall 2012 www.miami.edu/miami-magazine

ment. Yourist was invited to speak at the 2012 World Animal Health Congress.

Fred Chikovsky, A.B. ’78, J.D. ’81, Sara Chikovsky, A.B. ’78, J.D. ’82, and five of their children took part in the inaugural Hope for Vision 5K Run/Walk in Hollywood, Florida, last year, to raise funds to eradicate blindness. Sara is cochair of Hope for Vision’s board of directors. Son Max Chikovsky, B.S. ’12, serves as its director of science communications and daughter Arielle Chikovsky Amad, A.B. ’02, sits on the advisory board.

Gloria Estefan, A.B. ’78, released her latest album, Little Miss Havana (2011).

Bonnie Hinck-Baldatti, B.M. ’78, a Miami-Dade music teacher, was named Teacher of the Year for a second time at her school and won the Aerospace Officer of the Year Award for the Civil Air Patrol, Florida Wing, Group 7.

Patricia San Pedro, B.F.A. ’78, released her latest book The Cancer Dancer. Discovery Home & Health and Discovery Familia aired a documentary about her healing journey. She launched www. positivelypat.com, a multimedia resource for other women who have gone through breast cancer.

Rosann Sidener, B.M. ’78, M.M. ’87, Miami Beach Senior High School principal, received the Miami Beach Chamber of Commerce’s 2012 Jan Pfeiffer Distinguished Service Award for “extraordinary community involvement that has generated extensive contributions to South Florida.”

Horace Traylor, Ph.D. ’78, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga’s first African-American graduate, received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the university in 2011. He is a former Chattanooga City College president and retired Miami Dade College Foundation president and Miami Dade College district vice president for institutional advancement.

Andrew P. Bandklayder, B.B.A. ’79, M.B.A. ’80, is on the Barron’s magazine “America’s Top 1,000 Advisors: State-by-State” list.

Kenneth Fuchs, B.M. ’79, a composition professor at the University of Connecticut, had five of his works recorded by conductor JoAnn Falletta and the London Symphony Orchestra for Naxos American Classics.

Roderic I. Pettigrew, Ph.D./M.D. ’79, the first Director of the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering at the National Institutes of Health, presented a talk on the Coral Gables campus titled “The Convergence of Engineering, the Physical and Life Sciences, and the Public’s Health” as part of the UM College of Engineering Distinguished Speaker Series.

1980s

Sharon Mckinney, B.S.Ed. ’80, of Nassau, Bahamas, was named C.H. Reeves Junior High School’s Teacher of the Year in 2011. She has been a social studies educator for the past 39 years.

Paul D. Novack, B.B.A. ’80, a former mayor of Surfside, Florida, was inducted into the Miami Beach Senior High School Hall of Fame and promoted to the rank of captain in the Civil Air Patrol, U.S. Air Force Auxiliary, where he serves as legal officer and public affairs officer for the Miami Beach Cadet Squadron.

Thomas Kodadek, B.S. ’81, a chemistry professor at The Scripps Research Institute’s Florida campus, is principal investigator on a Type I diabetes research study that received a $4.2 million National Institutes of Health award to be shared with researchers at the University of Miami and Opko, a biotechnology company.

Douglas J. Cuomo, B.M. ’82, a prominent composer, was the Frost Distinguished Alumnus for 2011.

Citizen ’Cane Pianist’s Plan Is for the Dogs Michael Rosenberg, M.M. ’75, is on a mission to keep 20,000 unwanted cats and dogs from being killed each year in MiamiDade County public animal shelters. “When I see something wrong that I think I can fix, I try and do it,” says Rosenberg, who founded the Pets’ Trust Miami last year.

His proposal: Ask county homeowners to pay around $20 a year to fund programs such as low-cost spaying, neutering, and veterinary services.

“No one should have to return a dog or cat to a shelter because they can’t afford some medicine,” says Rosenberg, a Frost School of Music graduate in piano performance.

County shelters currently euthanize animals after five days to prevent overcrowding, he explains. “At the end of the five days, a dog is taken out of a cage. He thinks he is about to go for a walk and gets all excited. But it is his last walk.”

Rosenberg, president of the Kendall Federation of Homeowners Associations, committed to the cause after he heard an animal shelter representative speak at a homeowners meeting and toured a county facility. His own feline family includes Cutie and Petie (or PT, for Pets’ Trust).

This isn’t Rosenberg’s first crusade. Five years ago he fought successfully for county legislation that enables people to appeal their water bill if they think they’re being overcharged. And last year he campaigned against cuts to Farm Share, a statewide organization that distributes surplus food to those in need.

Rosenberg is also the president of Imagine Your Photos, which customizes gifts and products, and a composer who once created personalized lullaby tapes sold nationally by Playskool Toys. It was music that lured the Kentuckian to Miami 38 years ago—specifically acclaimed pianist Ivan Davis, who taught at the Frost School from 1966 to 2008. “It was a great time of my life,” he recalls. “UM is where I matured.”

Rosenberg hopes the results of a countywide Pets’ Trust straw vote on the November 6 ballot will give him yet another reason to sing the praises of his adopted hometown. No other U.S. community has publicly funded a trust dedicated to preventing adoptable pets from being killed, he notes. “We could be a model for the country.” —Erik Bojnansky

Hunting Deutsch, M.B.A. ’82, former vice president of Wealth Management at BankUnited and a member of the University’s President’s Council, was tapped

by Florida Governor Rick Scott to

serve as executive director of the state’s Department of Economic Opportunity.

Mark Cooper, A.B. ’83, an NFL Super Bowl XXI participant and leading broker associate with

www.miami.edu/miami-magazine Fall 2012 MIAMI 39

Class Notes Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage in Greenwood Village, Colorado, sponsored his Ninth Annual Rocky Mountain Fly Fishing Classic to benefit the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation in the Aspen/Basalt area in 2011, raising $58,000.

Barry Golob, B.S. ’83, a partner in the Washington, D.C., office of Duane Morris LLP, was named recruiting partner for the firm’s intellectual property practice group.

Ira E. Hoffman, J.D. ’83, a partner at Shulman Rogers in Potomac, Maryland, edited The Annotated Export Administration Regulations Desk Reference (West, 2012-13 edition). He is also a director of the Public Contracting Institute.

Greta Schulz, B.B.A. ’83, president and CEO of West Palm Beach-based sales consulting company Schulz Business was elected to the advisory board of Keiser University’s West Palm

Beach campus for its business program.

Edward H. Davis Jr., A.B. ’84, J.D. ’87, a founding shareholder of the international law firm Astigarraga Davis in Miami, received the Florida Bar’s 2010 G. Kirk Haas Humanitarian Award and Scholarship and designated the UM School of Law as recipient of his Haas Scholarship. He is also a Certified Fraud Examiner, a member of the International Association of Financial Crime Investigators, and a member of the World Bank’s International Corruption Hunters Alliance. He serves as co-general counsel to the Joint Liquidators of Stanford International Bank, Ltd., the second-largest Ponzi scheme in world history.

