The U at 100 | Spring 2025 | Miami Magazine | University of Miami

OCCUPYING AN ENTIRE BLOCK IN THE CITY OF CORAL GABLES, THE THREE-STORY BUILDING LOOKED MORE LIKE A FRONTIER FORT THAN AN EDIFICE OF HIGHER EDUCATION.

Eager to learn, students began streaming into the structure in the early-morning hours of Monday, Oct. 18, 1926, settling into their seats in classrooms separated only by partitions of studding covered by cardboard. The first day of classes at the nascent University of Miami had begun.

It wasn’t quite the opening the school’s founders had envisioned. But that it opened at all was something of a miracle. The land boom that helped spawn the dreams and plans for its creation had collapsed. And making matters worse, a devastating Category 4 hurricane struck Miami only a month before the University opened, washing away any hopes of a quick recovery.

Construction on what was supposed to be the University’s new home—a grand structure on a man-made hill in the Riviera section of the Gables—ceased. So, its founders scrambled to find a temporary home for the school, settling on the unfinished Anastasia Hotel, the stripped-down shell of the building students entered on the institution’s first official day. Workers hastily modified it for the University’s needs, adding classrooms and outfitting it with laboratories, administrative offices, a library, a student lounge, an auditorium, and a gymnasium with locker rooms.

They used cardboard partitions as classroom dividers, believing that it would be easier to convert the building back into a hotel once the University’s permanent home was completed. But what they and those first students didn’t know at the time was that the building would serve as the University’s temporary home for the next 20 years.

Birth and Struggle

It is entirely conceivable that the University of Miami’s history might have unfolded differently had it not been for a group of persistent individuals, members of a provisional board of regents who applied for and received the institution’s charter in 1925. The Dade County Circuit Court granted the charter on April 8 of that year. That group believed that the Miami metropolitan area would greatly benefit from an institution that offered “unique opportunities to develop inter- American studies, further creative work in the arts and letters, and conduct teaching and research programs in tropical studies.”

Even before that charter, William Jennings Bryan, the former U.S. presidential candidate and secretary of state, proposed the idea that a great Pan-American university would take advantage of South Florida’s climate and geography.

Coral Gables founder George Merrick shared that dream. “Miami should and can have such a university, and the ideal place for it is at Coral Gables,” he once wrote. Merrick’s gift of 160 acres and $5 million, to be matched by an equal amount from other sources, guaranteed the University of Miami’s birth.

On Feb. 4, 1926, more than 7,000 people gathered at the site selected for the University to witness a cornerstone laying of what was intended to be the institution’s first building, which Merrick named for his father, Solomon G. Merrick, a Congregational minister. Eight months later, a real estate crash and destructive tempest notwithstanding, the University opened.

Miami native Francis Houghtaling was the first to register for classes on the Friday before classes would begin. The son of a dairy farmer, he even recruited other students to help ensure the University’s future. By that December, the combined number of full-time students had reached 646.

The College of Liberal Arts, the School of Music, and the Evening Division comprised its initial academic offerings. Later, the University would launch a School of Law (1928), School of Business Administration (1929), and School of Education (1929).

Bowman Foster Ashe served as its first president through several lean years that saw the University struggle to stay afloat. Students, displaying genuine camaraderie, often acted decisively to help their institution survive. In one instance, when the University was forced to seek bankruptcy protection, they went door-to-door in the community to raise funds to pay faculty salaries long overdue.

Relief would come in July 1934, when the University was reincorporated and a board of trustees installed, replacing the board of regents. By 1940 community leaders had begun to replace faculty and administration as trustees. And eventually, after World War II, the University would move onto its Coral Gables Campus.

Today the University of Miami has grown into what its founders had envisioned. With more than $492 million in research and sponsored program expenditures annually, it features three campuses and is home to 12 schools and colleges serving undergraduate and graduate students in nearly 350 majors and programs. More than 19,000 students from around the world are pursuing their academic goals.

Over its 100-year history, the University has withstood pandemics, weathered storms, survived a great depression, opened medical facilities that have cured the sick, and above all, educated and graduated a multitude of students, sending them into a global workforce to help solve some of the world’s most intractable problems. And it all started in an unfinished building in Coral Gables.

The War Years

Just before dawn on Sept. 1, 1939, the German battleship Schleswig-Holstein launched a surprise attack on Poland, shelling Polish fortifications at the Baltic port of Danzig. Some 62 divisions, supported by more than 1,300 aircraft, then launched a coordinated assault across the German-Polish border.

