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That course are actually the ones doing all the video taping today and projecting this
out. Can you all wave your hands that are in the course. Okay. Well welcome. Thank you.
Alright. Most of you probably know that I am a big
fan of the book Good to Great. In this book Jim Collins compares companies that are truly
exceptional with those that are "merely" very good. As I have reflected on this past year,
and look forward excitedly to this year, I have been thinking a lot about a part of this
book that focuses on the concept of the flywheel. Collins writes:
"Picture a huge, heavy flywheel ... Now imagine that your task is to get the flywheel turning
as fast and long as possible. Pushing with great effort, you get the flywheel to inch
forward. ... You keep pushing, and the flywheel begins to move a bit faster. You keep pushing
in a consistent direction. Three turns ... five ... ten ... twenty ... a hundred. Then at
some point -- breakthrough! The momentum of the thing kicks in in your favor ... its own
heavy weight working for you. You're pushing no harder than during the first rotation,
but the flywheel goes faster and faster. Each turn of the flywheel builds upon work done
earlier, compounding your investment of effort. ... The huge disk flies forward with almost
unstoppable momentum.
Now suppose someone came along and asked, "What was the one big push that caused this
thing to go so fast?" ... Was it the first push? ... The hundredth? No! It was all of
them added together in the overall accumulation of effort applied in a consistent direction
(emphasis added). Some pushes may have been bigger than others, but any single heave -- no
matter how large -- reflects a small fraction of the entire cumulative effect on the flywheel."
Everywhere I go on our campuses I am struck by the sense of momentum that Miami has going,
a momentum like that described by Collins which is produced by the overall accumulation
of effort applied in a consistent direction. Our common vision, our deep commitment, our
hard work, and our spirit are building momentum and a better university. So I would like to
take my time today to describe some of those "pushes," those activities and actions that
stood out this past year and that we look forward to this year.
Last year certainly started out on a note of excitement as Paul Ryan, Class of 1992,
was announced as the vice-presidential candidate for the Republican Party. The very first campaign
rally involving Rep. Ryan was held on the Oxford campus. With very little notice, our
staff and students created an exceptional event. Throughout the election cycle, it was
most gratifying to see the positive attention that Miami received. The bookend to the Presidential
campaign occurred when First Lady Michelle Obama visited campus three days before the
election. Again, our staff and students outdid themselves in organizing an outstanding event.
The success of these events is a tribute to our staff and students who rallied (no pun
intended) to the cause with very little notice. The political diversity of these events reflects
well on our efforts to have our students engage alternative points of view. One of our newest
efforts, the Janus Forum, was launched last spring. The Janus Forum is a donor-funded,
student-run seminar that brings in individuals with sharply contrasting views on important
topics. Each speaker makes a 25-minute presentation followed by an hour of questioning from the
students. This past spring the students invited Ari Fleischer, former press secretary for
President George W. Bush, and Ezra Klein, columnist for the Washington Post and Bloomberg
to debate the question "Is democracy in America working?" This fall the students have invited
Bill Richardson, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, governor of New Mexico,
U.S. energy secretary, and U.S. representative, and William Kristol, founder and editor of
The Weekly Standard and panelist on FOX "News Sunday," to debate "America's Role in the
World" on October 30th. I most enthusiastically encourage you to attend.
While we welcomed these distinguished visitors to our campus, we also provided an extraordinary,
and for most participants, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to perform at Carnegie Hall. Four
hundred and seventeen of our students in six different ensembles wowed the crowd with truly
exceptional performances. Carnegie Hall had never done anything like this before and the
logistics of moving that many people on and off stage were incredibly challenging. That
made the appreciation of the results all the better. As our Convocation speaker, Jane McGonigal
noted, "The hard part is the fun part!" Although we cannot fully recreate the special moment
of that concert, I am delighted that we can enjoy a snippet of the performance here today.
Sophomore clarinetist Christopher Rueda will perform a solo version of the "Festive Overture"
by Dmitri Shostakovich. This piece was played at Carnegie Hall by the Miami University Wind
Ensemble, including Christopher. He is accompanied by Bruce Murray, chair
of
the music department.
Many of our students then followed up with another extraordinary event, as the marching
band represented Ohio in the 57th Presidential inaugural parade in Washington, D.C., at the
request of Michelle Obama who was so impressed with our students during her visit here. It
has been a little hard to tell our first year students that Carnegie Hall concerts and inaugural
parades don't happen every year!
