The University of Miami (informally referred to as UM, U of M, or The U) is a private, nonsectarian research university in Coral Gables, Florida, United States. As of 2015, the university enrolls 16,848 students in 12 separate colleges/schools, including the Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine in Miami's Health District, a law school on the main campus, and the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science focused on the study of oceanography and atmospheric sciences on Virginia Key, with research facilities at the Richmond Facility in southern Miami-Dade County.
The university offers 116 undergraduate, 105 master's, and 63 doctoral degree programs, of which 59 are research/scholarship and four professional areas of study. Over the years, the university's students have represented all 50 states and close to 150 foreign countries. With more than 14,000 full and part-time faculty and staff, UM is currently the sixth largest employer in Miami-Dade County. UM's main campus in Coral Gables has 239 acres and over 5.7 million square feet of buildings. In the 2017 U.S. News and World Report study of colleges and universities, UM is ranked the 44th best national university in the United States.
Research is a component of each academic division, with UM attracting $346.6 million per year in sponsored research grants. UM offers a large library system with over 3.1 million volumes and exceptional holdings in Cuban heritage and music. UM also offers a wide range of student activities, including fraternities and sororities, a student newspaper and radio station. UM's intercollegiate athletic teams, collectively known as the Miami Hurricanes, compete in Division I of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. UM's football team has won five national championships since 1983 and its baseball team has won four national championships since 1982.
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History
A group of citizens chartered the University of Miami (UM) in 1925 with the intent to offer "unique opportunities to develop inter-American studies, to further creative work in the arts and letters, and to conduct teaching and research programs in tropical studies". They believed that a local university would benefit their community. They were overly optimistic about future financial support for UM because the South Florida land boom was at its peak. During the Jim Crow era, there were three large state-funded universities in Florida for white males, white females, and black coeds (UF, FSU, and FAMU, respectively); in this accord, UM was founded as a white, coeducational institution.
The university began in earnest in 1925 when George E. Merrick, the founder of Coral Gables, gave 160 acres (0.6 km2) and nearly $5 million, ($68.3 million, adjusted for current inflation) to the effort. These contributions were land contracts and mortgages on real estate that had been sold in the city. The university was chartered on April 18, 1925 by the Circuit Court for Dade County. By the fall of 1926, when the first class of 372 students enrolled at UM, the land boom had collapsed, and hopes for a speedy recovery were dashed by a major hurricane. For the next 15 years the university barely remained solvent. The construction of the first building on campus, now known as the Merrick Building, was left half built for over two decades due to economic difficulties. In the meantime, classes were held at the nearby Anastasia Hotel, with partitions separating classrooms, giving the university the early nickname of "Cardboard College."
In 1929, Walsh and the other members of the Board of Regents resigned in the wake of the collapse of the Florida economy. UM'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 was chaired by UM's first president Bowman Foster Ashe (1926-1952). The new board included Merrick, Theodore Dickinson, E.B. Douglas, David Fairchild, James H. Gilman, Richardson Saunders, Frank B. Shutts, Joseph H. Adams, and J. C. Penney. In 1930, several faculty members and more than 60 students came to UM when the University of Havana closed due to political unrest. UM filed for bankruptcy in 1932. In July 1934, the University of Miami was reincorporated and a Board of Trustees replaced the Board of Regents. By 1940, community leaders were replacing faculty and administration as trustees. The university survived this early turmoil. During Ashe's presidency, the university added the School of Law (1928), the School of Business Administration (1929), the School of Education (1929), the Graduate School (1941), the Marine Laboratory (1943, renamed in 1969 as the Rosenstiel School), the School of Engineering (1947), and the School of Medicine (1952).
During World War II, UM was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took part in the V-12 Navy College Training Program, which offered students a path to a Navy commission.
One of Ashe's longtime assistants, Jay F. W. Pearson, assumed the presidency in 1952. A charter faculty member and a marine biologist by trade, Pearson retained the position until 1962. During his presidency, UM awarded its first doctorate degrees and saw an increase in enrollment of more than 4,000.