Robert Meyers, J.D. ’84, former executive director of the MiamiDade Commission on Ethics and Public Trust, is Of Counsel in the Broward office of Weiss Serota Helfman Pastoriza Cole & Boniske.

Jorge R. Duyos, B.S.I.E. ’85, M.S.I.E. ’88, with his Miamibased company JRD & Associates, Inc., was among 16 recipients of the 2011 U.S. Department of Homeland Security Small Business Achievement Award for its work at the DHS Office of Infrastructure Protection. He is also a member of the UM Alumni Association board of directors.

Ervin A. Gonzalez, J.D. ’85, is serving on the federally appointed BP Oil Plaintiffs’ Steering Committee.

Marianela Noguera, B.F.A. ’85, is an artist and owner of Marianela Noguera Artistic Designs.

Stuart C. Williams, Ph.D. ’85, owns the environmental consulting firm Envirotest. His son, Scott, is a marine science student at the University of Miami.

Victoria R. Brennan, A.B. ’86, J.D. ’89, was elevated from MiamiDade County Court judge to the 11th Judicial Circuit Court.

Tim Huebner, A.B. ’88, was

’C A N E I N T H E AC T

“Pine Glades Lake is my favorite place in Everglades National Park to see and photograph sunsets,” says Phoenix Lynn Marks, B.S.Ed. ’72. “It’s an amazingly different light show every time.” Her solo exhibition Wild Florida was on view at the Everglades National Park Gallery in August. More at miami.edu/miami-magazine.

40 MIAMI Fall 2012 www.miami.edu/miami-magazine

featured on C-SPAN 3’s American History TV. His class lecture on President Abraham Lincoln and Chief Justice Roger B. Taney is at www.c-span.org/Events/AHTVPreview/10737425225-1. He is the L. Palmer Brown Professor and chair of the Department of History at Rhodes College in Memphis, Tennessee.

Lida Rodriguez-Taseff, A.B. ’88, a partner at Duane Morris law firm in Miami, is on the board of directors for LatinoJustice PRLDEF, co-chair of South Florida Jobs with Justice, and chair emeritus of the Miami-Dade Election Reform Coalition.

Anthony Askowitz, B.B.A. ’89, was selected from more than 4,050 RE/MAX brokers as the company’s 2011 Broker of the Year for the North American region.

Fred Karlinsky, B.S.C. ’89, accompanied Florida Governor Rick Scott on a weeklong foreign trade mission to Israel. He is on the Republican National Committee’s National Finance Committee, and served on the 2011 Republican National Committee Finance Transition Team, Governor Scott’s 2011 Inaugural Host Committee, and Attorney General Pam Bondi’s 2011 Inaugural Committee.

Daniel Smith, B.B.A. ’89, president of Insight Card Services in Birmingham, Alabama, was selected to The Aspen Institute’s 2012 Class of Henry Crown Fellows in Washington, D.C. Steve Strong, B.S.E.E. ’89, was named senior vice president, engineering, for Skyware Global. He will direct the satellite communications engineering operations in the United Kingdom, Germany, and the United States.

Craig J. Walker, B.B.A. ’89, a colonel in the U.S. Air Force working in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, was selected as the vice wing commander of the 27th Special Operations Wing at Cannon AFB, New Mexico.

1990s

Steven J. Fox, B.S.C. ’90, vice president of network management and communications for Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, received the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association’s Richard L. Guffey National Leadership Award. He lives in Wilmington with his wife, Colleen, and children Jake and Alexis.

Howard Preissman, B.S.M.E. ’90, M.S.B.E. ’93, is cofounder and CEO of Keller Medical. His company, which makes a plastic surgery tool called the Keller Funnel, won a Governor’s Business Diversification Award in 2011 from the economic development organization Enterprise Florida.

Howard P. Wade, D.A. ’90, who recently retired as associate professor of history and associate dean of arts and sciences at Bluefield State College in West Virginia, received the college’s 2011 William B. Goodman Faculty Service Leadership Award.

Michael Hettich, Ph.D. ’91, released a new book of poems, The Animals Beyond Us (New Rivers Press, 2011).

Jennifer Burnett, B.B.A. ’92, M.B.A. ’98, is senior director of marketing and corporate communications for Interstate Hotels & Resorts, which operates nearly 400 hotels worldwide under franchised brand names such as Marriott, Hilton, and Holiday Inn. Bland Eng, B.S. ’92, is chief executive officer of Brandon Regional Hospital in Brandon, Florida. Previously he was CEO of Palms West Hospital in Loxahatchee, Florida.

He is married with two children.

Christine Biersack-Bettencourt, B.B.A. ’93, manages large-scale public safety government projects in New York City as a systems integration and program manager for Motorola Solutions.

Leyza Blanco, A.B. ’93, J.D. ’96, serves on two business law sections committees on behalf of The Florida Bar and is an at-large

director for the International Women’s Insolvency and Restructuring Confederation.

Thomas Carless, B.B.A. ’93, is a director of risk management services with McGladrey & Pullen, LLP’s Latin America Center practice.

Eddie Dominguez, B.S.C. ’93, joined City National Bank of Florida as senior vice president and director of marketing, communications, and community relations after a decade as executive editor of Miami’s Daily Business Review.

Stacey A. Giulianti, J.D. ’93, is in his seventh year as general counsel for Florida Peninsula Insurance Company and was recently profiled in Florida Trend magazine.

Carmen Alpizar Hellman, A.B. ’93, Tania Carreño-Mederos, A.B. ’89, and Anette Yelin, A.B., ’81, have formed the Coral Gables law firm Hellman Mederos & Yelin, P.L., catering to the needs of the health care industry. Hellman and Carreño-Mederos were again recognized as “Top Lawyers” in the 2012 edition of the South Florida Legal Guide.

Andy Santoso, B.S.I.E. ’93, lives in Jakarta, Indonesia. He is a managing director at sheet metal manufacturer PT Inti Polymetal.

He has a master’s degree in manufacturing systems engineering from the University of WisconsinMadison and is a doctor of business administration candidate at RMIT University. He and his wife, Ying Chang, have three daughters, Amy, Helen, and Anna.

Marlene Quintana, B.S.C. ’93, J.D. ’96, was appointed to the Federal Magistrate Judge Merit Selection Panel to recommend prospects to the United States District Court for the Southern District of Florida and help fill a U.S. magistrate judge position in Fort Lauderdale.

Lynda Tyer-Viola, M.S.N. ’93, was promoted to associate professor

by MGH Institute of Health Professions, the Boston health

Citizen ’Cane Film Culture on the Download Jorge Dalmau, B.B.A. ’87, M.S.I.E. ’89, and Xavi Dalmau, B.B.A. ’92, grew up hearing their father hold forth about how this or that marvelous film he’d seen at film festivals around the world wasn’t attracting a large enough audience.

Six years ago the brothers decided to do something about that.

Their company, BIGSTAR, brings independent, unique, and hardto-find movies to the masses via the virtually limitless theater of the Internet.