Two days later, in response to the invasion, Great Britain and France declared war on Nazi Germany. World War II had begun.

Germany’s aggression against Poland, however, did not change isolationist sentiments in the United States. Hundreds of thousands of Americans had perished or been wounded during World War I. As such, many Americans wanted to minimize U.S. involvement in world affairs. And with millions of people still unemployed because of the Great Depression, many believed the nation should concentrate on its troubles at home.

But despite U.S. ambivalence over the war, Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was in his second term as president of the United States when Germany invaded Poland, was convinced that the country would eventually need to take a stand against Adolf Hitler’s war machine.

At the University of Miami in 1939, intervention in the war had become a hot topic, particularly among members of the International Relations Club, one of the most active student organizations on campus at the time.

Whatever the prevailing sentiment, the University would become more directly involved in the war effort in early August 1940, partnering with Pan American Airways to train cadets for the U.S. Army Air Corps in long-range air navigation and meteorology. A total of 50 cadets arrived on campus on Aug. 12 of that year, with Pan Am instructors and pilots teaching them as part of a 12-week stay. Cadets from Great Britain began to take the same training at the University in March 1941. In a surprise visit, the Duke of Windsor arrived from his post as governor of the Bahamas to inspect the Royal Air Force cadets on Sept. 25, 1941.

The program would train more than 4,200 navigators—nearly 3,000 for the United States and over 1,200 for Great Britain—by the time it ended on Sept. 30, 1944. Smaller contingents of cadets from Brazil, China, Colombia, and New Zealand also received training.

With the bombing of Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, and the United States’ subsequent entry into the war, defense training activities at the University ramped up significantly. The University participated in the U.S. Navy’s V-12 Officer Training Program, established to increase the number of commissioned officers available for wartime service. As part of the program, the University offered regular college courses but with more emphasis on mathematics and the sciences. Existing faculty taught the classes, with civilian students sometimes taking some of the courses.

The war years greatly impacted faculty members and administrators, with some accepting civil service positions and others being drafted into the armed forces. From Aug. 1, 1942, to Sept. 15, 1943, for example, Ashe served as administrator of the War Manpower Commission, a federal agency created by Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1942 to address the labor shortage during the war. Jay F. W. Pearson, a charter faculty member and assistant to Ashe, took a leave of absence in June 1942 to serve first at the Officers Candidate School in Miami Beach, moving on to the Air Corps Pre-Technical School at Boca Raton, Florida, then to Seymour Johnson Field at Goldsboro, North Carolina, and finally San Antonio, Texas, as commanding officer of the Aviation Cadet Center.

Such events were indicative of the times, as other colleges and universities across the nation similarly played vital roles during World War II, training students, conducting research, and providing services to the military and government.

For the University of Miami, the war years also proved to be a time of great potential and stability, attributes that had eluded the institution since its opening. Property and monetary gifts poured in, and new academic programs and schools were created. The Graduate School (1941) and the Marine Laboratory (1943)—now called the Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science—both launched during the World War II period.

Postwar Era and the Civil Rights Movement

The postwar years were just as evolutionary for the University. When the Fall 1946 semester got underway, more than 5,000 students had registered for classes, many of them returning soldiers who had taken advantage of the GI Bill, which funded their tuition and expenses. The School of Engineering (1947) and the School of Medicine (1952) were created. The first permanent structure on campus, the Memorial Classroom Building, finally was completed in 1950.

After Ashe died in late 1952, Pearson assumed the office early the next year—his knowledge of the University landscape being an invaluable asset that allowed the institution to continue its tremendous momentum. The transition to Pearson, who had been at Ashe’s side since the birth of the University, was seamless.

New facilities and resources were added to keep pace with enrollment and strengthen the research enterprise. Groundbreakings were held for the Ashe Memorial Administration Building and the Otto G. Richter Library in 1953 and 1959, respectively. The University dedicated the Julian S. Eaton Hall, now the oldest residence hall on campus, in 1954, with the Miami Herald calling it an “ultra-ultra dorm.” In 1959 the J. Neville McArthur Engineering Building became a reality thanks to a $1 million donation from its namesake donor.

As the University ramped up its infrastructure, a new era—the fight for equal rights for African Americans and for an end to racial segregation and exclusion—was being waged on American soil. From the Montgomery Bus Boycott, sparked by the arrest of Rosa Parks, to the Greensboro sit-in and the Little Rock Nine, the fight took place on public transit buses, at lunch counters, and on school campuses.