The social changes of the 1960s and 1970s were reflected at UM. In 1961, UM dropped its policy of racial segregation and began to admit black students. African Americans were also allowed full participation in student activities and sports teams. After President Stanford pressed for minority athletes, in December 1966, UM signed Ray Bellamy, an African American football player. With Bellamy, UM became the first major college in the Deep South with a Black football player on scholarship. UM established an Office of Minority Affairs to promote diversity in both undergraduate and professional school admissions. With the start of the 1968 football season, President Henry Stanford barred the playing of "Dixie" by the university's band.
Historically, UM regulated female student conduct more than men's conduct with a staff under the Dean of Women watching over the women. UM combined the separate Dean of Men and Dean of Women positions in 1971. In 1971, UM formed a Women's Commission which issued a 1974 report on the status of women on campus. The result was UM's first female commencement speaker, day care, and a Women's Study minor. Following the enactment of Title IX in 1972, and decades of litigation, all organizations, including honorary societies were open to women. The Women's Commission also sought more equitable funding for women's sports. Terry Williams Munz became the first woman in America awarded an athletic scholarship when she accepted a golf scholarship from UM in 1973.
From 1961 to 1968, UM leased buildings on its South Campus to serve as the covert headquarters of the Central Intelligence Agency's JMWAVE operation against Fidel Castro's government in Cuba. In 1968, after Ramparts magazine exposed CIA operations on other campuses, JMWAVE was moved off the UM campus out of concern for embarrassing the university. The University no longer owns land at the south campus.
Henry King Stanford became UM's third president in 1962. The Stanford presidency saw increased emphasis on research, reorganization of administrative structure and construction of new facilities. Among the new research centers established were 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). Under Stanford, in 1965, UM began to recruit international students.
In 1981, Edward T. Foote II became the school's fourth president. Under Foote's leadership, on campus student housing was converted into a system of residential colleges. In addition, Foote initiated a five-year $400 million fundraising campaign that began in 1984 and raised $517.5 million. He saw the endowment expand from $47.4 million in 1981 to $465.2 million in 2000.
Foote was succeeded by Donna Shalala, who assumed the UM presidency in 2001. Under Shalala, Miami built new libraries, dormitories, symphony rehearsal halls, and classroom buildings. The university's academic quality and student quality also have improved as a result. During Shalala's leadership of the University of Miami, Miami hosted one of three nationally televised U.S. presidential debates of the 2004 U.S. Presidential election.
Starting in 2002, UM conducted a fundraising campaign titled "Momentum: The Campaign for the University of Miami" that ultimately raised $1.37 billion, the most money raised by any college in Florida as of February 8, 2008. Of that amount, $854 million went to the medical campus. On November 30, 2007, UM acquired the Cedars Medical Center and renamed it the "University of Miami Hospital", giving the Miller School of Medicine an in-house teaching hospital rather than being merely affiliated with area hospitals.
On February 28, 2006, custodial workers at the University of Miami, who are contracted to the university by a Boston, Massachusetts-based company, UNICCO, began a strike prompted by allegations of unfair labor practices, substandard pay, lack of health benefits, and workplace safety. After students began a hunger strike and on-campus vigil, the strike was settled on May 1, 2006. The settlement resulted in a card count which led to the recognition of the first union-represented bargaining unit at UM. UM raised wages from $6.40 to $8.35 per hour and provided health insurance.
In 2008-09, UM responded to the economic slowdown by tightening expenditures. While its endowment lost over 26.8% of its value, impacting endowment income, the school receives more than 98% of its operating budget from other sources.
In 2011, UM was ranked the nation's most fiscally-responsible nonprofit organization by Worth magazine, in a report issued in collaboration with nonprofit watchdog Charity Navigator.
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Campus
Coral Gables campus
UM's main campus spans 239 acres (0.97 km2) in Coral Gables, located immediately south of the city of Miami. Most of the University of Miami's academic programs are located on the main campus in Coral Gables, which houses seven schools and two colleges including the University of Miami School of Law. The campus has over 5,900,000 sq ft (550,000 m2) of building space valued at over $657 million.
The university also has a campus theater, the Jerry Herman Ring Theatre, which is used for student plays and musicals. The John C. Gifford Arboretum, a campus arboretum and botanical garden, is located on the northwest corner of the main campus in Coral Gables. The Jorge M. Perez Architecture Center is the lecture hall and gallery of the School of Architecture that displays exhibitions focusing on architecture and design.
