WOMEN SHAPING HISTORY: College Presidents
President Donna Shalala: University of Miami
By Joan Baum, Ph.D.
She has an impressive honors-strewn record in both academe and government—Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, President of Hunter College, Assistant Secretary for Policy Development and Research at the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, Associate Professor and Chair of the Program in Politics and Education at Teachers College, Columbia, and a stint in the Peace Corps in its founding years. Of her present position, however, as President of the University of Miami, a private research university with its main campus in Coral Gables, Florida, Donna E. Shalala says firmly, this is it. It’s where she’s been delighted to be over the last five years and where she’d like to be five years from now. She took the job for the same reason she has taken every other job—she likes “complexity, challenge.” “I love a new adventure.”
Ohio born, she has a B.A. in history from Western College for Women (now part of the Miami University in Ohio), a small undergraduate institution which introduced her to professors who became mentors and impressed upon her the importance of a solid undergraduate education. She went on to earn a doctorate from Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, combining early on a love of scholarship and service. Among many accomplishments she points with pride to the fact that the University of Miami has now become, as “the students say,” a “hot” school. SAT scores of entering freshmen have gone up 100 points and the “profile” of the school has been vastly “improved,” especially at the undergraduate level, with its over 10,000-student population. Amenities go a long way—tables and chairs on patios, a Starbucks in the Library, housing for over 40 percent of undergraduates, which the President says she looks to raise to 60 percent. There are also 800 apartments for upperclassmen. Because “campus life” is so important, the president recently hired a dean for undergraduate education. Despite an incredibly packed schedule at the helm of a major university that she has helped change dramatically in a mere few years, Dr. Shalala still finds time to teach (a course in Health Politics in the division of Political Science) and keep up with the students—they email her, she moves around the campus, and she recently put in an appearance on the Colbert Report.
Among other significant changes during her tenure, President Shalala also notes the accomplishment of “generational change,” whereby approximately 90% of senior-level positions at the university have seen turnaround. The new cadre includes some “nontraditional” appointments—specialists from fields outside academe but with years of professional experience in the business world and in various disciplines. She cites the young lawyer with no fund-raising experience who went on to meet the university’s goal of a billion-dollar campaign. She is an expert herself in the this area, of course, adding that she likes “raising money, telling stories to prospective donors, inspiriting them to commit.” Much of that new-found funding has gone into the University of Miami’s medical school and into scientific enterprise in general, she notes, putting the university front and center in research in neuroscience, genetics, cardiology and cancer, among other areas. Many of the new hirees at the university reflect President Shalala’s sense of the importance of multi-disciplinary study. Although the biological sciences, psychology and communications and business are the biggest undergraduate majors, it is her hope, she says, that University of Miami graduates will be prepared for their “third job.” Stop a typical student and ask him or her what their major is, and “you’d better be prepared for a long response.” University of Miami students want to major in everything. Their president could not be more pleased.#