Our female athletes captured the Jacoby Cup again, awarded to the Mid America Conference
university with the best all-sport record of achievement. Our women's teams set a school
record for Jacoby Trophy points by winning seven conference championships. We captured
our third straight MAC Sportsmanship Award, a nice reflection of the spirit on campus.
The Synchronized Skating Team won its 9th consecutive national title, tying the record
for all national skating championships. Our ice hockey team won the final regular season
CCHA championship title, and now looks forward to playing in the new National Collegiate
Hockey Conference. Not to be outdone, our alumni distinguished themselves with John
Harbaugh coaching the Ravens to a Superbowl title and earning induction into the Cradle
of Coaches.
Our students continue to shine in competition for many of the nation's most prestigious
academic awards. James Tong Morton, a junior at Miami University with a quadruple major
in computer science, electrical engineering, engineering physics and mathematics and statistics
and a minor in Chinese, won the Goldwater Scholarship. Benjamin Fenton, who is completing
both his master's and bachelor's degrees in biology, received honorable mention. Dirk
Auman, senior biochemistry and engineering physics major and honors student won the Astronaut
Foundation Scholarship. Kayla Orta, a sophomore, received a 2013 National Security Education
Program Scholarship for International Study, while four other Miami University students
received Benjamin A. Gilman International Scholarships to help fund their summer and
fall study abroad experiences. Three Miami University seniors were awarded Fulbright
English Teaching Assistantships.
Miami University's forensics team won the national championship for the third year at
the 31st annual Novice National Tournament, and the James Lewis Family Mock Trial program
team placed eighth in the nation at the 2013 American Mock Trial Association National Championship
Tournament.
Kudos to these students and to their professors and faculty and staff mentors who do so much
to challenge and support our students.
We achieved a milestone in the life of our regional campuses with the creation of a new
division, the College of Professional Studies and Applied Sciences. The role of the regionals
has changed dramatically since Middletown was founded as the first regional campus in
the state. The new divisional structure will provide expanded opportunities for the regionals
to design programs and majors that better align with the needs of residents and employers
of Southwest Ohio.
We welcomed an exceptionally strong incoming class in Oxford last year and recruited an
even academically stronger incoming class for this fall. In fact, the class of 2017
is the most academically accomplished and diverse class in our history. This outcome
was the result of an "all in" attitude across campus, or in Collins' term, a whole lot of
"pushes" in the same direction. Everyone was involved in providing a warm and highly personal
welcome that impressed prospective students and their parents. It is difficult for printed
material to adequately convey what a real, and genuine, interaction can. By every one
of these interactions, we demonstrate that we are who we say we are. With this class,
we launched the Academic Scholars program that invites a small cohort of students into
a department or interdisciplinary program where they are intensively engaged in those
activities that surround and augment our curriculum, such as interacting personally with visiting
speakers and mentoring, while enjoying the special benefits of being a part of an ongoing
cohort.
Another huge milestone for the University was surpassing our 500-million-dollar goal
for the Love and Honor campaign It is natural to focus on the size of that number -- half
a billion dollars! But the true way to think about the impact of the campaign is what we
are doing, and what we will be able to do, thanks to the forward-looking generosity of
our alumni, parents, faculty, staff, and friends. Going forward, thousands of students will
have their own unforgettable Miami experience because of the new scholarships - incredible
faculty will be recruited, retained, and supported because of new chairs and professorships - and
everyone will benefit from the new facilities that significantly enhance our campuses and
communities. A campaign is not just about dollars. It is about believing in and creating
a brilliant future.
Finally, I would like to highlight the incredible work leading to the adoption of the Miami
2020 Plan. Fifty people served on the lead committees that created and then revised,
recreated, and refined these goals with significant feedback from the broader Miami community.
In a few moments I will talk about the final steps of implementation, but let me emphasize
here the goals themselves. Inspired by our vision that "Miami will provide the best undergraduate
experience in the nation, enhanced by superior, select graduate programs," we established a unifying goal to "Promote a vibrant learning and discovery
environment that produces extraordinary student and scholarly outcomes."
There is a lot of high expectation packed into this unifying goal. We seek not merely
to be very good, but to be the best, an ambitious goal that energizes everything we do. We strive
to create an active, energetic environment, inside and outside the classroom, an environment
that stresses initiative, hard work, collaboration, and creativity. We seek to dissolve the boundaries
between teaching and research by emphasizing (and facilitating) learning that is inquiry-based
and encouraging our students to work directly with faculty in their research and community
engagement. We recognize that the "vibrant learning and discovery environment" reflects
the totality of the student experience, from the classroom, to residential living, to participating
in student-led organizations to, well, performing at Carnegie Hall! We value graduate education
and carefully choose to excel in a limited number of high quality programs that draw
from our strengths and very often contribute directly to our undergraduate success as well.