The Coral Gables campus is served by the Miami Metrorail at the University Station. The Metro connects UM to downtown Miami, Brickell, Coconut Grove, Civic Center, and other Miami neighborhoods. The UM campus is about a 15-minute train ride from Downtown and Brickell. The Hurry 'Canes shuttle bus service operates two routes on campus (as well as to the University Station) and weekend routes to various off-campus stores and facilities during the school year; an additional shuttle route provides service to the RSMAS campus on Virginia Key and Vizcaya Station. Miami also has a Zipcar service. There is also a lake called Lake Osceola located at the center of campus. It contains a large fountain, which serves as a landmark to many university students.
Student housing
The Coral Gables campus houses 4,500 enrolled students. This group is disproportionately freshmen (84% of new freshmen live on campus compared with 43% of all degree undergraduates). UM's on-campus housing consists of five residential colleges and one apartment-style housing area available only to undergraduate degree-seeking students. The residential colleges are divided into two dormitory-style residence halls and three suite-style residence halls. The McDonald and Pentland Towers of Hecht Residential College and the Walsh and Rosborough Towers of Stanford Residential College are commonly referred to as the "Freshman Towers", as the single-sex by floor (with shared bathroom facilities) co-ed dormitories generally house new students. Eaton Residential College, which originally housed only women, and the Mahoney/Pearson Residential Colleges have suite-style housing with every two double-occupancy rooms connected by a shared bathroom.
In addition to these five residential colleges, Miami also has an area called the University Village which consists of seven buildings with apartment-style annual contract housing, fully furnished with kitchen facilities. The University Village is only open to juniors and seniors, but was previously open to graduate students and students of the School of Law up until July 31, 2009; after this date, there has been no housing available for any graduate students on the Coral Gables campus. The University of Miami also has a series of fraternity houses, opposite the intramural fields on San Amaro Drive, dubbed "Fraternity Row"; the sororities do not possess any such facilities.
Miami previously had a series of seven buildings set aside for student residences called the Apartment Area, consisting of the oldest dormitories on campus which were originally built to house married veterans and their families. These buildings also featured fully furnished apartments with kitchen facilities, but they were not leased to students as in the University Village. These residences were closed at the end of the Spring 2010 semester, although several others of these original dormitories continue to be used as office space for departments such as the Office of Student Employment, the Air Force ROTC Detachment 155, and the Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Education PIER 21.
The University of Miami does not offer housing for students with children or for married students. UM abolished its separate dorms for athletes in 1990.
Medical campus
The Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine campus, located in Miami city proper in Civic Center, trains 1,000 students in various health-related programs. It consists of 68 acres (280,000 m2) within the 153 acres (620,000 m2) University of Miami/Jackson Memorial Medical Center complex. The medical center includes three UM-owned hospitals: University of Miami Hospital, Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, and Anne Bates Leach Eye Hospital. Jackson Memorial Hospital, Holtz Children's Hospital, and the Miami Veterans Affairs Medical Center are also a part of the medical center and are affiliated with UM, but are not owned by UM. The heart of this campus is "The Alamo" - the original City of Miami Hospital, which opened in 1918, that is on the National Register of Historic Places. In 2006, UM opened the 300,000 sq ft (28,000 m2), 15-story Clinical Research Building and Wellness Center. In 2009, a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certified, nine-story Biomedical Research Building, a 182,000 sq ft (16,900 m2) laboratory and office facility, opened to house the Interdisciplinary Stem Cell Institute and the Miami Institute for Human Genomics. UM has started to build a 2,000,000 sq ft (190,000 m2) UM Life Science Park adjacent to the UM medical campus. These additional Gold LEED certified buildings are being built by Wexford Science & Technology, a private developer, on land leased from UM. The Medical campus is connected to UM's main campus by the Miami Metrorail with direct stations at University Station for the main campus, and Civic Center Station for the medical campus.
On December 1, 2007, the university purchased the Cedars Medical Center, renaming it as the University of Miami Hospital. Situated in the Miami Health District, the hospital is close to the Jackson Memorial Hospital, which has been used by the UM students and faculty to provide patient care for many years.
Starting in 2004, the Miller School began offering instruction on the campus of Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida. MD candidates were admitted to either the Miami or Boca Raton programs and spent the first two years studying on the selected campus and the last two on the main campus in Miami. In April 2005, the Boca Raton program was expanded to include a third clinical year in Palm Beach County. In 2010, when Florida Atlantic University made plans to establish their own medical school, no future classes of the regional campus were accepted. The last class to complete the first three years of training in Boca Raton is the Class of 2013.