“When we started BIGSTAR, nobody knew or cared much about Jorge and Xavi Dalmau the digital space,” says Xavi. “The money always came from DVD sales, but we were sure this would change in the next few years, so we persisted.”

They began obtaining the rights to festival favorites from famous places like Cannes and Sundance as well as from more obscure festivals in New Zealand, the Caribbean, and South America. As downloading and streaming gained popularity, their catalog of 5,000 mostly independent films accrued value.

Today they’ve virtually cornered the market on film festival favorites.

“We have new partnerships every week,” says Xavi.

They also have a content deal with Lionsgate, and efforts are under way to showcase films made by students coming out of top universities.

MTV and VH-1 co-founder Les Garland, who met the brothers through a golfing connection, serves as a special advisor to the 15-employee startup. “Xavi and Jorge have magnetic personalities,” he says, offering a reason for its success so far.

“They are loaded with passion.”

Born in Venezuela and raised in Miami, the brothers studied business at the University of Miami. Jorge earned a master’s degree in industrial engineering while Xavi tried to make it on the pro golf circuit after UM. Both worked in their father’s manufacturing businesses before turning their longtime passion for film (Xavi is a drama and documentary buff, while Jorge prefers action and comedies) into a profitable plot twist with a happy, if somewhat predictable, ending. “We decided to venture out by ourselves,” says Xavi, “although, you can see, it always ends up a family affair in the end.” —Robert Strauss

sciences graduate school founded

by Massachusetts General Hospital.

Michelle Diffenderfer, J.D. ’94, was listed in The International Who’s Who of Environment Lawyers.

Patrick Panetta, B.Arch. ’94, is Arizona State University’s associate director of real estate development and the 2012 AIA Arizona chapter president.

David M. Rudy, B.B.A. ’94, is executive producer and producer

www.miami.edu/miami-magazine Fall 2012 MIAMI 41

Class Notes of the documentary Baby Let Your Hair Hang Down, about the autoimmune hair loss disorder alopecia areata. It debuted at the 2011 DocMiami film festival.

Chris Van Berkel, B.B.A. ’94, was promoted to senior executive of Accenture, a global management consulting, technology services, and outsourcing company.

Robert C. Harding, M.A. ’95, Ph.D. ’98, is a tenured associate professor and chair of political science at Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama. His newest book is Space Policy in Developing Countries (Routledge, 2012).

Jessica Damian, A.B. ’96, Ph.D. ’07, associate professor of English at Georgia Gwinnett College, was one of three University System of Georgia faculty members selected to receive the 2012 University System of Georgia Board of Regents’ Teaching Excellence Award. She also received the 2010-11 GGC Outstanding Teaching Award and gave the school’s 2011 Convocation keynote address. She and husband Mike Schelke live in Atlanta.

Jenny Litz, B.S. ’96, Ph.D. ’07, who studies dolphins as a research fishery biologist for NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service, was featured in an episode of the WPBT2 original production Changing Seas, titled “Sentinels of the Seas,” that won a 2011 award presented by the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and Institute of Medicine. The production team included then-UM student Veronique Koch, M.S. ’11.

Jill A. Weitz, M.B.A. ’96, is the vice president of global human resources at NCR Services.

Marisabel Bazan, B.S.C. ’97, is a Panamanian singer/songwriter and fine artist in Los Angeles who has designed two T-shirt lines as well as a Fall 2011 line of graffiti-style bags for LeSportsac.

Charong Chow, A.B./B.F.A. ’97, is an artist and food lover who

writes the blog www.EatingWithHudson.com. Her first novel is Random (e-published, 2011).

Anthony Rosa, A.B. ’97, is the president and CEO of GSEA Fashion Group in New York City.

Nancy Stagliano, Ph.D. ’97, was named CEO of iPierian biopharmaceutical company.

Kira Turchin, B.S. ’97, M.S.B.E. ’00, and Jason S. Turchin, J.D. ’02, founded Betty Cares, in memory of Kira’s mother, to raise funds for the Miami Children’s Hospital Foundation—more than $20,000 in its first year. Betty Cares also makes donated laptops available to patients at Miami Children’s Hospital, where the Turchins’ baby received neurosurgical care.

Adam Kalish, B.S.C. ’98, is a partner with Lux Capital in New York City.

Jim Fatzinger, B.B.A. ’99, M.B.A. ’01, Georgia Gwinnett College’s associate vice president for Student Affairs, was selected for the 2011-12 American Council on Education Fellows Program.

Ravi Maharajh, A.B. ’99, a mental health clinician, is the author of How to Support Your Elementary School Teacher (self-published, 2011). He lives in New Jersey with his wife, Jaya, a public school teacher.

Nikki Lewis Simon, J.D. ’99, a litigation shareholder with Greenberg Traurig, was featured in the 10th Annual Women Worth Watching issue of the Profiles in Diversity Journal.

Simon is on the Women’s Chamber of Commerce of Miami-Dade County and Gwen S. Cherry Black Women Lawyers Association boards.

2000s

Brian A. Briz, B.B.A. ’00, is a partner in the Miami office of Holland & Knight LLP. Ileana M. Espinosa Christianson, B.B.A. ’00, was recognized by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation’s “40 under 40.”

42 MIAMI Fall 2012 www.miami.edu/miami-magazine

Mixed Media Words: The Good Food Revolution Will Allen’s odyssey led him off his childhood farm, around the world as a basketball player and business executive, and ultimately to a life rooted in growing nutritious food in blighted areas. As CEO of Growing Power, Allen, ’71, feeds thousands and educates even more about how healthy, sustainable food leads to healthier people and communities. Now the MacArthur fellow, with coauthor Charles Wilson, tells his own story (Gotham Books, 2012).

Music: Adele 21 When British recording artist Adele swept the Grammies this year with six wins, the University of Miami was represented by Frost School of Music engineering alumnus Andrew Scheps, B.M. ’89. A producer, engineer, and mixer who has worked with the likes of Michael Jackson, the Red Hot Chili Peppers, and U2, Scheps was among a team of six who took home the 2012 Album of the Year Grammy Award for 21 (XL Recordings/Columbia, 2011).

Art: The Wall Between Us Caridad Sola, B.F.A. ’03, B.Arch. ’03, is a performance and visual artist as well as a licensed architect. She brought all of those talents to bear in her latest piece, performed at the Fountain Art Fair in New York, earlier this year. She previously worked as a construction project manager for the National September 11 Memorial & Museum Project at the World Trade Center Site.

Cinema: Love, Gloria In April writer/director Nick Scown, M.F.A. ’04, debuted his first featurelength film, released by RMS Films in 2011, at UM’s Bill Cosford Cinema.

The comedy’s plot revolves around a washed-up child star, an obsessed fan, and the stalker who kidnaps them.

His earlier screenplay Jack Hammer: Male Stewardess was a Disney Studios’ Feature Writing Fellowship finalist.