Thanks to the efforts of activists nationwide, the movement began to garner results. In the landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education case, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that racially segregated public schools were inherently unequal. And in 1956, the court struck down laws requiring segregated seating on public buses.

Slowly but surely, the nation was changing. And the University of Miami would help usher in that new age of equity. Its Board of Trustees voted on Jan. 31, 1961, to admit qualified students without regard to race or color—a move faculty members applauded. “The UM Faculty Council commended the Board of Trustees this week for making the University’s facilities equally available to all qualified persons regardless of race, color, creed, or national origin,” read a story published in the Feb. 17, 1961, issue of The Miami Hurricane student newspaper.

During the summer of that year, Black students would attend classes without incident. “University Classes Are Peacefully Integrated,” read a headline in the June 23, 1961, issue of The Miami Hurricane.

The story noted that at least 30 Black students began attending undergraduate and graduate-level classes that summer. While the administration demonstrated a large measure of liberalism in its decision to integrate the University, life on campus proved “painful” for some of the first Black students, as a story in the Oct. 26, 1962, issue of The Miami Hurricane reported. “We get along just fine.

Everybody ignores us, and we ignore them. But you still don’t get accustomed to indifference,” Gloria Collier, a then-19- year-old sophomore from Miami, was quoted in the story.

Benny O’Berry, B.S.Ed. ’62, a World War II veteran, became the first Black graduate. He eventually became a successful businessman and longtime pastor at a Baptist church in Miami.

By the time Henry King Stanford became the University’s third president in 1962, the number of Black students had increased, with many of them achieving success at a school that only a few short years earlier would have refused to admit them. The 6-foot-5 Ray Bellamy, B.S.Ed. ’72, M.S.Ed. ’77, became a Miami Hurricanes football legend in the late 1960s, setting all kinds of receiving records as the first Black football athlete awarded a scholarship to a major university in the Southeast. He excelled away from the gridiron as well, becoming the University’s first Black student body president.

In the spring of 1967, University officials formally recognized United Black Students (UBS), an organization in which Black students could experience some of the social life and engagement they desired. They also regarded UBS as a vehicle to help spur change at the University and attain some of the goals that were indicative of Black student movements at other institutions of higher learning. As such, the organization, led by its founder, the late Harold Long Jr., B.A. ’68, J.D. ’71, presented a list of demands to Stanford.

They wanted more Black students to be enrolled, more scholarships for minorities, a Black studies program, and Black professors to teach those courses. And when UBS deemed that progress on its proposals was too slow, Long and 13 other Black students marched into Stanford’s second-floor office in the Ashe Building on May 17, 1968, and quickly sat on the couches and floor, demanding that the administration act on their demands. “We had to do something, and we decided that [a sit-in] was the way to go,” recounted Long. “We knew we weren’t leaving voluntarily, and if it meant we were going to be arrested, so be it.”

And they were arrested, though charges were later dropped.

Their protest, however, achieved significant success. Stanford, who was sympathetic to the agenda of Black students and often met with UBS leaders, was instrumental in brokering a decision to invite to campus a delegation of Black educators to discuss with all parties concerned and what could be done to grant UBS’s proposals.

Meanwhile, University trustees approved 50 tuition scholarships, which were named for John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr.

Invited by Stanford and the Department of Religion, King visited the Coral Gables Campus on May 16, 1966, delivering remarks on “The Church’s Involvement in the Civil Rights Program.” Out of concern for his safety, the civil rights leader had been ushered in through the back door of the Whitten Student Union. Some 1,500 students and faculty members gave him a standing ovation, according to a Miami Herald story. “Civil rights is a moral issue—it is not just a matter of economics and politics,” King told the audience. A few days after he was assassinated on April 4, 1968, the University held a memorial service on campus for the Nobel laureate.

In 1970 Whittington Johnson became the first Black faculty member hired by the institution. He would teach at the school for several years as a professor of history. And by 1972, the initial 50 scholarships approved by the board had increased to 200.

Today the story of the University of Miami’s first Black graduates is chronicled in a University of Miami Libraries digital exhibit. The Taylor Family/UTrailblazers Experience on the Coral Gables Campus, a gift from alumnus and former trustee Johnny C. Taylor, features an interactive three-screen kiosk at the Dooly Memorial Classroom Building that allows users to scroll through hundreds of photographs, documents, newspaper articles, film footage, bios, and other historical artifacts related to the years just after the institution’s 1961 desegregation.