There is no on campus housing for students of the Miller School of Medicine in Miami or Boca Raton. The Miami and Boca Raton campuses charge identical tuition, with a lower tuition for in-state students.
RSMAS/Marine Campus
In 1945, construction began on the Rickenbacker Causeway to make Virginia Key accessible by car. The county offered to give UM a part of the island adjacent to the Miami Seaquarium in exchange for UM operating the aquarium. However, the aquarium construction was delayed when a bond referendum failed, so UM leased the land in 1951. In 1953, UM built classroom and lab buildings on a 16-acre (65,000 m²) campus to house what would become the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science (RSMAS). Additional buildings were added in 1957, 1959 and 1965. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory is located across the Rickenbacker Causeway from the campus. From 1947 to 1959, the State of Florida funded the UM Marine Lab on Virginia Key until the State built a separate marine lab in St. Petersburg. In 2009, UM received a $15 million federal grant to help construct a new $43.8 million, 56,500 square feet (5,250 m2) Marine Technology and Life Sciences Seawater Research Building.
There is no housing on the RSMAS campus. As part of its campus-wide free shuttle service, UM operates a route from the Coral Gables campus to the RSMAS campus, which includes stops at the Vizcaya Metrorail station on weekdays.
South Campus
In 1946, UM acquired the former Richmond Naval Air Station, in southwestern Miami, located 12 mi (19 km) south of the main campus in order to accommodate the post-war increase in students. The campus was acquired immediately following World War II and provided classrooms, housing, and other amenities for about 1,100 students (mostly freshmen) for two academic years. In 1948 it was repurposed as a research facility. In the 1960s, some of the buildings were leased to the Central Intelligence Agency. The South Campus Grove was a 350 acres (1,400,000 m2) plot for agricultural research and horticultural studies that was established in 1948. For 20 years, UM used radioactive isotopes in biological research on the South Campus, and buried materials included irradiated animals on the site. In August 2006, UM agreed to reimburse the Army Corps of Engineers $393,473 for clean-up costs under the Superfund law. Its six buildings provide 63,800 sq ft (5,930 m2) to currently house: the Global Public Health Research Group, Miami Institute for Human Genomics, Forensic Toxicology Laboratory (for analysis of DUI suspect blood samples), and Microbiology and Immunology. The University of Miami once planned to build a south campus on the property but opted to sell 80 acres of land instead. The University no longer owns land at the south campus.
Richmond Campus
The Richmond campus is a 76 acres (310,000 m2) site that was formerly the United States Naval Observatory Secondary National Time Standard Facility, which already had buildings and a 20M antenna used for Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI). The Rosenstiel School's Center for Southeastern Tropical Advanced Remote Sensing (CSTARS) and Richmond Satellite Operations Center (RSOC) have research facilities located on a portion of the new campus.
Sustainability
Since 2005, UM has a "Green U" initiative which includes LEED certification for buildings and the use of biofuels by the campus bus fleet. UM established the Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy. As a part of the Abess Center, UM launched the R.J. Dunlap Marine Conservation Program to educate students on the importance of protecting the marine environment. In 2008, UM replaced the chiller plant on its Virginia Key campus to improve its carbon footprint. UM also planted mangroves, sea grape trees, and other dune plants on Virginia Key to protect its sand dunes and to protect the campus from storm damage.
Student body
In 2015, UM received 33,416 applicants for 2,082 available openings in its freshman class. About 63 percent of new freshmen admitted to the university graduated in the top 10 percent of their high school class, with an average GPA of 4.0 and median SAT score of 1300.
In 2015, undergraduates were composed of: 27% from the Greater Miami area, 10% from other parts of Florida, 48% from other U.S. states, and 15% were international students. Graduate students were composed of: 36% from the Greater Miami area, 12% from other parts of Florida, 33% from other U.S. states, and 19% were international students.
As of 2009, UM reported the following graduation rates: 68% graduating within 4 years, 79% graduating within 5 years, and 82% graduating within 6 years. Male student athletes have a 52% 4-year graduation rate, and 72% of female student athletes graduate within 4 years.