Sabrina Cohen, B.S.C. ’00, executive director and president of the Sabrina Cohen Foundation for Stem Cell Research, launched the annual ‘CELLebrity’ Doctors Calendar in 2011 to raise funds and awareness for her nonprofit organization, which aims to help scientists reverse spinal cord injury and treat other central nervous system impairments.

WebMD Magazine named Cohen, who is a quadriplegic as a result of a spinal cord injury from a 1992 car accident, an “American Health Hero” in 2009.

Martha R. Mora, A.B. ’00, is a partner in the litigation department of Florida law firm Avila Rodriguez Hernandez Mena & Ferri LLP. Geeta Nayyar, B.S. ’00, M.D. ’03, is chief medical information officer for AT&T. She is also an assistant clinical professor of medicine at George Washington University.

Lawrence Soto, B.B.A. ’00, is a managing partner at Global Group Consulting Services LLC. Stephanie L. Carman, J.D. ’01, an associate at Hogan Lovells in Miami, received the Florida Bar Young Lawyers Division’s Lynn Futch Most Productive Young Lawyer Award.

Alan Chan, B.M. ’01, won the 2011 ArtEZ Jazz Composition Contest in the Netherlands. His big-band composition “To Be Continued” made its European debut with the Millennium Jazz Orchestra at the International Jazz Festival Enschede. His concert for erhu (Chinese fiddle) and chamber orchestra, winner of the Los Angeles County Arts/St. Matthew’s Music Guild Commission Award, had its world premiere last June. He is cofounder and artistic director of the Gateway Performance Series in West Los Angeles.

Sebastian Eilert, B.Arch. ’01, founder of Sebastian Eilert Achitecture, won the 2011 AIA Miami Sustainable Design Architect of

the Year and 2010 Young Architect of the Year awards.

Alex Hanna, LL.M.P. ’01, received a Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition for outstanding service as a leader in the Hispanic community.

Claudio Kawecki, B.B.A. ’01, from Hoboken, New Jersey, won a competition to caddie for golfer Davis Love III at the RSM International Pro-Am during the 2011 McGladrey Classic.

Richard Montes de Oca, J.D. ’01, formed the corporate law, global compliance, and business ethics firm MDO Partners in Miami.

Shannon (Gilmore) Berry, B.S.N. ’02, her husband, Stuart, and sons Darwyn and Newton welcomed Edison Henry to the family in December 2011.

Darrity H. Furman, B.S.C. ’02, earned a medical imaging degree from Massachusetts General Hospital Institute of Health Professions in Boston.

Elgin Polo, M.B.A. ’02, is a partner in the accounting and advisory firm Kabat, Schertzer, De La Torre, Taraboulos & Co. Sabriya Rice, M.A. ’02, changed positions from CNN health writer and producer to director of media relations for the American Cancer Society.

Lianne Marks, Ph.D. ’02, M.D. ’04, is an assistant professor of internal medicine at Texas A&M College of Medicine, a staff physician and clinic quality director, and, as of 2011, the regional chair of internal medicine at the college’s Round Rock campus.

Julio J. Barroso, B.S.C. ’03, communications and marketing coordinator at Keys Energy Services, was tapped to chair the American Public Power Association’s Public Communications Committee at their 2012 conference. Public Power magazine named him one of 60 “Rising Stars of Public Power.”

Sarah McGrail, B.S.C. ’03, a visual effects producer, received a Hollywood Post Alliance nomination

Citizen ’Cane A Head for Fashion For Sir Isaac Newton they say it was an apple. For Robin Dorman, B.M. ’77, a hard tumble on packed snow provided her eureka moment. After her mild concussion subsided, she realized that skiing sans helmet was risky business—too risky.

Unfortunately, shiny plastic headgear didn’t suit Dorman’s sense of style at all.

“I was always a bit of a fashionista,” she explains.

What to do? Accessorize, of course. The interior designer and former fashion buyer for Saks Fifth Avenue in New York created Helmet Band-Its, fur or faux fur bands that can transform clunky-looking headgear into haute hats.

“It’s totally geek to chic,” she says of the patentpending invention, which is making its way into boutiques and ski shops from Miami to L.A. With support from her attorney husband, Roderick Dorman, J.D. ’76, and son Kirk Dorman, B.S.C. ’09, who is executive vice president of her start-up company, Robin has transitioned from interior designer to fashion designer/entrepreneur. She’s now working on new safety niches for her made-in-the U.S.A. brand such as bicycle and motorcycle helmets.

“It’s really important to wear a helmet,” she says. “You have to. But it doesn’t have to look bad!”

This isn’t the first time Dorman has reinvented herself. At the University of Miami, she studied voice and sang in nightclubs before going on to fashion school and following in the footsteps of her interior designer mother.

After years in New York, she reconnected with and married Roderick Dorman, an old friend from her UM days. She moved to Southern California, where they had two sons. Their younger son, Kirk, is also a ’Cane who studied advertising, economics, and marketing.

The family continues to show love for its alma mater by hosting Summer Sendoffs for incoming freshmen who live in their area. This year, says Robin, around 100 guests, including President Donna E. Shalala, attended the event in their home.

“We’re big believers in the school,” she says. “I feel so strongly about supporting the U.” —Robin Shear

for Outstanding Compositing in Television for the pilot episode of Necessary Roughness.

Caridad Sola, B.F.A. ’03, B.Arch. ’03, performed “Prince Charming” at the closing party for the

Fountain Art Fair in New York this year.

Spencer Duke, B.B.A. ’04, M.B.A. ’07, is a senior director for Prestige Cruise Holdings, parent company of Oceania and Regent

www.miami.edu/miami-magazine Fall 2012 MIAMI 43

Class Notes Seven Seas cruises.

Colin Foord, B.S. ’04, a marine biologist, is co-founder of Coral Morphologic, a scientific art endeavor that won a $150,000 John S. and James L. Knight Foundation challenge grant in collaboration with the Miami Science Museum for multimedia installations at the Miami International Airport and the New World Symphony building.

Michael Laas, B.S.E.N.E. ’04, M.S.C.E. ’07, an environmental engineering technician in Miami, was named among the “Top 20 Under 40” by ENR Southeast in recognition of his community involvement and professional achievements. At Gannett Fleming, he is an in-house consultant to the Florida Department of Transportation, District 6. He also serves as the Southeast Regional Director for the firm’s Corporate Sustainability Team.

He is involved with nonprofit

organizations such as Sails for Sustenance, the Environmental Coalition of Miami and the Beaches, the Surfrider Foundation, and New World Symphony.

Frank A. O’Brien, B.B.A. ’04, founder of Conversation LLC, was named to the board of trustees for the Better Business Bureau of Metro New York’s Education and Research Foundation.

Jason Abrahams, B.B.A. ’05, is marketing manager of Club Colors in Schaumberg, Illinois.

Martha L. Ayerdis, M.B.A. ’05, president of human resources and marketing at MWL Management Inc., was named Minority Woman Consultant of 2011 by South Florida’s Minority Chamber of Commerce. She’s a board member of American Society For Public Administration South Florida Chapter and a diversity committee member for the Association of Fundraising Professionals, Miami-Dade County.