To achieve this lofty vision, the Miami 2020 effort focuses on three critical foundational
goals. First, we seek to create a Transformational Work Environment. We live in a rapidly changing
world and, for our incredibly committed faculty and staff to contribute most effectively while
growing professionally, we need to "Ensure vitality and sustainability by building a
forward-looking, efficient, and caring culture that stimulates, recognizes, and rewards creativity,
entrepreneurial thinking, and exemplary performance." Again, there is a lot packed into that goal
to inspire our future actions.
Second, we seek to strengthen an Inclusive Culture and Global Engagement. Diversity in
all of its forms is hugely important in stimulating creativity, knowledge, and success. We are
one of the most diverse nations in a diverse world. We need to reflect that world in our
composition and engage that world through experiential learning. Thus, Miami will "Promote
a diverse culture of inclusion, integrity, and collaboration that deepens understanding
and embraces intercultural and global experiences."
Third, we embrace our mission as a public university by establishing Effective Partnerships
and Outreach. In this goal, we go beyond traditional thinking of service by seeking to "Cultivate
mutually beneficial partnerships and applied and service-oriented projects that strengthen
our local, state, national, and world communities."
The development of these goals and these many accomplishments demonstrate what a great year
we had. Now, let's turn to looking at the year ahead. In keeping with the fly-wheel
analogy, it is important that we continue to apply new energy to the flywheel. Without
it, the fly-wheel will slow down. With it, the fly-wheel accelerates.
Before I highlight some specific activities planned for the year ahead, I want to emphasize
how critical what we usually think of as "routine" is to our success. The success we enjoyed
this past year, and the momentum that is sweeping us into this year, are above all else the
result of an incredible amount of "routine" work that goes on every day. We must never
underestimate the importance of highly motivated, highly committed people working towards the
same goal, "pushing in the same direction." A revised course, a new internship, an improved
operation in physical facilities, a new policy for student life -- all of these are examples
of the thousands of day-to-day individual "pushes" that define us and improve our outcomes.
Just as importantly, the spirit in which we deliver these activities reflects the innovative
and highly personalized culture that makes Miami special. So, with the importance of
everyday activities clearly in mind, let me turn to describing a handful of activities
that symbolically and substantively will be part of moving the flywheel faster this year.
Less than two weeks ago we launched a new year for more than 3,600 first-year students
at Convocation in the Hub. This class truly took flight, sharing inspiring words of advice
to each other on the wings of paper airplanes. It was an amazing sight. Next ASG president
Charlie Schreiber introduced a new tradition and a new standard for student behavior centered
on "I am Miami." At the Convocation, new students were given a small packet that contained a
Miami lapel pin with the words "I am Miami" on the bottom of the "M." They were also given
a card with a holographic "I Am Miami" on one side and the new "Code of Love and Honor"
on the other. The code is a personalized adaptation of the values statement adopted by the Board
of Trustees in 2002. The code begins with a simple, yet powerful statement that has
defined Miami from the beginning.
I am Miami. I believe that a liberal education is grounded
in qualities of character and intellect.
It is a profound statement anchoring the Miami experience in our commitment to developing
the whole person -- a liberal education that aspires to awaken the intellectual world and
the development of personal character anchored in strong values. Let me share the rest of
the code:
I stand for honesty, integrity, and the importance of moral conduct.
I respect the dignity, rights and property of others, and their right to hold and express
disparate beliefs. I defend the freedom of inquiry that is the
heart of learning. I exercise good judgment and believe in personal
responsibility. I welcome a diversity of people, ideas, and
experiences. I embrace the spirit, academic rigor, opportunities,
and challenges of a Miami Experience that prepares me to make the world a better place.
I demonstrate Love and Honor by supporting my fellow Miamians.
And because I Am Miami, I act through my words and deeds in ways that reflect these values
and beliefs. With a deep sense of accomplishment and gratitude,
I will Love, Honor and make proud those who help me earn the joy and privilege of saying,
"To think that in such a place, I led such a life."
This code is the foundation for the Miami family to strengthen a culture of respect
and personal responsibility that will significantly enhance all of the other programs that seek
to improve student life and student growth on our campuses.
