The story
Bowman Foster Ashe (1926 to 1952)
In 1925, the University of Miami was founded by a group of citizens who sought to offer "unique opportunities to develop inter-American studies, further creative work in the arts and letters, and conduct teaching and research programs in tropical studies", according to the university's founding charter. They believed that a local university would benefit the Miami metropolitan area and were optimistic that the university would be a beneficiary of future financial support, especially since South Florida was benefiting from the historic 1920s land boom. During this era of Jim Crow laws, there were three large state-funded universities in Florida for white male students, white female students, and black students: the University of Florida in Gainesville and Florida State University and Florida A&M University, both in Tallahassee. Like most private universities of the time, the University of Miami was founded as a coeducational institution but not yet open to Black students.
In 1925, George E. Merrick, founder of Coral Gables, granted 160 acres (0.6 km2) and nearly $5,000,000 ($91.8 million, adjusted for current inflation) for the university's founding. The contributions included land contracts and mortgages on real estate that had been sold in the city. The university was formally chartered April 8, 1925 by the Circuit Court for Dade County. But by 1926, as the first class of 372 students enrolled at the new university, the land boom had collapsed and hopes for a speedy recovery were dashed by the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926. For the next 15 years, the university struggled financially, bordering on insolvency. The first building on campus, now known as the Merrick Building, was left half built for over two decades due to the economic difficulties, requiring that classes be held off-campus at the nearby Anastasia Hotel in Coral Gables. Partitions separated the classrooms, giving the university the early but long since discarded nickname Cardboard College.
In 1929, University of Miami founding member William E. Walsh and other members of the university's board of regents resigned following the widespread collapse of Florida's economy. The university's plight was so severe that students went door to door in Coral Gables collecting funds to keep it open. A reconstituted ten-member board chaired by the university's first president Bowman Foster Ashe included Merrick, David Fairchild, James Cash Penney, and others. In 1930, several faculty members and more than 60 students entered the University of Miami when the University of Havana closed amidst political unrest in Cuba. While helpful to the University of Miami's early development, it still was not enough, and the university was forced to seek bankruptcy protection two years later, in 1932.
The troubles, however, were short-lived. In July 1934, the University of Miami was reincorporated and a board of trustees was installed, replacing the board of regents. By 1940, community leaders were replacing faculty and administration as trustees. During Ashe's presidency, the university grew considerably, adding the School of Law (1928), the School of Business (1929, renamed the Miami Herbert Business School in 2019), the School of Education (1929), the Graduate School (1941), the Marine Laboratory (1943, renamed the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science in 2022), the School of Engineering (1947), and the School of Medicine (1952).
During World War II, the University of Miami was one of only 131 colleges and universities nationally to participate in the V-12 Navy College Training Program, which offered students a path to commissioning as a U.S. Navy officer.
Jay F. W. Pearson (1952 until 1962)
In 1952, Jay F. W. Pearson, one of Ashe's long-time assistants, was appointed the University of Miami's second president. A charter faculty member and marine biologist, Pearson held the university's presidency for a decade, until 1962. Under Pearson's leadership, the University of Miami began awarding its first Ph.D. degrees, and student enrollment increased substantially, exceeding 4,000.
From 1961 until 1968, the university leased buildings on its south campus to the Central Intelligence Agency that were used in JMWAVE, a covert operation and intelligence gathering operation against Fidel Castro's communist government in Cuba. The university no longer owns land at the south campus.
In 1961, the university dropped its policy of racial segregation, and began admitting Black students and allowing their full participation in student activities and athletic teams. Five years later, in 1966, Ray Bellamy, a Black student at the University of Miami, became the first major Black college athlete in the Deep South to receive an athletic scholarship.
Read the full text
Until the early 1970s, as was widespread practice at colleges and universities nationally, the university regulated female student conduct more strictly than that of male students, including employing a staff under the Dean of Women charged with watching over female students. Under Pearson, however, the university began incrementally liberalizing these policies. In 1971, he consolidated the separate Dean of Men and Dean of Women positions in one. The same year, the university established a Women's Commission, which issued a 1974 report on the status of women on campus, leading to the university's first female commencement speaker, day care, and the launch of a Women's Study minor. Following enactment of Title IX in 1972 and over a decade of litigation, University of Miami organizations, including honorary societies, were opened to women's participation and inclusion. The Women's Commission also secured more equitable funding for women's sports. In 1973, Terry Williams Munz became the first woman in the nation awarded an athletic scholarship when she accepted a University of Miami golf scholarship.
Henry King Stanford (1962 until 1981)
Henry King Stanford, then president of Birmingham–Southern College, was appointed the University of Miami's third president in 1962. Stanford led an increased emphasis on the university's research, reorganization of its administrative structure, and construction of new campus facilities. New research centers established under Stanford included the Center for Advanced International Studies (1964), the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Evolution (1964), the Center for Theoretical Studies (1965), and the Institute for the Study of Aging (1975). In 1965, the University of Miami also began actively recruiting international students. Beginning with the 1968 football season, Stanford barred playing of "Dixie" by the university's band.
