Students sign their names and writes messages on an orange-painted beam that will be one of the final pieces used in the construction of the new Student Activities Center.

With major construction work completed on the University of Miami’s new Student Activities Center, workers paused on May 4 to place a tree at the top of the building.

“This marks a milestone, but we still have a long way to go,” Stephen Chang, project manager of the construction firm Moss & Associates, said to about 100 workers and UM administrators at the topping out ceremony—a tradition in the construction industry.

The Student Activities Center, which is scheduled for completion in 2013, will include gathering places, programming space, a student organizations suite, retail outlets, and a new Rathskeller. It is being made possible by the $20 million lead gift from Tracey and Bruce Berkowitz of the Fairholme Foundation, as well as a student referendum passed in 2006 that imposed a student fee specifically for the center’s construction.

“We wanted to give our students an activities center that’s second to none,” UM President Donna E. Shalala told construction workers, many of whom wore t-shirts emblazoned with a rendering of the center and the date of the topping out ceremony. She also thanked them for their efforts, saying that she was happy that UM could create jobs in Miami.

As workers began dining on a catered lunch, only a few feet away from the construction site, near the Office of the Registrar, students began signing an orange-painted beam that will be one of the final pieces used to build the center.

UM freshmen Urte Peteris, Katie Tillman, and Jiaqi O’Reilly, who live on the same floor at Stanford Residential College, happened to be strolling past when they noticed a small crowd of students gathered around the beam, taking turns signing their names and writing messages. The three, who will graduate in 2015, each signed their names and graduation year on the beam. Peteris said she’s “ecstatic” that she’ll still be enrolled at UM by the time the center is completed.

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Two new zones will be added to the University of Miami’s color-coded system of parking lot zones for its Coral Gables campus. Portions of the yellow parking zone will be changed to pink and white zones. The changes, which are based on feedback from current yellow zone permit holders, will be implemented in August.

The Pavia Garage, where the addition of two floors will add 307 parking spaces, and its surrounding surface lots have been designated the pink zone, while a portion of the Mahoney-Pearson Garage and the surface lots surrounding it will be the white zone. Purple, red, gray, and green zones will remain in the same areas on campus. For a detailed map of parking zones, click here.

In addition to these new zone configurations, a portion of the first floor of the Pavia Garage will be designated for general visitor parking.

Parking and Transportation Services rolled out its new parking management plan of color-designated zones last fall, instituting a program designed to evenly distribute parking across campus, increase usage of underutilized lots, and give permit holders a greater chance of finding parking in zones where their permits are valid. The plan also reduces parking “orbits” and traffic on neighboring roadways, and makes it easier to manage parking inventory as demand and University needs change.

Faculty, staff, and students can apply online to select a permit within their preferred zone based on availability. Once a zone is sold out, it will no longer be available for purchase. In such a case, applicants can then select from the remaining options and, if desired, go on a waiting list for their preferred zone.

The application process for permits begins in June. Permits will be sold to specific groups based on an established distribution hierarchy on a first-come, first-served basis. Dates for the permit application process and the distribution hierarchy are listed below. For a list of frequently asked questions, please click here.

June 18: All faculty and staff

July 2: All returning students

July 16: New students, including transfers; new law and new graduate students. This does NOT include first-year students who are residing on campus.

Erin Kobetz

A University of Miami faculty member known for preparing physicians to work in medically underserved communities is the recipient of a prestigious award that recognizes South Florida educators who integrate service learning into their teaching. Read the full story

The Launch Pad and one of its entrepreneurs were among the winners at the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce’s annual Technology Leaders of the Year Awards.

Developed at the University of Miami as a novel entrepreneurship initiative that helps both students and alumni create new enterprises, The Launch Pad won in the “Technology Organization” category, while Tyler McIntyre, the CEO of a company that specializes in software development for the growing mobile application market, won the “Technology Student Entrepreneur” award.

The Technology Leaders of the Year Awards were created to honor individuals, teams, organizations, and companies that support and develop the future of the South Florida technology community. Winners were selected because of their effective use of technology to improve business performance or to develop new markets, products, or communities, as well as for their significant contributions to the South Florida technology community.

In the past year The Launch Pad has hosted and promoted more than 20 events in support of educating, connecting, and promoting both technology entrepreneurs and developers, including Refresh Miami, Startup Weekend, the Android Developer Group, WordCamp Miami, and Lean Startup Group Miami. The majority of Launch Pad Tech events were held at the offices at Terremark’s NAP of the Americas.

The Launch Pad’s next project is to actively engage the South Florida community in educating and connecting the tech community through the Launch Pad Tech initiative. Available to anyone in South Florida, the initiative has a goal to train and mentor skilled programmers in the latest technologies available in their field of interest (mobile or Web). These new highly trained developers can then be fed into the South Florida technology startup ecosystem or use their knowledge to start their own high-growth technology startup.

William Silverman, assistant director of The Launch Pad, accepted the award. In his acceptance remarks, Silverman thanked Manny Medina, founder of Terremark. “Manny believed in our vision, making it possible for us to set up Launch Pad Tech in the Terremark NAP, which allowed us to connect to hundreds of technology entrepreneurs over the past year.”

Silverman also mentioned Refresh Miami and IT Women as “great friends and collaborators, and we all work together to support the [local tech] community.” He also noted the two “Technology Student Entrepreneur” finalists—Ketan Rahangdale, CEO of EarTop Technologies, and Mark Slaughter, CEO of Cohealo—and the category winner, Tyler McIntyre. All three are currently University of Miami students and Launch Pad entrepreneurs. “We are very proud of our three student tech entrepreneurs,” Silverman said. “The Launch Pad is all about growing great entrepreneurs here in South Florida, and they are perfect examples.”

McIntyre is CEO of Lucid Technologies, LLC, which has launched several applications, including LuciDmessenger, which allows for cross-platform communication between BlackBerry Messenger and iPhone and Android phones; one of the top downloaded weather applications globally, rated by Apple as “New & Noteworthy”; and Chat for Facebook, which is currently the sixth top-selling social networking app for the Mac OS.

McIntyre is enrolled as a third-year student in UM’s School of Business Administration and actively participates in The Launch Pad entrepreneurship program.

Director of Alumni Programs Cynthia Cochran, who is four months pregnant, sits in the nursing mothers room at Gables One Tower as Nanette Vega, chair of the Nursing Mothers Policy Advisory Group, explains UM’s Break Time for Nursing Mothers Policy.

Only a few months ago, Dominique Kirkland had to use her supervisor’s office at the Miller School of Medicine to express breast milk for her newborn son, Kelvin. A toxicologist in the Department of Pathology, Kirkland works in an open laboratory setting, making it impossible to have the privacy needed to pump milk at least three times a day.

But now, dedicated rooms across the University are giving nursing mothers at UM the clean and secluded accommodations they need to express milk, and Kirkland couldn’t be happier. Read the full story