As the 1960s and 1970s progressed, the University found itself at the forefront of a new set of challenges. In the aftermath of the failed Bay of Pigs invasion, it took on the responsibility of helping to preserve Cuban intellectual life at a time when the island nation’s own institutions were subject to totalitarian control. The University established a postgraduate medical school for Cuban doctors, helping them to prepare for state licensing exams. A training program for Cuban teachers who wanted to teach in U.S. schools also was created.

The ongoing war in Vietnam fueled anti-war protests by students who believed the University should address the key issues of the times. A proponent of people’s right to disagree, Stanford met regularly with students, faculty members, and minority leaders. He also introduced new courses and hired new faculty and administrators in response to calls for change. Stanford held open forums on “The Rock” and would even walk into crowds of protests to engage in dialogue.

The ongoing war in Vietnam fueled anti-war protests by students who believed the University should address the key issues of the times. A proponent of people’s right to disagree, Stanford met regularly with students, faculty members, and minority leaders. He also introduced new courses and hired new faculty and administrators in response to calls for change. Stanford held open forums on “The Rock” and would even walk into crowds of protests to engage in dialogue.

Sandra Day O’Connor became the first woman to serve on the U.S. Supreme Court. A new era in space flight began when the space shuttle Columbia, the first reusable space vehicle, launched. AIDS emerged as a deadly epidemic. Explosions at the Chernobyl power plant resulted in the worst nuclear disaster in history. And the Berlin Wall fell. In Miami, a series of events—from rising crime rates to a civil disturbance in Miami’s Liberty City neighborhood following the acquittal of four white police officers in the beating death of an unarmed Black insurance agent—painted a disconcerting picture of the metropolitan area, one that impacted nearly every industry and institution, even higher education.

Between the time the University’s fourth president, Edward Thaddeus “Tad” Foote II, was hired and when he welcomed his first freshman class, more than 1,000 students had withdrawn, sending the University spiraling into a budget crisis. But like it had always done, the institution rallied, largely through Foote’s visionary ideas.

A former dean of the law school at Washington University in St. Louis, Foote turned that initial shortfall of students into a major element of the institution’s first long-term strategic plan: The University would get smaller to get better. Admitting fewer students allowed the University to become more selective, thus the caliber of students improved significantly.

The Foote era also saw the launch in 1984 of the five-year $400 million Campaign for the University of Miami, which surpassed its goal in April 1988 and ended with a $517.5 million commitment for buildings, scholarships, and endowments. Three new schools were created: architecture, communication, and international studies. Competitive research funding increased significantly, rising from $58.1 million in 1981 to $193.9 million in 2000.

The Hurricanes football team captured national championships in 1983, 1987, and 1989, while the baseball program won two College World Series titles, in 1982 and 1985. Dormitories were transformed into residential colleges, with students and faculty families living and learning together. And the University increased its presence in the South Florida community, a commitment Foote made during his December 1981 inauguration address, when he said a special task force would be created and “charged with examining how the University now contributes to its own community of South Florida and how, consistent with its central mission, it might do more.”

The University was again on solid footing as the 1980s came to an end.

Resilience of the 1990s

It was a decade of prosperity, scientific breakthroughs, and technological advancement. The Soviet Union collapsed, bringing an end to a decades-long Cold War. The Human Genome Project, the landmark global endeavor to decipher the chemical makeup of the entire human genetic code, began. The Hubble Space Telescope was launched into orbit with the promise of changing humanity’s understanding of the universe. And the internet rose to prominence, ushering in a new era in business, communication, and entertainment.

But it was also a decade of heartbreak. Los Angeles erupted into five days of rioting after four white police officers were acquitted of assault in the videotaped beating of a Black motorist that shocked the nation. The Columbine High School shooting marked another tragic chapter in gun violence. And in the deadliest act of domestic terrorism in U.S. history, a former Army veteran packed a truck with explosives and detonated it in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people.

For the University of Miami, the 1990s was a decade of expansion, achievement, and ingenuity.

On the Medical Campus, the University of Miami Ear Institute—a global center for all hearing loss conditions, evaluations, and treatments—opened in 1990 with the recruitment of internationally renowned clinical and research faculty. Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center opened the doors to a new facility in 1992 with the mission of meeting the special physical and psychological needs of cancer patients. And on the Coral Gables Campus, the Patti and Allan Herbert Wellness Center opened in 1996.