Edward T. Foote II (1981 until 2000)
In 1981, Edward T. Foote II, then dean of Washington University School of Law, was appointed the University of Miami's fourth president. Under his leadership, the university focused on attracting high-quality faculty and students, and consciously limited or reduced undergraduate admissions as part of its strategic plan. Foote also oversaw the conversion of on-campus student housing into residential colleges and the university launch of its largest fundraising campaign to date, a five-year, $400 million campaign that began in 1984 and exceeded that goal, raising $517.5 million. Foote established three new schools: the School of Architecture, the School of Communication, and the School of International Studies.
During Foote's tenure, the university's endowment increased nearly ten-fold, growing from $47.4 million in 1981 to $465.2 million in 2000.
Donna Shalala (2000 until 2015)
In November 2000, Foote was succeeded by Donna Shalala, former chancellor of the University of Wisconsin–Madison from 1988 to 1993 and U.S. secretary of Health and Human Services from 1993 to 2001, who was appointed the University of Miami's fifth president. Under Shalala, the University of Miami built new libraries, dormitories, symphony rehearsal halls, and classroom buildings. The university's academic quality continued improving, a trend that began in earnest under Foote.
Roughly a year into Shalala's presidency, on November 5, 2001, an 18-year-old University of Miami fraternity pledge drowned while attempting to swim across Lake Osceola, the campus lake, while intoxicated. Police reports later cited the student's dangerously high blood alcohol content in conjunction with dropping water temperatures and exhaustion as primary factors in his death, and two fraternity members who accompanied him were criminally charged with "negligence, breach of fiduciary duty, and breach of duty to aid and/or rescue."
In 2002, the University of Miami launched a new and even more ambitious multi-year fundraising campaign that ultimately raised $1.37 billion, the most ever raised by any university or college in Florida history as of 2008. From these proceeds, over half, $854 million, was allocated to construct and improve the University of Miami's Leonard M. School of Medicine medical campus. In November 2007, the University of Miami acquired Cedars Medical Center in Miami's Health District, renaming it University of Miami Hospital and giving the Miller School of Medicine its first dedicated in-house teaching hospital rather than having to rely on academic affiliations with area hospitals.
In 2003, Shalala controversially chose to close the University of Miami's North-South Center, a university research organization dedicated to the study of contemporary issues in Latin America and the Caribbean. The North-South Center was established by the U.S. Congress in 1984. It had secured a partnership with the Rand Corporation and was, as the Associated Press reported in 2003, "a respected public policy think tank specializing in Latin American and Caribbean issues including trade and economic policy, migration, security, public corruption, and the environment."
On September 30, 2004, the University of Miami hosted one of three nationally televised U.S. presidential debates between presidential candidates George W. Bush and John Kerry during the 2004 presidential election. The debate, moderated by Jim Lehrer of PBS NewsHour, was held on the University of Miami campus inside the Watsco Center. It drew 62.5 million viewers.
In February 2006, University of Miami custodial workers, who were contracted to the university through a Boston-based company, alleged unfair labor practices, substandard pay, lack of health benefits, and workplace safety concerns. They launched a strike that drew support from several University of Miami students, who began a hunger strike and on-campus vigil in support of it. The strike settled May 1, 2006 when a card count union vote was permitted and led to establishment of the first collective bargaining unit in the university's history. The university raised wages for its custodial workers from $6.40 to $8.35 per hour and provided health insurance.
In 2008 and 2009, partly stemming from the Great Recession, the university endowment experienced a loss of 26.8% of its capital and additional associated losses from diminished endowment income. The university responded by tightening expenditures. Damage from the endowment's negative performance was limited, however, because the university receives over 98 percent of its operating budget from non-endowment sources. In 2011, the university was ranked the nation's most fiscally responsible nonprofit organization in a Charity Navigator report published in collaboration with Worth magazine.
In 2013, Shalala approved the sale of donated environmentally sensitive land to commercial developers. After many lawsuits, the U of M and the developers were able to clear the land to build a Wal-Mart and other commercial operations.
Julio Frenk (2015 until 2024)
On April 13, 2015, the University of Miami announced the appointment of Julio Frenk, former dean of Harvard University School of Public Health and former Secretary of Health for the government of Mexico, as the university's sixth president. On March 10, 2016, the University of Miami hosted the 2016 Republican presidential primary's twelfth and final debate at BankUnited Center on the university campus, which aired nationally on CNN and drew 11.9 million viewers.
On June 12, 2024, the University of California, Los Angeles announced that Frenk would be joining UCLA as the university's chancellor six months later, on January 1, 2025. The same day, the University of Miami announced that the university's chief executive officer, Joe Echevarria, had been appointed acting president of the University of Miami "effective immediately." On June 19, 2024, the University of Miami student newspaper, The Miami Hurricane, labeled Frenk's departure "shocking", and criticized his leadership. "Frenk was rarely a prominent influence on UM's campus," the student newspaper reported.
In June 2024, the Los Angeles Times reported that Frenk's new salary at UCLA represented "a significant reduction from" his base pay of US$1.68 million at the time of his departure from the University of Miami.
Under Frenk's nine years of leadership of the University of Miami, the university's national ranking on U.S. News & World Report's ranking of national universities fell considerably from 48th in the nation upon his arrival in 2015 to 67th in the nation when he departed in 2024.
Joe Echevarria (2024 to present)
On October 18, 2024, the University of Miami Board of Trustees appointed Joe Echevarria, former chief executive officer of Deloitte and the university's interim president since June 12, 2024, as the seventh president of the University of Miami.
From Wikipedia’s article on University of Miami, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.5