A little over three weeks ago the movie "The Butler" debuted. The movie was inspired by
the life of Eugene Allen who served eight presidents in the White House. The story was
originally reported by Miami alumnus Wil Haygood in The Washington Post. The screen adaptation
uses this moving story to provide a deeper understanding of the civil rights movement
that was unfolding across the nation during these years. The movie makes vivid the dangerous
times and acts of heroism that individuals, both black and white, demonstrated for the
cause of freedom. The movie takes note of the deaths of three Freedom Riders -- James
Chaney, Michael Schwerner, and Andrew Goodman -- who were trained on the campus of Western
College in the summer of 1964 before heading south to register black voters. Last week
we were again inspired by the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington and Dr. Martin
Luther King's "I have a dream" speech. This coming year also marks the 50th anniversary
of Freedom Summer, and to commemorate this historic event, Miami will focus attention
throughout the year on "Celebrating Freedom: Learning from the Past, Building the Future."
There will be a wide variety of events on all of our campuses sponsored under this theme
throughout the year, and I urge everyone to participate in as many of these events as
possible. They provide us with the opportunity to reflect on the progress made and the progress
yet to come in the United States and throughout the world to ensure the freedom and dignity
of all people.
The celebration of freedom and the "I am Miami" campaign both have their roots deeply planted
in the very best of a liberal arts tradition. Thus, the efforts to complete a revision of
the Miami Plan stand out as a significant effort in the year ahead. Few efforts are
as fundamental to a university, and even more so to Miami, than sharing a passion for the
liberal arts -- which remain the most comprehensive basis for preparing students to be able to
continually adapt in a constantly changing world -- as the heart of our curriculum. A
great deal has already been accomplished, but there is much to do in order to find that
difficult balance of internal aspirations within the context of external constraints.
I encourage everyone to participate in this process.
In January, we will open the Armstrong Student Center. For a long time this building has
been the dream of Miami students. With their commitment and the generous support of more
than 10,000 of our alumni, parents, and friends, it will soon be a reality. It is a stunning
facility. In my view, and pretty much the view of everyone who has toured it, the architects
have created something extraordinary. It is a practical and efficient building. By reusing
the existing buildings, we saved tens of millions of dollars and found an incredibly energy
efficient solution. It is a highly functional building. From the beginning, the architects
were impressed with the energy of the Miami student body. They worked with the planning
committee to ensure that this building will, like its academic counterparts, provide the
kinds of spaces that facilitate the functions that are so critical to developing the Miami
student. The building will be dedicated on Friday afternoon, February 7th, as part of
the celebration of the successful conclusion of the Love and Honor campaign. Students are
planning for daily highlights for the two weeks leading up to the dedication. I hope
that you will celebrate with them.
As I noted earlier, we are devoting substantial effort to determine how to implement the Miami
2020 Plan at the divisional and local levels. We have established the University goals and
now we need to integrate those goals into our daily work. As we do this, our ability
to "push in the same direction" will be greatly enhanced, moving that flywheel a little faster
each and every day. Miami 2020 will provide a coherent and comprehensive focus to our
efforts to improve. I cannot overstate its importance to our future, and I would like
to take a few remaining moments to frame this effort.
There are two major themes I would like to address. First, I would like to paint the
big picture of what we seek to accomplish with Miami 2020 as our strategic plan for
the next seven years. Then, I will focus on how we will accomplish those goals.
On one level, the "what" question is fairly simple to answer -- to achieve our vision
of providing the best undergraduate experience in the nation, enhanced by superior, select
graduate programs. Where it gets a bit more complicated, well actually a lot more complicated,
is in the understanding of what "best" means. Intuitively, we all understand that best is
somehow all about quality, and that "we will know it when we see it." It is easy, for example,
to profile a particularly successful student and appropriately feel that this person's
accomplishments rank high on our intuitive scale of best.
Although this feeling and commitment to the concept of quality are important elements,
they do not provide us with sufficiently tangible targets to measure our overall progress. Numerous
rankings have been created to measure "quality," and it might be attractive to adapt their
measures. Unfortunately, while their intent may be admirable, these rankings tend to focus
on perceived status and/or input measures, such as the average test scores of incoming
students, the proportion of applicants who are admitted, and the amount spent per student.