Academics
There are currently 2,616 full-time faculty members, with 96% of regular faculty holding doctorates or terminal degrees in their field. UM has a student-faculty ratio of 12:1. The University of Miami is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools and 23 additional professional and educational accrediting agencies. It is a member of the American Association of University Women, the American Council on Education, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Association of American Colleges and Universities, the Florida Association of Colleges and Universities, the Independent Colleges & Universities of Florida, and the National Association of Independent Colleges and Universities.
Organization
UM is led by a board of trustees, which holds two meetings each year. The board has 48 elected members, 3 alumni representatives, 23 senior members, 4 national members, 6 ex officio members, 14 emeriti members and 1 student representative. Ex officio members, who serve by virtue of their positions in the university, include the president of the university; the president and immediate past president of the citizens board; and the president, president-elect and immediate past president of the alumni association. Since 1982, the board has eleven visiting committees, which include both trustees and outside experts, to help oversee the individual academic units.
UM's president is the university's chief executive officer, with a 2012 salary of $1.16 million, and each academic unit is headed by a dean.
On April 13, 2015, the university announced that Dr. Julio Frenk would be the university's 6th president. Frenk previously served as dean of Harvard University's T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Mexico's minister of health.
- School of Architecture
- College of Arts and Sciences
- School of Business Administration
- School of Communication
- School of Education and Human Development
- College of Engineering
- Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science
- Phillip and Patricia Frost School of Music
- School of Nursing and Health Studies
- The Graduate School
- Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine
- University of Miami School of Law
In addition, UM also has a division of continuing and international education and a program in executive education as part of its school of business administration.
A partnership with nearby Florida International University, also allows students from both schools to take graduate classes at either university, allowing graduate students to take a wider variety of courses. In addition, the Miller School of Medicine offers separate PhD and MD/PhD programs in several biomedical sciences.
The Department of Community Service, staffed by volunteer medical students and physicians from UM's Leonard M. School of Medicine, provides free medical and other community services in Miami and surrounding communities.
For the fiscal year ending May 2012, UM had $2,403,500,000 in total revenues and $2,431,500,000 in functional expenses.
Rankings
In the 2017 issue of U.S. News & World Report's "America's Best Colleges," the University of Miami was ranked 44th among national universities. U.S. News's 2016 ranking of U.S. medical schools ranked the Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine as the 44th best medical school for research in the nation, while US News ranked the School of Law as the 60th best law school in the nation. In 2008, U.S. News & World Report ranked the University of Miami Physical Therapy Department 7th in the nation and the Department of Psychology's Clinical Training Program 25th in the nation.
The National Science Foundation ranks UM 112th out of 630 research institutions in the number of granted doctorate degrees in its FY 2006 survey. It ranked 65th out of 634 institutions in terms of total research and development expenditures in 2014.
The Academic Ranking of World Universities rates UM one of the world's top 150 academic institutions In Forbes magazine's 2010 rankings of 600 undergraduate institutions, UM ranked 293rd. In 2012, Forbes gave the University of Miami a 132 overall ranking and ranked it among the 115 top private universities and among the top 53 research universities in the nation.
In the 2009 edition of Best 371 Colleges, The Princeton Review ranks UM one of the 141 "Best Southeastern Colleges" and ranks it first in the nation in its "Lots of Race/Class Interaction" category.
Libraries
The Otto G. Richter Library, the University of Miami's main library, houses collections that serve the arts, architecture, humanities, social sciences, and the sciences. It is a depository for federal and state government publications. Rare books, maps, manuscript collections, and the University of Miami Archives are housed in the Special Collections Division and in the Cuban Heritage Collection.
In addition to the Richter Library, the Libraries include facilities that support programs in architecture, business, marine science, and music:
- Judi Prokop Newman Information Resources Center (Business)
- Marta and Austin Weeks Music Library
- Paul Buisson Architecture Library
- Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science Library
The university also has specialized libraries for medicine and law:
- Louis Calder Memorial Library (Medicine)
- University of Miami Law Library
Within the Miller School of Medicine, there are two specialized departmental libraries for ophthalmology and psychiatry that are open to the public:
- Mary and Edward Norton Library (Ophthalmology)
- Pomerance Library (Psychiatry)
Combined holdings of the libraries include over 3.4 million volumes, 87,125 current serials titles, 75,521 electronic journals, 630,756 electronic books, 4.1 million microforms, and 172,560 audio, film, video, and cartographic materials. The Libraries have a staff of 86 Librarians and 115 support staff.