The 1991 Miami Hurricanes football team finished 12-0 and captured the program’s fourth national championship in nine years behind quarterback Gino Torretta, B.B.A. ’92, who would win the Heisman Trophy the following year. Success on the diamond would come in 1999, when the Hurricanes baseball team won the College World Series, defeating rival Florida State Seminoles.

But the University’s biggest impact during the decade would come in its response to a natural disaster. Hurricane Andrew struck southern Miami-Dade County in the predawn hours of Aug. 24, 1992, destroying and damaging thousands of homes and leaving hundreds of people homeless. The city of Homestead was hardest hit, with more than 99 percent of the mobile homes there destroyed.

The storm hit during the first night of new student orientation, stranding thousands of students and their parents on campus. Buildings on the Coral Gables Campus were damaged, and the start of the fall semester was delayed by more than two weeks. The University wouldn’t reopen until Sept. 14. And when it did, its students and faculty sprang into action, participating in initiatives and projects to help hurricane-ravaged southern Miami-Dade County rebuild.

School of Architecture students rolled up their sleeves and engaged in workshops focusing on rebuilding. Many of them were integral players in the New South Dade Planning Charrette, a workshop sponsored by the We Will Rebuild initiative that was formed to help South Dade recover from Andrew. Students worked alongside design professionals, government officials, members of civic organizations, and residents to develop a vision of a new South Dade through more than a dozen proposals that varied in scope and scale. Among the student projects that came to fruition was one to make the main boulevard in South Miami Heights more pedestrian- and bike-friendly.

In the aftermath of Andrew, the School of Architecture created the Center for Urban and Community Design, a center with a mission of retrofitting and creating sustainable communities and buildings through collaborative, interdisciplinary projects.

Also during that time of post-storm recovery, the School of Medicine established its Pediatric Mobile Clinic to provide medical care to uninsured children.

The Coral Gables Campus itself would also recover, as Foote used insurance and Federal Emergency Management Agency funds to restore it to a condition that surpassed its pre-Hurricane Andrew look.

Momentum of the 2000s

The Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. A powerful tropical cyclone that devastated New Orleans. The Indian Ocean tsunami that claimed at least 225,000 lives across a dozen countries. The largest economic crisis since the Great Depression.

And the spread of social media across the world.

Such were the noughties.

For the University of Miami, which turned 75 years old in the year 2000, the decade was one of tremendous growth, spurred by the vitality of a new president. Donna E. Shalala, the former Peace Corps volunteer who became the longest-serving secretary of Health and Human Services in U.S. history, took the reins.

In her inspiring inaugural address, held Nov. 2, 2001, she noted how the events of Sept. 11 changed the lives of everyone. “As the intellectual guardians of open democratic societies, we must commit ourselves to excellence in everything we do,” Shalala said.

Achieving such excellence would be greatly facilitated by ambitious fundraising efforts, the likes of which the institution had never before pursued. When the $1 billion Momentum: The Campaign for the University of Miami was publicly launched in October 2003, it became the largest and most comprehensive fundraising initiative in the school’s history, with the endowment of student scholarships and new teaching chairs and the enhancement of facilities and research endeavors among its lofty goals.

A $100 million donation—the largest from a family in the institution’s history—from the family of Leonard M. Miller, the late South Florida businessman and former University board chair, named the medical school in Miller’s honor. Also during the campaign, the music school was renamed the Frost School of Music in honor of a $33 million gift from philanthropists Phillip and Patricia Frost.

After reaching its goal more than a year ahead of schedule, the Momentum campaign came to an end on Dec. 31, 2007, having raised $1.4 billion and making the U the first university in Florida to successfully mount a billion-dollar campaign.

While the campaign may go down as the University’s signature accomplishment of that decade, it was by no means the only defining attribute.

The University hosted the first of the 2004 presidential debates between Republican nominee George W. Bush and Democratic nominee Sen. John Kerry on Sept. 30. Some 250 University of Miami students, those who won an essay contest in which they wrote about “Democracy in Action: Make Your Vote Count,” attended the event. More than 5,000 others watched the debate on large-screen televisions at a debate watch party held in the Whitten University Center.