To be sure, the academic qualifications of the incoming class do matter, but there are
other qualities that matter just as much. Throughout its history Miami has excelled
at being a "value-added" university, a university that prides itself in seeking out students
who are both academically capable and willing to work to achieve great things. Here is how
one of our students, Justin Hogue, explains this quality in a letter thanking Valerie
and me for our scholarship support. In his letter, Justin poses the question of why he
chose Miami, even though he had more scholarship funding elsewhere. He writes:
"Miami University is not simply any university. Beyond its beautiful landscape and classic
brick buildings lies the Miami spirit. When I walk across campus now, as I did as a senior
in high school, what I see in students is a drive. A desire to be more, to do more,
to make the most out of their time at Miami, and to make the most out
of life."
To be sure, the amount of resources that are available also matters, but at the end of
the day it is what we do with those resources that matters even more. And this is where
our goals come into play. Are we focused on those activities that make the biggest difference
in moving us in the right direction? U.S. News & World Report ranked us third in the
nation for "efficiently spending [their] limited resources to produce the highest possible
educational quality." Because we are so focused on achieving the highest levels of success
for our students, the value-added proposition is very high for Miami. The Miami 2020 Plan
will take that even higher as we focus with more even clarity and more intention in creating
a vibrant learning and discovery environment that produces extraordinary student and scholarly
outcomes. Are our students graduating? Are they prepared and competitive as graduates
of Miami? This is the heart of what Miami 2020 is all about on all of our campuses.
This is what, ultimately, we mean by best.
So how do we achieve that success? The three foundational goals that I described earlier
-- transformational work environment, inclusive culture and global engagement, and effective
partnerships and outreach -- identify the framing goals and mission-critical activities.
In addition to focusing on improving quality, these foundational goals also stress two other
factors that are vital to our future success: improving productivity and diversifying our
revenue sources.
There seems to be little doubt that the mounting pressures on higher education to constrain
cost increases will continue into the foreseeable future. Quite simply, increasing tuition enough
to cover increased costs is not an option. The challenge we face is that over 80 percent
of our expenses are in people -- which is critically important for a university that
stresses its personalized environment! However, to control costs it will be critical to improve
productivity. And that is something that Miami is becoming quite good at. Our whole approach
to reducing our core budget has been founded on the premise that we can equal or improve
outcomes at lower cost by prioritizing and redesigning what we do. Unlike many others,
we rejected the notion of broad-based, non-strategic cuts which can in fact impede progress, in
favor of aligning our budgets with our priorities. The Strategic Priorities Taskforce laid out
the vision and challenges that we have met so well throughout the university.
The use of LEAN management techniques is perhaps the most visible example of the ways in which
rethinking how we operate can make such a difference. The adoption of LEAN techniques
is not only an effective change tactic. As more and more people are trained and participate
in such activity (over 950 staff and almost 400 students), our culture is becoming more
entrepreneurial and innovative. Similarly, the premise underlying the Top 25 Initiative
has been that we can improve our teaching and learning outcomes without increasing our
funding. Obviously that, too, requires a huge amount of innovation that reshapes how we
approach our classes, use technology, and monitor outcomes.
So, clearly, our future success depends on finding ways to innovate and constrain cost
increases. Yet, it is also obvious that we cannot simply save our way to success. In
addition to improving productivity, we need to continue to create a more diversified set
of revenue streams. Here again, we are making progress, though we need to intensify these
efforts. We are increasing the number of students who enroll in 3+2 or 4+1 programs that provide
our students with a clear pathway to an accelerated master's degree while increasing revenue.
We are increasing the number of students who come from outside of Ohio which has both a
positive financial impact and increases awareness of Miami nationally and internationally, leading
to more opportunities for our graduates. Close to 40 percent of our first-year students are
from outside Ohio, and we now enroll more than 1,300 international students from 67
countries.
We are devising a strategy for e-Learning that will build on our strengths and focus
on key goals. We offer a growing number of our more popular lower division courses online
so that our students can take these courses, rather than courses from other providers,
over the summer or during winter term. Again, in addition to a positive financial impact,
such offerings add to our quest for success by providing a smoother path to timely graduation.
The Farmer School plans to offer a general business minor online starting next summer,
providing more non-business majors the opportunity to be grounded in the fundamentals of business
-- skills that will enhance their future prospects and add to their ability to contribute to
whatever type of organization they serve. We are launching e-learning masters' programs
through Oxford that provide more access to highly motivated learners. And we are greatly
expanding our e-learning course offerings on the regional campuses to address the needs
of the communities we serve. These are but some of the many initiatives that are being
launched to extend our reach, provide more and better options for our students, and strengthen
our financial foundations. Accelerating these initiatives is critical to our future success.