Natalie F. Guerra-Valdes, B.S.C. ’05, is an associate in the Boca Raton, Florida, office of Blank Rome LLP. Melissa L. Kuipers, J.D. ’05, was named chair of the Colorado Convention Committee for the 2012 Republican National Convention in Tampa, Florida.

Scott Poiley, M.F.A. ’05, and Bruce Wood, ’05, had their first feature film, Cassadaga, screened at the Screamfest Horror Film Festival in Hollywood, California.

Susan L. Leary, A.B. ’06, M.A. ’08, and Sean M. Kilpatrick, A.B. ’06, M.S.Ed. ’09, celebrated their first wedding anniversary on January 22, 2012. Both work for their alma mater. Susan is a lecturer in English composition and Sean is the associate director of advising in the Department of Psychology.

Joline Mujica, B.A.M. ’06, was nominated by the Carbonell Awards as Best Actress in a Musical for her role as Tracy

u Elegant spaces available to alumni and the community for meetings, intimate gatherings and celebrations.

• More than 9,500 sq. ft. of indoor event space • More than 4,000 sq. ft. of outdoor event space • Room and furniture configurations can change for maximum flexibility

• High-end finishes throughout • State-of-the-art acoustic and audiovisual equipment • Conveniently located on the University of Miami’s Coral Gables campus • Available to the public

6200 San Amaro Drive Coral Gables, FL 33146

44 MIAMI Fall 2012 www.miami.edu/miami-magazine

305-284-1934 www6.miami.edu/alumnicenter

Turnblad in Hairspray at the Actors’ Playhouse.

Cara Samantha Scherker, B.A.M. ’06, a New York City-based vocalist, sang for judges on American Idol in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, this year. She also released her debut extended-play recording, Out the Door. Her song “I Gotta Say” is a Show Me the Music 2012 songwriting competition semifinalist.

Kevin Sharpley, B.S.C. ’06, wrote and directed the animated short film The Beach Chronicles, which was part of this year’s Miami International Film Festival University of Miami film short competition.

Kate Hendrickson, B.S.C. ’07, is the media relations manager for The National Aquarium in Washington, D.C., and Baltimore, Maryland.

Mark Michel, M.B.A. ’07, a lieutenant commander in the U.S. Navy, has joined the White House

as a member of the National Security Staff. He was previously based in Stuttgart, Germany, and successfully completed special operations combat deployments to Afghanistan with SEAL Team 8 and SEAL Team 10. He and his wife, Sarah, live in Alexandria, Virginia, with twin sons Carter and Walker and dog Arleigh.

Jessica R. Frank, J.D. ’08, was recognized by the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation’s “40 under 40.”

Jenna (Blatstein) Leigh, A.B. ’08, launched the Jenna Leigh brand of lingerie in 2008. It is designed in New York, where stores such as Anthropologie, Bloomingdale’s, and Barneys have picked it up.

Elan Levy, M.D. ’08, an emergency room physician, represented New York during Cosmopolitan magazine’s Most Eligible Bachelor contest of 2011.

Hayoung Lim, Ph.D. ’08, is the author of Developmental SpeechLanguage Training through Music for Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 2011).

Raneir Pollard, B.S.C. ’08, is a stand-up comedian in Los Angeles who was featured on Showtime’s “Pride Comedy Jam.” David Richardson, Ph.D. ’08, a research fisheries biologist for the National Marine Fisheries Service, won a prestigious Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers from the U.S. government.

Blair E. Brettschneider, B.S.C. ’09, a development assistant for a Chicago-based program that helps refugee girls adjust to life in the United States, was one of two U.S. representatives selected to attend the 2011 UNESCO Youth Forum in Paris.

Margaret Cardillo, M.F.A. ’09, won the 2011 Florida Book Award for Children’s Literature with her book Being Audrey.

Max Marty, M.B.A. ’09, launched Blueseed, a company that plans to anchor a residential ship off California’s shore in internation-

al waters, enabling foreign-born workers to commute by ferry to Silicon Valley. A USA Today article notes that the 27-yearold “came up with the idea after seeing so many of his classmates at the University of Miami’s business school head back to their home countries after failing to secure work visas.”

Adrienne Vendetti, B.B.A. ’09, and Stephanie Vendetti, B.B.A. ’11, are sisters and redheads who launched How to Be a Redhead in 2011. Their website of the same name, which focuses on beauty, fashion, and health/nutrition advice for redheads around the world, was nominated last year

by SHAPE Magazine as one of the Top Beauty Blogs.

Farah Dosani, B.S.C. ’10, coproduced the PBS documentary Life at the End: Caring in the Face of Loss, www.lifeattheend. healthystate.org, and produced a companion radio story titled The Emotional Cost of Caregiving for National Public Radio stations in Florida.

Claudia Garcia, A.B. ’10, and husband Anthony Rivero welcomed son Noah Alexander Rivero Garcia last June in Webster, Texas.

Samantha Bangs, A.B. ’11, lives in Los Angeles. She served as production coordinator for the documentary film Why Am I So Fat, in which the filmmaker loses 200 pounds in nine and a half months.

Scott Braun, B.S.C. ’11, is a studio host and reporter for MLB Network, a baseball-dedicated television sports channel.

Heather Gaines, B.S.C. ’11, is a news associate at CNBC’s Mad Money with Jim Cramer.

Jake M. Greenberg, J.D. ’11, is an associate in the firm of Hirschhorn & Bieber, P.A., practicing in the areas of state and federal criminal defense and complex civil litigation.

Submit class notes to alumni@miami.edu.

In Memoriam* Cleo B. Montgomery, A.B. ’32 Martha O. Auer, A.B. ’38 Lewis H. Fogle, B.B.A. ’40, J.D. ’42 Philip W. Ackerman, B.S. ’41 Max R. Silver, J.D. ’41 Harold P. Barkas, A.B. ’43, J.D. ’57 Eleanor A. Schou, A.B. ’43 David C. Andre, B.B.A. ’44 Rebecca J. Graves, B.M. ’44 Madeline E. Paetro, B.Ed. ’44 Gene S. Gould, B.B.A. ’45 Louise M. Harris, B.Ed. ’45 Frederick S. Smith, B.B.A. ’45 Anne Clinton, B.Ed. ’46 Roberta McKenry, B.B.A. ’47, J.D. ’54 Roberta C. Perle, A.B. ’47 Edith S. Zipp, A.B. ’47, B.Ed. ’54 James F. Donovan, B.B.A. ’48 Marjorie E. T. Hockett, A.B. ’48 Jay P. Kendrick, B.Ed. ’48 Philip D. Medvin, J.D. ’48 Stanley A. Seymour, B.S.E.S. ’48 James P. Covalt, A.B. ’49 William W. Massey, B.B.A. ’49 Patricia L. Russo, A.B. ’49 Peter J. Ferguson, B.B.A. ’50 Fred E. Hafner, A.B. ’50

