The UM Honor Council is partnering with the Butler Center for Service and Leadership, STRIVE, LINK and Give Back Week to coordinate a campus-wide book, food, and supply drive from Monday, March 22 to Monday, April 12. Council members will be accepting donations in the University Center Breezeway from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. during these days. The council will also have bins located in every residential college as convenient donation drop-off points. All donations and items collected will go to the South Miami-Dade Center for the homeless. The drive is being conducted by UM students as part of the University’s institutional commitment to the Clinton Global Initiative University.

Diane Cook, who is retiring as UM's vice president and treasurer after a 31-year career at the institution, says the people she encountered will be her most treasured memory of the University.

Clad in leather jacket and pants, the chinstrap to her motorcycle helmet securely fastened, Diane Cook looks quite like one of the “Ladies of Harley” as she rides on the back of her husband’s 1997 Heritage Springer. They rev up the bike every weekend, driving all around Miami on rides Cook describes as “pure fun.”

It’s a hobby many of Cook’s friends and coworkers never knew she had. To them, she is the University of Miami’s vice president and treasurer, a numbers guru who looks more accustomed to balancing the books than biking along a beltway.

But soon, Cook will have more time to devote to riding on a Harley, perhaps even learning how to drive it. After 31 years at UM—29 of them as treasurer—Cook is closing the books on a memorable career.

She leaves behind a university with an endowment 20 times larger than it was when she started, thanks in large part to her savvy investment skills and knack with numbers.

“When I started here, we had about $35 million in the endowment, and that grew to a peak of $700 million at one point,” Cook recalls.

To ramp up that figure, Cook and her team diversified the University’s portfolio, increasing the number of asset categories in areas ranging from stocks and bonds to real estate.

Cook, center, received the UM President's Medal at the 2009 December Commencement ceremony. UM President Donna E. Shalala and Joe Natoli, senior vice president for business and finance and chief financial officer, presented her with the award.

“Bringing our investment policies into the state-of-the-art with the risk tolerance level that the trustees wanted was important,” Cook says. “But it was gradual. We’re not risk-takers, but we definitely modernized the portfolio.”

UM President Donna E. Shalala lauded the vice president and treasurer at last year’s December commencement ceremony, crediting her “astute money management” knowhow for saving the University millions of dollars.

“Working with the University’s Board of Trustee’s Investments Committee, she has re-engineered the way endowment and pension funds are managed and developed new processes for manager selection for due diligence as well as for assets allocation,” Shalala said at the ceremony, where Cook received the UM President’s Medal.

Cook’s financial acumen was put to the test during the economic downturn, requiring her and UM’s treasury team to devise strategies to protect the institution’s assets. UM, she says, has weathered the storm “better than many, because we’re not that dependent on our endowment for day-to-day operating income. And that’s a good thing. Schools around the country that derive a lot of their budget support from their endowment have been really devastated.

“We also didn’t have as much commitment to some of the illiquid investment portfolios that some have, and that protected us from some of the weak performance that others got,” Cook continues.

She’s never been afraid of working with big numbers, even for someone who didn’t realize she had a gift with figures until she reached college. Cook graduated from high school thinking she would major in chemistry. After exploring various academic disciplines, she finally decided on finance, earning her degree in finance from Purdue University, where she worked for six years before coming to UM. She earned her M.B.A. from UM’s School of Business Administration.

Cook says her most treasured memories of the University won’t be of dollars and cents but of the people she encountered. “They’re absolutely wonderful,” Cook says. “From the faculty and staff to the trustees and students, everybody has such a wonderful view and outlook about what this University can do.”

She’ll also remember the Hurricane football team’s five national championship games, all of which she attended. She says she is proud of the University’s achievements, noting the exceptional faculty, the steady rise in the national rankings, and the increasing quality of students.

Cook’s last day at UM is Friday, March 26. She and her husband, a retiring airline pilot whom she met and fell in love with at Purdue, are moving to Tucson, Arizona, where she plans to do volunteer work with the Girl Scouts and, of course, enjoy Harley rides.

“The change of scene is going to be a delight in that 90 percent of all the vacations we’ve ever taken that are etched in our memories have been to the desert Southwest. So it’s going to be a treat to be able to walk out our door and be in that environment all the time.

“But Miami,” she says, “will always be home.”

The University Libraries, along with over 200 other libraries throughout North America, are participating in the 2010 LibQUAL survey this spring. The survey is open to all students and faculty on the Coral Gables and Rosenstiel campuses.

The Association of Research Libraries coordinates this survey of users’ opinions on library service quality. LibQUAL is unique because participating libraries are able to share aggregate data, which helps them to compare themselves with peer institutions. Your participation will help not only the University of Miami Libraries, but other institutions across the country.

Please take about 10 minutes to complete this survey. For more information about LibQUAL and to take the survey, go to www.library.miami.edu/survey.

Researchers at the Miller School of Medicine experience a large increase in funding from the NIH, including money from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

The research enterprise at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine has reached a new milestone in funding from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Propelled in large part by stimulus grants, the Miller School has moved into the top third of all U.S. medical schools that receive money from the NIH, gaining major market share relative to other U.S. medical schools.

During fiscal year 2009, which ended on September 30, 2009, the Miller School received a total of $122.8 million in NIH funding to move from No. 43 to No. 41, ahead of the Ohio State University, the University of California-Davis, and Ivy League Dartmouth, according to preliminary data just released by the NIH. Of that figure, $25.9 million came from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act funding of the NIH, designed to stimulate the economy. The Miller School ranked No. 32 out of 123 medical schools in the amount of stimulus funding received.

Of Florida medical schools, the Miller School is way ahead in NIH funding; the next medical school is the University of Florida College of Medicine in Gainesville, which ranks No. 52.

“The Miller School of Medicine continues to show tremendous growth in its research portfolio,” said Pascal J. Goldschmidt, senior vice president for medical affairs and dean of the Miller School. “When you consider the Miller School ranked No. 52 four years ago, our rate of growth is nothing short of extraordinary. Even more remarkable is the quality of the work that these NIH grants support. Our scientists are clearly at the cutting edge of their fields, from basic discoveries in biology to novel ways to deal with humans’ most challenging illnesses. We are definitely on the map.”

“Our growth in funding from the NIH, the primary federal agency for conducting and supporting biomedical research in this country, is a testament to the commitment of Miller School faculty and its leadership to moving science forward,” said Richard Bookman, executive dean for research and research training at the Miller School and vice provost for research at the University of Miami.

Willy Chirino concert to follow game — ticket distribution starts next week

Now in its fifth year, it has become a University of Miami tradition—an annual event honoring the phenomenal faculty and staff who are responsible for UM’s continuing record of success.

In appreciation of the dedication and outstanding work of the University’s employees, the president and provost will be hosting the Fifth Annual University of Miami Family Night with the Marlins on Saturday, May 1 at Sun Life Stadium.

Last year’s Family Night was the largest ever held by the University, attracting 19,000 UM employees and family members—and this year’s event promises to be even more special.

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