Dozens of events were held leading up to the debate, including a lecture series called “Celebrating American Democracy and Diversity.” The 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso, spoke and received an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters degree as part of the series.

Several facilities helped transform the Coral Gables Campus, including a new home for the School of Architecture. With its domed tower, freestanding colonnade, buttresses, and half-moon windows, the 8,600-square-foot Jorge M. Perez Architecture Center is now the centerpiece of the school’s five-building complex.

In the fall of 2006, the School of Nursing and Health Studies opened the M. Christine Schwartz Center for Nursing and Health Studies, which features classrooms and clinical practice labs, conference rooms, and a computer lab.

The Lowe Art Museum would dedicate its new Myrna and Sheldon Palley Pavilion for Contemporary Glass and Studio Arts in 2008, making it one of the few museums in South Florida with an extensive glass collection.

The Miller School of Medicine experienced a building boom of its own during the decade. It opened the Lois Pope LIFE Center, the hub of the medical school’s neuroscience research efforts, in 2000 and in 2001 dedicated the Batchelor Children’s Research Institute, a center devoted exclusively to research on children’s health.

In Athletics, the Miami Hurricanes baseball squad won the 2001 College World Series, and the football team would capture its fifth national championship, defeating the Nebraska Cornhuskers 37-14 in the Rose Bowl on Jan. 3, 2002, to cap an undefeated (12-0) season.

It was also the decade the Hurricanes women’s and men’s basketball teams would get a home to call their own. Their on-campus arena, the 8,000-seat Convocation Center opened in storybook fashion, with the men’s team defeating the storied North Carolina Tar Heels 64-61 in overtime on Jan. 4, 2003.

But the arena, now known as the Watsco Center, would come to be synonymous with more than just basketball—hosting concerts, award shows, and commencement ceremonies. The days of one, massive graduation event on what is now called the Foote University Green ended with the spring 2003 ceremony, the first held inside of the $48 million arena.

Building Boom of the 2010s

The momentum built by the University during the 2000s continued at a juggernaut pace with the arrival of the 2010s, a decade that saw economic recovery from the Great Recession, nearly 200 countries sign the Paris Climate Accords, the Event Horizon Telescope captures the first image of a black hole, the legalization of same-sex marriage, and major television shows such as “Breaking Bad” and “Game of Thrones.”

It was also a decade that started with tragedy, when a magnitude 7.0 earthquake struck Haiti on Jan. 12, 2010, leaving huge swaths of the Caribbean nation’s densely populated capital, Port-au-Prince, in ruins; killing between 200,000 and 300,000 people, by some estimates; and displacing thousands of others.

The University of Miami immediately rushed to the aid of its neighbor, with nearly every school and college rendering assistance of some kind.

Led by world-renowned Miller School of Medicine neurosurgeon Dr. Barth Green—who in 1994 cofounded the nonprofit Project Medishare for Haiti to provide health care to the country’s underserved areas—a team of physicians, nurses, and other personnel from the University arrived in the quake-damaged country within 24 hours after the temblor struck, treating hundreds of injured patients at a 240-bed trauma and critical care field hospital on the grounds of the Port-au-Prince airport.

Two months after the earthquake, the School of Architecture, at the request of the Haitian government’s Commission for Reconstruction, hosted a five-day planning charrette to aid in Haiti’s rebuilding efforts. Then-dean of the School of Architecture Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk organized the charrette, which resulted in a body of work that helped support the Haitian government’s postdisaster needs assessment recommendations presented to the U.N. International Donors Conference at the end of March 2010 in New York.

And when the Obama administration granted Temporary Protected Status to undocumented Haitian immigrants three days after the earthquake, a group of School of Law students—supervised by the Health Rights Clinic and a staff of immigration attorneys—set up a makeshift legal office in the Miami Health District to screen dozens of Haitians who had arrived to apply for the special immigration status.

Fundraising once again took center stage, as the University in early February 2012 publicly launched Momentum2: The Breakthrough Campaign for the University of Miami, setting a goal of reaching $1.6 billion by the year 2016. And like the previous campaign, Momentum2 achieved its goal ahead of schedule—assisted by a $55 million gift from the Miller family to help build a state-of-the-art medical education building.