Richard H. Hall, A.B. ’50 Frederick A. Kleis, B.B.A. ’50 Denis T. O’Sullivan, J.D. ’50 Joseph Reis, B.S. ’50 Edward M. Rosenberg, B.B.A. ’50 Charles W. Battisti, J.D. ’51 Leonard S. Bernstein, B.B.A. ’51 Robert A. Eppley, B.S. ’51 Solomon Fried, J.D. ’51 James A. Gilleland, A.B. ’51 Herman F. Shermer, A.B. ’51 James K. Woischwill, B.B.A. ’51 Michael F. Coughlan, B.Ed. ’52 Peter Dyshuk, B.Ed. ’52 Edward C. Leman, B.B.A. ’52 Benjamin Budowsky, A.B. ’53, B.B.A. ’57 James Cardinal, A.B. ’53 James Choromokos, B.S.C.E. ’53 Norman A. Gewirtz, A.B. ’53 Charles L. Highbarger, B.Ed. ’53 Harold A. Jones, B.S.M.E. ’53 Donald V. Mariutto, B.B.A. ’53 Leonard P. Pianin, B.B.A. ’53 Gordon Salyers, B.Ed. ’53 Stanley L. Tait, A.B. ’53 Allen B. Gross, B.B.A. ’54 Warne R. Millard, B.S. ’54

Founder of the Modern Frost School Grammy-nominated jazz pianist and composer William “Bill” Lee III served as Frost School of Music dean from 1964 to 1982.

His legacy includes growing the school’s enrollment from 150 to 825, introducing several firstof-their-kind programs, such as music therapy and music engineering, adding four buildings, and expanding the Foster building. He also attracted talented musicians to UM, including his eldest child, Will F. Lee IV, ’71, a bassist best known for his work on The Late Show with David Letterman. Frost School Dean Shelton Berg describes Bill Lee as “brilliant and visionary” and the “founder of the modern Frost School.” Lee briefly served as UM’s vice president and provost before retiring and being named a distinguished professor emeritus and composer in residence emeritus. Lee died in October 2011. He was 82. The Frost School’s William F. Lee III Music Scholarship Fund honors his memory.

www.miami.edu/miami-magazine Fall 2012 MIAMI 45

In Memoriam

Modernist Architect in the Magic City School of Architecture Professor Jan Hochstim, B.S.A.E. ’54, M.A. ’76, an authority on the modern architecture movement and author of two seminal architecture books, began his career as an educator in 1958. He received numerous teaching awards and was a prolific architect who owned a practice with fellow faculty member Paul Buisson. Together the men placed their modernist imprint on the Coral Gables campus, designing the original Mark Light Stadium and renovating the 1940s-era apartments that became the School of Architecture’s home in 1984. In March 2011, Dade Heritage Trust honored Hochstim as a “Living Legend” for his contributions to Miami’s architectural heritage. He died eight months later at age 80.

John A. Sanzo, B.M. ’54 Robert A. Thomas, B.Ed. ’54 Frank H. Weston, J.D. ’54 Joseph T. Keller, A.B. ’55 Bernard S. Brown, B.S.C.E. ’56 Lester Feuer, J.D. ’56 Stephen Miller, B.Ed. ’56 Donald G. Stark, B.Ed. ’56 M.S. ’69 John S. O’Brien, A.B. ’57 Brockman L. Plauche, A.B. ’57 Stuart J. Mason, B.B.A. ’58 Charles M. Norwitch, B.Ed. ’58 Alexander L. Paskay, J.D. ’58 Roberta H. Weiner, A.B. ’58 Helen D. Henry, B.S.N. ’59 Thomas J. Matthews, B.S.C.E. ’59 William G. Mossman, B.B.A. ’59 Roger M. Newman, B.Ed. ’59 Edmond J. Angelil, A.B. ’60 Staci W. Brenner, B.Ed. ’60 David F. Cupp, A.B. ’60 Lawrence F. Frank, B.B.A. ’60, M.B.A. ’62 Kenneth F. Kniskern, J.D. ’60 Frederick R. Margolin, M.D. ’60 Frank D. Nichols, B.B.A. ’60, M.B.A. ’62 Ethel A. Paulk, B.Ed. ’60 John I. Vaughan, B.B.A. ’60 Wilburn A. Blitch, B.B.A. ’61 Donald H. Carreau, A.B. ’61 Clement DiFillippo, B.S.A.E. ’61 Allen N. Duff, B.B.A. ’61 Robert P. Ludwig, B.B.A. ’61

Jean C. Moeller, M.Ed. ’61 Antone R. Case, B.B.A. ’62 Darol K. Evans, A.B. ’62 Jay D. Oyler, B.B.A. ’62 Edwin T. Sells, B.B.A. ’62 Sylvia S. Friedman, A.B. ’63 Anna R. Gale, B.Ed. ’63 Henry J. Lebejko, B.B.A. ’63 Robert B. Mahoney, B.B.A. ’63 Patrick F. Brennan, A.B. ’64 Peter C. Forbes, J.D. ’64 Kenneth C. Knox, B.B.A. ’64 Joseph A. Maggio, B.Ed. ’64 Samuel M. Meyer, B.S. ’64 Douglas C. Fulton, B.B.A. ’65, J.D. ’68 Jack Kichler, M.D. ’65 Eugene R. Labovitz, A.B. ’65 Bruce W. Nasher, B.B.A. ’65 Raul L. Zayas-Bazan, C.T.P. ’65 Robert A. Zipp, A.B. ’65 Darrell K. Brainard, B.B.A. ’66 William L. Davis, B.S.E.E. ’66 Elaine R. Sevin, B.Ed. ’66 Joseph P. Giordano, B.M. ’67 Linda K. Moore, B.Ed. ’67 Dorothy A. Smith, B.Ed. ’67 Eugene H. Leonard, B.B.A. ’68 Philip Winitsky, M.S. ’68 Ted Connell, A.B. ’69 Frances A. Salter, A.B. ’69, M.A. ’72 Luis Sanchez, A.B. ’69 Malcolm D. Sloan, B.B.A. ’69 Elaine G. Blackstone, M.Ed. ’70, M.S.N. ’82

46 MIAMI Fall 2012 www.miami.edu/miami-magazine

Ronald G. Caron, B.B.A. ’70 Michael C. Cothran, A.B. ’70 Thomas P. Finan, J.D. ’70 Frederick D. Lewis, A.B. ’70 Ahmad A. Moccari, M.S.M.E. ’70 James L. Montgomery, Ph.D. ’70 Margarita G. Esquiroz, B.B.A. ’71, J.D. ’74 Carlton G. Fisher, M.Ed. ’71 Stephen M. Hofrichter, A.B. ’71 Patricia A. Killian, A.B. ’71 Mercedes R. Lollis, B.Ed. ’71, M.Ed. ’73 Paul T. Dee, M.S.Ed. ’73, J.D. ’77 John C. Erb, A.B. ’73 Guillermo R. Paz, B.Arch. ’73 Richard A. Peterson, A.B. ’73 Lelah A. Fleischer, B.Ed. ’74 Richard H. Maloy, LL.M.T. ’74 Gary H. Tourtellotte, B.S. ’74 Constance A. Vebber M.Ed. ’74 Frances C. Venezia, A.B. ’74 Henry K. Perle, A.B. ’75 David P. Dalton, J.D. ’76 Stephen D. Jerome, J.D. ’76 Thomas R. Williamson, Ph.D. ’76 Norman B. Bamberg, M.D. ’77 William G. Dennis, B.B.A. ’77 Jay W. Lotspeich, M.B.A. ’77