In January 2017, the Jay I. Kislak Foundation announced that it was making a substantial donation of rare books, maps, and manuscripts to the UM Libraries and to Miami Dade College. The collection includes the earliest published copies of Columbus's letter on the first voyage.
Research
Sponsored research expenditures for fiscal year 2008 reached a record of more than $326 million. Those funds support over 5,000 graduate students and postdoctoral trainees. In Fiscal Year 2006, UM received $127 million in federal research funding, including $89.5 million from the Department of Health and Human Services and $16.7 million from the National Science Foundation. Of the $8.2 billion appropriated by Congress in 2009 as a part of the stimulus bill for research priorities of the National Institutes of Health, the Miller School received $40.5 million. In addition to research conducted in the individual academic schools and departments, Miami has the following University-wide research centers:
- The Center for Computational Science
- The Center for Hemispheric Policy
- The Institute for Cuban and Cuban-American Studies (ICCAS)
- Leonard and Jayne Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy
- The Miami European Union Center: This group is a consortium with Florida International University (FIU) established in Fall 2001 with a grant from the European Commission through its delegation in Washington, D.C., intended to research economic, social, and political issues of interest to the European Union.
- The Sue and Leonard Miller Center for Contemporary Judaic Studies
- John P. Hussman Institute for Human Genomics - studies possible causes of Parkinson's disease, Alzheimer's disease and macular degeneration.
- Center on Research and Education for Aging and Technology Enhancement (CREATE)
- Wallace H. Coulter Center for Translational Research
The Miller School of Medicine receives more than $200 million per year in external grants and contracts to fund 1,500 ongoing projects. The medical campus includes more than 500,000 sq ft (46,000 m2) of research space with plans underway to build a new UM Life Science Park, which will add an additional 2,000,000 sq ft (190,000 m2) of space adjacent to the medical campus. UM's Interdisciplinary Stem Cell Institute seeks to understand the biology of stem cells and translate basic research into new regenerative therapies. In 2007, Joshua Hare, MD and colleagues reported that a new stem cell therapy was safe for the treatment of myocardial infarction and reduced complications from the condition.
As of 2008, the Rosenstiel School receives $50 million in annual external research funding. Their laboratories include a salt-water wave tank, a five-tank Conditioning and Spawning System, multi-tank Aplysia Culture Laboratory, Controlled Corals Climate Tanks, and DNA analysis equipment. The campus also houses an invertebrate museum with 400,000 specimens and operates the Bimini Biological Field Station, an array of oceanographic high-frequency radar along the US east coast, and the Bermuda aerosol observatory. UM also owns the Little Salt Spring, a site on the National Register of Historic Places, in North Port, Florida, where RSMAS performs archaeological and paleontological research.
UM built a brain imaging annex to the James M. Cox Jr. Science Center within the College of Arts and Sciences. The building includes a human functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) laboratory, where scientists, clinicians, and engineers can study fundamental aspects of brain function. Construction of the lab was funded in part by a $14.8 million in stimulus money grant from the National Institute of Health.
In 2004 the university received $124 million in science and engineering funding from the U.S. federal government, the largest Hispanic-serving recipient and 54th overall. $92 million of the funding was through the Department of Health and Human Services and was used largely for the medical campus.
UM maintains one of the largest centralized academic cyber infrastructures in the country with numerous assets. The Center for Computational Science High Performance Computing group has been in continuous operation since 2007. Over that time the core has grown from a zero HPC cyberinfrastructure to a regional high-performance computing environment that currently supports more than 1,200 users, 220 TFlops of computational power, and more than 3 Petabytes of disk storage. The center's latest system acquisition, an IBM IDataPlex system, was ranked at number 389 on the November 2012 Top 500 Supercomputers.
Student life
The university is affiliated with 31 fraternities and sororities. Six of them (Alpha Epsilon Pi, Alpha Sigma Phi, Lambda Chi Alpha, Sigma Alpha Epsilon, Sigma Chi, and Zeta Beta Tau) have houses on campus. Among the service groups organized by students are Amnesty International and Habitat for Humanity. Students organize the Ibis yearbook, UMTV (a cable TV channel carried on Comcast Channel 96, which includes nine programs, many of which have won national awards), UniMiami (a Spanish-speaking Cable TV broadcast), the student-run Distraction Magazine and the campus radio station WVUM.
