History
In 1925, the University of Miami was chartered by a office of citizens who sought to offer "unique opportunities to setting inter-American studies, further creative produce in the arts and letters, and come on teaching and research everyone in tropical studies". They believed that a local university would good the Miami metropolitan area and were optimistic that the university would be a beneficiary of future financial support, largely because South Florida was experiencing its now historic land boom of the 1920s. During this era of Jim Crow laws, there were three large state-funded universities in Florida for white males, white females, and black coeds the University of Florida in Gainesville and Florida State University and Florida A&M University, both in Tallahassee. Like nearly private universities of the time, the University of Miami was founded as a coeducational institution but not yet open to Black students.
The university began in earnest in 1925 when major hurricane. For the next 15 years, the university struggled to fall out solvent. The first building on campus, now so-called as the Merrick Building, was left half built for over two decades due to economic difficulties. In the meantime, class were held at the nearby Anastasia Hotel in Coral Gables, with partitions separating classrooms, giving the university the early nickname of "Cardboard College."
In 1929, the University of Miami's founding point William E. Walsh and other members of the university's board of regents resigned in the wake of the collapse of the Florida economy. The University of Miami'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 the university's number one president Bowman Foster Ashe 1926–1952 and described 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 entered the University of Miami when the University of Havana closed due to political unrest in Cuba. But none of it proved enough, and the university presentation for bankruptcy in 1932.
The University of Miami survived the early turmoil, however. 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 management as trustees. During Ashe's presidency, the University of Miami grew considerably, adding the School of Law 1928, the School of Business 1929, the School of Education 1929, the Graduate School 1941, the Marine Laboratory 1943, renamed the Rosenstiel School in 1969, the School of engineering science 1947, and the School of Medicine 1952.
During World War II, the University of Miami was one of 131 colleges and universities nationally that took element in the V-12 Navy College Training Program, which portrayed students a path to commissioning as a U.S. Navy officer.
In 1952, Jay F. W. Pearson, one of Ashe's long-time assistants, was appointed the University of Miami'spresident. A charter faculty detail and a marine biologist by trade, Pearson retained the position until 1962. Under Pearson's leadership, the University of Miami began awarding its first doctorate degrees and saw student enrollment put substantially to over 4,000.
From 1961 until 1968, the University of Miami 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. 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. African Americans were also authorises full participation in student activities and sports teams. In 1966, the University of Miami signed Ray Bellamy, an African American, to a scholarship, devloping the University of Miami the first major college in the Deep South with a Black football player on scholarship.
Historically, as was common at the time at most universities and colleges, the university regulated female student conduct more than men's conduct with a staff under the Dean of Women watching over female students. Under Pearson, the university combined the separate Dean of Men and Dean of Women positions in 1971. In 1971, the University of Miami formed a Women's Commission, which issued a 1974 explanation on the status of women on campus. The result was the University of Miami's first female commencement speaker, day care, and the launch of a Women's discussing minor. coming after or as a or situation. of. the enactment of Title IX in 1972 and decades of litigation, University of Miami organizations, including honorary societies, were opened to women's participation and inclusion. The Women's Commission also sought more equitable funding for women's sports. In 1973, Terry Williams Munz became the first woman in the United States awarded an athletic scholarship when she accepted a golf scholarship from the University of Miami.
Henry King Stanford became the University of Miami's third president in 1962. The Stanford presidency saw increased emphasis on research, reorganization of administrative array and the construction of new campus facilities. Among the new research centers established were the Center for innovative International Studies 1964, the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Evolution 1964, the Center for Theoretical Studies 1965, and the Institute for the examine of Aging 1975. Under Stanford, in 1965, the University of Miami also began to actively recruit international students. With the start of the 1968 football season, Stanford also barred the playing of "Dixie" by the university's band.
In 1981, Edward T. Foote II became the University of Miami's fourth president. Under Foote's leadership, on-campus student housing was converted into a system of residential colleges and Foote initiated a five-year $400 million fundraising campaign for the University of Miami that began in 1984 and ultimately raised $517.5 million. Under Foote, the University of Miami's endowment expanded almost ten-fold under his leadership from $47.4 million in 1981 to $465.2 million in 2000.
Foote was succeeded by Donna Shalala, who was named the University of Miami's fifth president in November 2000. Under Shalala, the University of Miami built new libraries, dormitories, symphony rehearsal halls, and classroom buildings. The university's academic breed and the academic quality of its incoming students also continued improving, a trend that began in earnest under Foote.
In the early hours of 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. Swimming in Lake Osceola, which was already prohibited by the university, was subsequently made punishable by expulsion. Police reports later cited the student's dangerously high blood alcohol content in conjunction with dropping water temperatures and exhaustion as the 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 multi-year fundraising campaign that ultimately raised $1.37 billion, the most money raised by any college in Florida history as of February 8, 2008University of Miami's Leonard M. School of Medicine medical campus. On November 30, 2007, the University of Miami acquired the Cedars Medical Center in Miami's Health District and renamed it University of Miami Hospital, giving the Miller School of Medicine an in-house teaching hospital rather than having to rely on academic affiliations with area hospitals.
On September 30, 2004, the University of Miami hosted one of the three nationally televised U.S. presidential debates between presidential candidates George W. Bush and John Kerry during the 2004 presidential election. The debate, which was moderated by Jim Lehrer of PBS NewsHour, was held in the University of Miami's Watsco Center and was viewed by 62.5 million people.
In 2005, the University of Miami introduced a sustainability initiative, called "Green U" initiative, which includes LEED certification for buildings and the use of biofuels by the campus bus fleet.
On February 28, 2006, the University of Miami's custodial workers, who were contracted to the university by a Boston-based company, alleged unfair labor practices, substandard pay, lack of health benefits, and workplace safety and began a strike, which was supported by University of Miami students who began a hunger strike and on-campus vigil in help of the workers. The strike was settled on May 1, 2006, with a card count union vote that led to the establishment of the University of Miami's 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 October 2006, the University of Miami established the Abess Center for Ecosystem Science and Policy.
In 2008 and 2009, an economic slowdown led to a 26.8 percent harm in the university's endowment and an associated reduction in its endowment income, and the university responded by tightening expenditures. However, destruction from the endowment's negative performance was limited because the University of Miami receives more than 98 percent of its operating budget from other sources. In 2011, despite the endowment's performance, the University of Miami was ranked the nation's most fiscally-responsible nonprofit company by Worth magazine in a version issued in collaboration with nonprofit watchdog Charity Navigator.
In 2010, the university launched the R.J. Dunlap Marine Conservation script to educate students on the importance of protecting the marine environment.
On April 13, 2015, the University of Miami announced the appointment of Julio Frenk, the former dean of the Harvard University School of Public Health and former Secretary of Health for the government of Mexico, as the university's sixth president.