Melissa A. O’Connor, B.Ed. ’77 Lawrence G. Sahler, B.S. ’77 Michael A. Mullins, A.B. ’78 Ronald M. Hannon, M.D. ’79 Thomas C. Moore, A.B. ’80 John J. Susi, B.B.A. ’80 Stephen A. Papy, A.B. ’81 Lourdes A. Alfonsin-Ruiz, B.S.Ed. ’83, J.D. ’92 Rima A. Shahin, B.B.A. ’84 Darlene Schweitzer-Ramras, A.B. ’85, J.D. ’88 Carl E. Kern, J.D. ’87 Thomas S. Roberts, M.B.A. ’91 Alexander A. Rubido, A.B. ’91 Roxann K. Giles, M.S.N. ’95 Amy R. Metzler, M.D. ’98 Gary J. Fisler, J.D. ’01 Michael A. Chiantella, LL.M.E. ’04 Katherine M. Hoen, B.S.H.S. ’10 *As of July 31, 2012 We diligently research every name in our “In Memoriam” section, but errors can occur.

Please notify us of errors so we may correct our records.

Making Sense of Data Akmal Younis, M.S.E.E. ’91, Ph.D. ’98, associate professor in the College of Engineering, died suddenly in December 2011 at the age of 48. He came to the University from Cairo, Egypt, in 1989 to be a research associate in the Department of Industrial Engineering. Serving in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering since 2001, Younis focused his research on biomedical imaging, medical informatics, and networks and information security. He and his students built BioFederator, a Web-based system that uses algorithms to give health care providers critical patient data. He led UM’s participation in the bioinformatics research group LA Grid, a supercomputing network linking researchers across the United States, Latin America, and Spain. In addition to the IBM Faculty Award, he received several federal grants for research that included developing techniques to interpret MRI scans more accurately.

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Homecoming 2012 20 Football FSU vs. UM, Sun

25 Alumni Board of Directors Meeting Newman Alumni Center 26-March 24 Lowe Art Museum

Lowe Art Museum ArtLab @ The Lowe—Adapting and Adopting: Waves of Change as East Encounters West Modern and Contemporary Japanese Art

Life Stadium, Miami Gardens, Florida

Infinite Mirror: Images of American Identity Stephen Knapp: New Light

NOVEMBER

FEBRUARY

6 Football and Official UMAA

1-11 Girls vs. Boys Adrienne

Pregame Celebration UM vs.

Arsht Center for the Performing Arts, Miami, Florida

20-March 2 Jerry Herman Ring Theatre King Lear 20 Distinguished Alumni Lecture Series Michael “Pete” Piechoski,

Notre Dame, Soldier Field, Chicago, Illinois*

3-4 Dolphins Cycling Challenge

7 Bank of America Chicago

Log on to ridedcc.com

Marathon Chicago, Illinois 17-27 Jerry Herman Ring Theatre

UM students perform at the Arsht Center in November.

Boeing Boeing

18 Medical Legacy Admission Information Session Newman

18-19 Alumni Board and Council Reception and Meeting

Alumni Center

BankUnited Center

ALUMNI LEADERSHIP Board of Directors Executive Committee

Dany Garcia, B.B.A. ’92, President Patrick Barron, B.B.A. ’75, Immediate Past President John Calles, A.B. ’89, J.D. ’92, President-elect Carrie Mahan Anderson, A.B. ’93, Vice President Joris Jabouin, B.B.A. ’90, M.B.A. ’92, Vice President Frank Jimenez, B.S. ’88, Vice President Linda Steckley, M.B.A. ’87, Vice President Brenda K. Yester, B.B.A. ’90, Vice President Donna A. Arbide, M.B.A. ’95, Executive Director

Alumni Trustees

T. Kendall “Ken” Hunt, B.B.A ’65 William Koenigsberg, B.B.A. ’77 Hal F. Rosenbluth, B.G.S. ’74

Regional Directors

Truly Burton, A.B. ’73 Jorge Duyos, B.S.I.E. ’85, M.S.I.E. ’88 Larry King, Jr., A.B. ’83, M.B.A. ’93 Kourtney Ratliff, B.B.A. ’03 Alex C. Rodriguez, B.B.A. ’86 Erica Zohar, A.B. ’92

Directors

Juan Albelo, B.S.E.E. ’93, M.S.I.E. ’96, M.B.A. ’96 Suzanne M. Block, A.B ’81 James J. Blosser, B.B.A. ’60, J.D. ’65 Santiago Corrada, A.B. 86, M.S.Ed. ’91 Victoria Corrigan Fine, B.S. ’80, M.B.A. ’81 Devang B. Desai, A.B. ’97, J.D. ’03 Martin J. Ganderson, B.B.A. ’73 Cynthia Hudson, A.B. ’84, M.A. ’97 Camilo Lopez III, M.B.A. ’82 Noelia Moreno, B.B.A. ’86, J.D. ’89 John Pittaluga, B.S.M.E. ’83

Andrew F. Potter, M.B.A. ’04 Oti Roberts, B.B.A. ’03 Alan Serure, B.S. ’75, M.D. ’79 Winston Warrior, B.B.A. ’93, M.B.A. ’96

Faculty Representatives

Robert F. Moore, Associate Chair, Department of Teaching and Learning Richard Williamson, Chair, Faculty Senate

Student Representatives

Nawara Alawa Dashawna “Shawna” Fussell-Ware Kanesha Hines

Alumni Network Clubs

Atlanta Jane Snecinski, B.M. ’74, M.B.A. ’82, janeski30@hotmail.com Austin Lori Luza, B.B.A. ’94, M.S.Ed. ’95, lori@texasbluelime.com Boston Ryan Magee, B.S.B.E. ’08, rpmcane@gmail.com Broward Jason Haber, A.B. ’03, haber.jason@gmail.com Charlotte TBD Chicago Jose Armario, M.S. ’03, president@chicago-canes.org Cincinnati Mark McPheron, B.B.A. ’78, Mark_McPheron@CINFIN.com Cleveland Diana Le, B.M. ’09, dianale523@gmail.com Dallas Bryan Dolgin, B.S.C. ’97, bryandolgin@yahoo.com Denver John Victor, B.B.A. ’06, td4j@aol.com Detroit Shannon Bartlett, B.S.B.A. ’12, s.bartlett4@umiami.edu Germany Sharon Petrik, B.B.A. ’04, M.B.A. ’07, sharonpetrik@gmail.com Greensboro Allyson Lugo, B.S.C. ’07, aklugo@gmail.com Houston Michael Williams, B.B.A. ’01, michael.williams@aig.com Indianapolis Jordan Miller, B.S. ’07, jordymiller@gmail.com