Fueled by campaign donations, building projects during the decade continued to boom. The Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric, and Earth Science opened its Marine Technology and Life Sciences Seawater building. The 86,000-square-foot facility houses the Marine Life Sciences Center, where critical research on marine animals and the impacts of climate on organisms and ecosystems is conducted. But it is the Alfred C. Glassell Jr. SUrge-STructure-Atmosphere INteraction (SUSTAIN) Laboratory that is the highlight of the complex. The lab features a 75-foot-long wind-wave tank that can generate Category 5 hurricane-force winds, allowing researchers to study the rapid intensification of tropical cyclones and the impacts of sea level rise.

Described as a “game changer” for students, the Student Activities Center—later renamed the Donna E. Shalala Student Center—opened at the start of the 2013-14 academic year. Student organizations that once had to share office space in the neighboring Whitten University Center now had their own individual accommodations.

The School of Nursing and Health Studies opened its state-of-the-art, five-story Simulation Hospital Advancing Research and Education, or S.H.A.R.E., in 2017, offering the latest simulation technology in a variety of clinical environments.

The School of Architecture dedicated its Thomas P. Murphy Design Studio Building, which includes high-tech features such as a fabrications lab with 3D printer and modern workstations that facilitate advanced digital production.

Frost School of Music opened the Patricia Louise Frost Music Studios, a 41,089-square-foot, twin-building complex that unites students and faculty musicians in world-class teaching and rehearsal spaces.

The decade would also see Shalala announce she was stepping down as president at the end of the 2014-15 school year. A physician and former minister of health of Mexico would replace her. Julio Frenk, a prominent Harvard dean and the son of German-Jewish immigrants who fled to Mexico to escape the persecution of Nazi Germany, became the University’s first Hispanic and native Spanish-speaking president in 2015.

At his investiture ceremony, he committed the institution to advancing its relevance. “Today, more than ever before, we must build a sturdy bridge that connects scholarship to solutions,” he said.

The U means something. For 100 years, we and our community have been at our best when we achieve greatness together.

Launch of a New Century

The 2020s began with COVID-19, and like institutions of higher learning everywhere, the University of Miami entered unchartered waters as it began to deal with a global pandemic that was establishing a foothold in the U.S., forcing businesses to adopt work-from-home policies, communities to mask up and practice social distancing, and universities and colleges to shutter their classrooms and migrate courses online.

Like most other institutions, the University of Miami closed its main campus midway through the Spring 2020 semester, sending students home to complete the term remotely. But when fall rolled around, the University, like it had done on so many occasions throughout its history, rose to the occasion. With meticulous protocols and precautions in place, it offered both in-person and remote instruction that fall, becoming one of just a few higher education institutions to do so. Its efforts served as a model, as no cases of in-classroom transmission of the virus were recorded throughout the full academic year.

Even as the world battled the pandemic, the University refused to be stagnant. It publicly launched its most ambitious fundraising effort ever, the $2.5 billion Ever Brighter: The Campaign for Our Next Century.

New facilities opened, including the $36.5 million Knight Center for Music Innovation, which showcases next-generation features that allow Frost School of Music students, faculty members, and visiting artists to experiment, explore, and develop new modalities in musical performance.

Research, a cornerstone of any great academic institution, got a substantial boost when the Frost Institute for Chemistry and Molecular Science, made possible by a $100 million donation from Phillip and Patricia Frost, opened in a 94,000-square-foot facility early this decade, focusing on research at the molecular level.

A landmark anonymous gift in 2020 of $126 million to Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center came with the promise of accelerating breakthrough advances in finding cures for cancer and expanding innovative treatment options for patients.

On-campus housing ramped up as well, with two new student lodging projects opening this decade: the 12-acre Lakeside Village, composed of 25 interconnected buildings, and the first phase of Centennial Village, which welcomed 880 first-year students to its Ibis and Coral Residential Colleges.

With the 2020s described as the decisive decade for climate action because of a multitude of extreme events, the launch of the Climate Resilience Institute ensures the schools and colleges receive University support for interdisciplinary, problem-driven research aimed at finding solutions to climate impacts and other environmental stressors.

In 2023 the University achieved a designation it sought for decades: membership in the prestigious Association of American Universities, a distinguished national organization of leading research universities founded in 1900.

Now in 2025, a new era begins with a new administration led by a University of Miami alumnus, former trustee, and die-hard Canes fan who fell in love with the institution 50 years ago when he stepped onto its campus as a freshman.

Now in 2025, a new era begins with a new administration led by a University of Miami alumnus, former trustee, and die-hard Canes fan who fell in love with the institution 50 years ago when he stepped onto its campus as a freshman.