Since 1929, students have published The Miami Hurricane newspaper twice-weekly. The paper has been honored in the Associated Collegiate Press Hall of Fame.
UM has appointed individuals in the various departments to handle students' problems and complaints called "Troubleshooters." UM also has an Ombudsman to mediate complaints that cannot be resolved by the troubleshooters. Since 1986, UM has an Honor Code governing student conduct.
The university has a number of student honor societies. The Iron Arrow Honor Society (which also inducts faculty, staff, and alumni) is the highest honor awarded by the university. The university maintains a chapter of Mortar Board. In 1959, the Order of Omega was founded at UM, and it remained a one-campus honorary until 1964. It is now a national honorary for fraternity and sorority members with a chapter continuing at UM.
Athletics
The University of Miami's athletic teams are the Hurricanes, commonly referred to as the "Canes". They compete as a member of the National Collegiate Athletic Association Division I level, competing primarily in the Atlantic Coast Conference for all sports since the 2004-05 season. The Hurricanes previously competed in the Big East Conference from 1991-92 to 2003-04. Men's teams compete in baseball, basketball, cross-country, diving, football, tennis, and track and field; while women's teams compete in basketball, cross-country, diving, golf, rowing, soccer, swimming, tennis, track and field, and volleyball.
The University of Miami's mascot is Sebastian the Ibis. Its marching band is the Band of the Hour. The Miami Maniac is the mascot for baseball games.
Football program
The football program has been named national champion five times over the past three decades (1983, 1987, 1989, 1991, and 2001) and has appeared in the AP Top 25 frequently during this time. Alumni of the Miami Hurricanes football team include five members of the Pro Football Hall of Fame and two Heisman Trophy winners. Mark Richt was hired as the 24th head football coach on December 4, 2015.
For 70 years, from 1937 through 2007, the Hurricanes played their home football games at the Miami Orange Bowl. Beginning with the 2008 season, the University of Miami began playing its home football games at Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens. The university signed a 25-year contract to play there through 2033.
On December 12, 2009, the global sports network ESPN aired a documentary on the UM football program, The U, which drew 2.3 million viewers, the most ever for a documentary on the sports cable network. As of the 2011 National Football League season, UM had the most players active in the NFL of any university in the nation, with 42.
Baseball program
The UM baseball team, coached currently by Jim Morris, has won four national championships (1982, 1985, 1999 and 2001). Ryan Braun was named "National Freshman of the Year" by Baseball America while playing for the school in 2003, and won the Atlantic Coast Conference Baseball Player of the Year award as a junior. They play their home games at the on-campus baseball stadium, Alex Rodriguez Park at Mark Light Field, named for New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez, who contributed $3.9 million toward the stadium's 2007-2009 renovation.
Other sports
A smaller facility, Cobb Stadium, is located on the University of Miami campus and is used by the university's women's soccer and men's and women's track and field teams. UM's men's and women's basketball teams play their home games at Watsco Center on the Coral Gables campus. Jim Larrañaga is the head coach of UM's men's basketball team. UM's men's basketball team has twice reached the NCAA Championship's "Sweet 16" (1999-2000 and 2012-2013). Katie Meier is the head coach of UM's women's basketball team.
People
Notable alumni
Alumni of the University of Miami include a number of prominent people, including entertainers such as actors and musicians; athletes from Major League Baseball, the National Football League, the National Basketball Association, and the Olympic Games; chief executive officers of various companies; public officials and scientists.
Notable faculty
The University of Miami faculty includes (or has included), by way of example, physicists Paul Dirac and Carolyne M. Van Vliet, Judge Marilyn Milian, geologist Cesare Emiliani, marine biologist Samuel H. Gruber, economist Neil Wallace, audio engineer Bill Porter, artist and architect Bonnie Seeman, architect Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, sociologist Lowell Juilliard Carr, constitutional law expert John Hart Ely, head of the Administrative Conference of the United States, legal expert Paul R. Verkuil, bassist Jaco Pastorius, guitarist Pat Metheny, artist Walter Darby Bannard, and philosopher Colin McGinn.
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