8 Accelerating Ambition

Reception Orlando, Florida

B.B.A. ’76, Newman Alumni Center

10–January 13, 2013 Lowe Art

21-22 President’s Council Reception and Meeting Newman

Museum Christo and Jeanne-

Alumni Center

Claude: Prints and Objects

Jacksonville Merissa Amkraut, B.M. ’02, merissaum@aol.com Las Vegas Hal Moskowitz, B.B.A. ’69, vegashal@yahoo.com London Caroline Larson, A.B. ’08, caroline.larson@gmail.com Los Angeles Chad Fisher, A.B. ’00, canesinsocal@gmail.com Louisville Michael Friedman, B.B.A. ’74, mfriedman@sustainablemgt.com Nashville Mark Block, B.S.C. ’99, theblockagency@yahoo.com New Jersey Robert Morris, A.B. ’76, rgmorris2@gmail.com New York David Goldberg, B.B.A. ’03, umnyalumni@gmail.com Orlando Roger Jeffery, B.S.C.E. ’76, rogerlynnjeffery@aol.com Palm Beach Stefany Allongo, B.A.M. ’06, stefanyallongo@gmail.com Philadelphia Mark Bolen, A.B. ’07, markjbolen@gmail.com Phoenix Kathleen George, J.D. ’88, Kathleen_m_george@yahoo.com Portland Erin Wright, B.S.C. ’06, portlandcanes@gmail.com Raleigh Amy Gretenstein, B.S.C. ’06, agretenstein@gmail.com Richmond Matt Roberts, M.M. ’97, matt@soundcone.com San Diego Elena Mulvaney, B.B.A. ’04, elenaquevedo24@yahoo.com San Francisco Melissa Glass, B.S.C. ’09, missglass1821@gmail.com Sarasota Chris Clayton, B.S.C. ’94, cclayton12@aol.com Savannah Tom Farnkoff, B.B.A. ’69, farneey1946@hargray.com Seattle Christian Hasenoehrl, M.S. ’95, M.B.A. ’95, seattlecanes@gmail.com Southwest Florida Molly Caldaro, A.B. ’05, m.mcguire@umiami.edu St. Louis TBD Tallahassee Kelly Sciba, B.S.C. ’92, tksciba@msn.com Tampa Larry King, Jr., A.B. ’83, M.B.A. ’93, larrykingjr@tampabay.rr.com

More at miami.edu/calendar

CALL FOR NOMINATIONS

To nominate an alumnus for the UM Alumni Association’s Board of Directors, go to www.miami.edu/alumni/umaa/ board/nominationform.htm and complete the online form. For more information, contact Erica Arroyo, B.S.C. ’03, M.A.L.S. ’08, senior director, Alumni Programs, at 305-284-1724 or earroyo@miami.edu.

Washington, D.C. Michael Waldron, B.S.I.T. ’05, mwaldron@definitivelogic.com

Special Interest Groups

Black Alumni Society Phyllis Tyler, B.B.A. ’80, Phyllis.tyler@irs.gov Band of the Hour Joseph E. Bagierek, B.M. ’03, M.B.A. ’07, jbagierek@gmail.com Public Health Alumni Association Gabriela Halder, B.S. ’08, halderg@vcu.edu, and Isabel Kilzi Rovira, A.B. ’08, imkilzi@gmail.com UM Sports Hall of Fame Walter “Wally” DiMarko, B.Ed. ’65, M.A. ’70, wdjkapp@aol.com, and K.C. Jones, ’97, jonesest@msn.com

Schools and Colleges Groups

College of Engineering Alfonso D. Dager, B.S.C.P.E. ’07, alfonsodager@gmail.com, and Tamara Ali, B.S.I.E. ’04, M.B.A. ’06, M.S.I.E. ’09, tamicane@gmail.com School of Law Devang B. Desai, A.B. ’97, J.D. ’03, ddesai@gaebemullen. com, and Jaret L. Davis, A.B. ’96, J.D. ’99, davisj@gtlaw.com

Miller School of Medicine Steven F. Falcone, B.S. ’83, M.D. ’87, M.B.A. ’04, sfalcone@med.miami.edu, and Jeffrey Block, M.D. ’82, docblock@ bellsouth.net School of Nursing & Health Studies Leila Adderton, A.B. ’79, B.S.N. ’05, M.S.N. ’10, leadderton@aol.com, and Jennifer A. Lopez, B.S.N. ’09, jalopez86@gmail.com Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science Erica Towle, B.S.M.A.S. ’10, etowle@rsmas.miami.edu Alumni records of the University of Miami are kept strictly confidential.

Directory information is released only to other members of the alumni community unless an alumnus or alumna has requested complete privacy. On a very limited occasion and only at the approval of the UM Alumni Association Board of Directors, directory information is shared with outside vendors who are in a joint relationship with the University. Should you not wish to release your name to any outside vendor and/or other members of the UM alumni community, please notify the Office of Alumni Relations in writing at P.O. Box 248053, Coral Gables, Florida 33124-3410.

www.miami.edu/miami-magazine Fall 2012 MIAMI 47

Big Picture

ANDREW INNERARITY

A SNAPSHOT OF THE U TODAY

Lakeside Linkup Arms stretched outward and hands joined together, hundreds of University of Miami students and employees linked up on April 20 for the sixth annual Hug the Lake, encircling Lake Osceola on UM’s Coral Gables campus in a symbolic “hug” to show their appreciation for and increase awareness about the environment.

48 MIAMI Fall 2012 www.miami.edu/miami-magazine

Friday, October 19 ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■ ■

Audrey R. Finkelstein UM Experience Campus Walking Tours Legacy Information Session Class Reunions: 50th, 40th, 30th, 25th, 10th, 5th, and Zero Year Reunions and School/College Events Alumni Avenue Homecoming Parade, Boat Burning, Fireworks, and Concert

Saturday, October 20 ■ ■

Pregame Celebration Homecoming Game: Florida State University vs. University of Miami

Sunday, October 21 ■

Golden Ibis Society Celebration Brunch (Classes of 1926-1961)

For other events happening during Alumni Weekend and Homecoming or for more information, contact the Office of Alumni Relations at 1-866-UMALUMS (862-5867), 305-284-2872, via email at alumniweekend@miami.edu, or visit us online at www.miami.edu/alumniweekend.

MIAMI

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The University of Miami Magazine

University of Miami Division of University Communications Post Office Box 248073 Coral Gables, Florida 33124-1210

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If a picture is worth a thousand words, then what would a chapter of your life say?

The University of Miami wants to learn about the moments and people that have shaped your life. It could be the birth of your child, the trip of a lifetime, the one who inspired you to be who you are today—whatever makes up the Story of U. Because the UM family is a collection of incredible individuals with extraordinary stories to tell, stories that uplift, ignite, teach, touch and transform.

Share your story today at storiesofu.com