Veritas, Vol. 45, No. 01, September 2002

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^ The sound of music is in the air as U the School of Music’s Festival Miami kicks off its 19th season.
/ I The School of Medicine, Florida’s first I medical school, has reached a golden milestone—its 50th birthday.
Ten years after the ‘Big One,’ the KmJ voices of Hurricane Andrew come alive in Professor Eugene Provenzo’s book.
Volume 45 ■ Number 1 ■ September 2002
For the Faculty and Staff of the University of Miami
www.miami.edu/veritas
PHILLIP AND PATRICIA FROST CONTRIBUTE $5.9 MILLION TO SCHOOL OF MUSIC
The School of Music has received a $5.9 million gift from prominent philanthropists Phillip and Patricia Frost. The gift will help construct the School of Music Center for Faculty and Administration Building.
“Patricia and I are delighted to help with the further development of what is already a great School of Music,” says Phillip Frost, CEO and chairman of the board of IVAX Corporation and chairman of the UM Board of Trustees.
The Frosts are Phillip Frost	longtime benefac-
tors to the School of Music. Over the past two decades they have established the Patricia L. Frost Professorship for the Dean of the Music School, the Anna Frost Scholarship Fund, and the Abraham Frost Commission Series. In 1999, the Frosts donated $1 million to the University of Miami Band of the Flour.
This latest gift will help build a 53,000-square-foot building that will house faculty offices, teaching studios, and offices for the school’s administration.
SURVEYING THE SEA: RESEARCHERS DIVE INTO FISH ‘CENSUS’
In what is arguably the most ambitious study of marine life ever conducted in the United States, scientists from the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science spent a month counting the fish in the Florida Keys.
Their goal: to provide a “snapshot” of the status of fisheries across the entire Florida Keys reef ecosystem, from Key Biscayne to the Dry Tortugas.
“It’s the first time we’ve done a whole system assessment in one fell swoop,” says UM marine biologist Jerry Ault, who led the group of scientists representing various state and federal agencies on the 30-day fish census. “The long-term goal is to develop high-precision monitoring of stock abundance at particular life stages to see what effects regulations, like ‘no-take zones,’ are having on coral reef fisheries resources throughout the Florida Keys ecosystem.”
Funds to be used to attract minority students to the sciences
Department of Biology gets $2.1 million grant
Disadvantaged and minority students, long underrepresented in scientific fields ranging from ecology to biomedicine and marine science, could soon see their numbers in such disciplines rise as a result of a $2.1 million grant awarded to the Department of Biology to help attract more of these students to the sciences.
Awarded by the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the grant will help support the department’s initiatives in providing scientific research experience to high school and community college students. It also will be used to instruct current and future high school teachers in research-based approaches to science teaching, and to implement a new approach in teaching first-year undergraduate introductory biology laboratories.
The grant is part of $80 million in
George E. Batchelor had a passion for the health of children
He learned to fly at the age of 16.
He helped design the P-51 Mustang, a World War II fighter plane, then served as a pilot during the war. And he started a small air cargo carrier that would grow into a company worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
While aviation may have been
George E. Batchelor’s profession, his passion was for the health and welfare of children.
The renowned aviation pioneer and philanthropist who gave millions of dollars for research on children’s health died recently at his Miami Beach home from lung cancer. He was 81.
Like the long-lasting mark he made in the aviation arena, Batchelor leaves an enduring legacy at the University of Miami that will benefit generations to come. He provided the lead gift of $10 million to build the Batchelor Children’s Research Institute at the School of Medicine. He surprised all in attendance at the building’s dedication on May 3, 2001, by increasing that gift to $15 million.
The eight-story facility, which houses the many research initiatives of Continued on page 3
funding being awarded by the medical institute to 44 research universities around the country. UM is collaborating with Miami-Dade Community College (M-DCC) and Miami-Dade County Public Schools on its grant program, which begins this fall.
“We’re going to build a community with science at its core,” says Michael Gaines, professor and chair of the Department of Biology and program director for the grant.
Community college students from M-DCC will be awarded stipends to work in UM research labs, and if they complete all the necessary requirements, they will receive full scholarships to attend the University. During the summer, high school juniors will live in UM residence halls and conduct scientific research under the guidance of University faculty. Gaines says parents also will get involved, taking part in “Family Science Sundays” in which they participate in research-related activities with their children.
While this is the third Howard Hughes Medical Institute grant awarded to the department, Gaines says this year’s program has been expanded to include initiatives aimed not only at attracting more minorities to the sciences but instructing current and future teachers in effective science teaching and implementing new advanced laboratory classes for UM freshmen.
Michael Gaines, professor and chair of the Department of Biology, is program director for a grant that seeks to attract more minority and disadvantaged students to the sciences.
M-DCC and University of Miami education majors, for example, will work with Miami-Dade County school teachers and students, taking special courses and pursuing research guided by UM faculty mentors.
The grant also will help UM build two new introductory biology laboratories where first-year students will team with upper-level honors and graduate students and faculty to conduct in-depth research.
Under the Department of Biology’s previous two medical institute grants, 64 students completed the program,
27 of which are now in medical school, with another nine pursuing doctorates in science-related fields.
Leonard Miller is remembered as a man who gave back to his community
Many people will always remember Leonard Miller as an astute Harvard graduate who came to Miami 47 years ago and, with only $10,000 in capital, started building homes.
Just as many others, however, will remember him as a man who built not only houses, but the solid foundations of education, whether it was in teaching the world about the issues affecting Jewish people or improving school achievement among under-
privileged students.
Miller, founder of Lennar Corp., one of the nation’s largest homebuilders, was committed to both endeavors and many others. Recently, the longtime philanthropist and civic leader died after a two-year battle against liver cancer.
He was 69. But his legacy in South Florida, especially at the University of Miami, lives on.
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