Finally, as we think about how we are going to accomplish our goals, I would like to emphasize
the distinct aspects in implementing the Miami 2020 Plan. In previous strategic plans, the
goals were measured exclusively at the university level, and strategies identified almost solely
at the university level. The Miami 2020 Plan connects the local, "on the ground," activities
with university goals. Every division and unit (department) is being asked to produce
a local set of metrics and strategic actions that feed into the university goals. Some
of these measures, like retention rates and financial goals, are direct contributors to
the university's success. Other measures of improved local performance are indirect contributors
that nonetheless provide critical support for the general direction outlined in Miami
2020. As each department identifies its unique contributions to our overall goals, we will
gain a better appreciation of how interconnected and complementary our work is, demonstrating
how what we do matters well beyond our specific responsibilities.
Although these department-level indicators provide a certain measure of accountability,
the real power lies in the feedback that they provide to local initiatives. As we continue
to innovate, it is vital that we are able to assess the outcomes of all our efforts.
Is the flywheel spinning faster? Are we moving the needle? What is working and what is not?
By monitoring our outcomes more carefully and systematically, we will be in a much better
position to move forward.
In academia we have often relied on anecdotes and impressions to guide our evaluation. Let
me share one of my favorite examples of what I mean by this. When I was at the University
of Washington we had two 350-student sections of Introduction to Biology that were offered
every quarter. As part of a teaching improvement initiative, we introduced clickers into one
of the courses. At the end of the quarter there was a strong feeling of success. Everyone,
from students to faculty, felt that the initiative was a huge success -- class participation
was up and everyone seemed more engaged. But the common final exam brought a rude shock
-- there was no difference in the learning outcomes. This forced a re-examination and
improved strategies with the clickers and student accountability that led to significant
improvements in learning. But if we had not had the benefit of this controlled experiment,
we might never have realized that while we all felt good about the impact of the clickers
on the course, we really were not accomplishing our learning outcomes objectives.
We now have much more data and sophisticated analysis to help us determine how well our
efforts are working. This provides an exciting foundation for us to track the success of
our students and the efficacy of our efforts in ways that would have been impossible previously.
By approaching the implementation of Miami 2020 with this spirit, our creativity and
innovation will be stimulated by feedback that will guide our efforts to even more productive
and desirable outcomes. As I draw these remarks to a close, let me
return to the theme of the flywheel that I used to open today. Momentum is a beautiful
thing, to be more precise, positive momentum is a beautiful thing! Because of the incredible
efforts across our campuses to deliver the very best educational experience, and the
visionary thoughtfulness of the Strategic Priorities Taskforce, the Miami 2020 Plan,
and other similar efforts at all levels of the university, Miami is enjoying exceptional
success. We have built momentum, the flywheel is spinning, and we continue to add to its
speed. We will monitor that speed and momentum through a number of key indicators that we
have determined through the Miami 2020 planning process, and we will use those feedback metrics
extensively as we innovate in our relentless pursuit of providing an even better experience
and better outcomes.
Obviously, then, these numbers are important and there is an urgency to our continued innovation
and strategic execution, yet at the end of the day we must always remember that for each
of those students who come to Miami, it is a unique and, we hope, special experience.
I was reminded of that through an email that I received from Daniel Rambo, facilities manager
in the Demske Culinary Support Center:
This past week my wife, Beverly, and I moved our youngest daughter Grace to Florence, SC
to begin her teaching career. The trip was emotional and bitter-sweet, as all such moments
are. Grace graduated from Miami this past May with a degree in education and a focus
in teaching math and social studies at the middle school level. After three days of buying
furniture, setting up bank accounts, choosing health care packages, and preparing her first
classroom for her first day I was touched by a moment you may appreciate. I walked into
her newly occupied bedroom to install a curtain rod. This room, like the rest of the apartment
was a disorganized collection of partially unpacked containers, boxes of shoes, and layers
of clothes waiting for closet space. The place resembled the back room of a Wal-Mart store.
However, there on the center of her dresser, sitting on a decorative pedestal, standing
upright and open for display was her Miami degree. In the middle of all this chaos, Grace
had taken the time to handle this particular item with some special care. It warmed my
heart.
It is my hope that everyone who is a part of Miami understands how what they do, how
what you do, how what we do, pushes the flywheel forward and that we all, everyday, share in
the joy and pride that Daniel and Beverly experienced with Grace, a Miami graduate.
For Love and Honor. Thank you.