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MIAMI (July 30, 2009) — After 23 years at the helm of Florida International University, President Modesto A. Maidique on Monday will mark the end of his tenure by ushering in a new era for FIU.
Maidique will begin his last day as president by welcoming the 43 students who make up the inaugural class of the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine. Maidique will deliver his remarks at 8 a.m. Monday, Aug. 3 in the Blue Cross/Blue Shield Classroom (Room 160) in the Health and Life Sciences II (HLS II) building on the Modesto A. Maidique Campus (MMC), 11200 S.W. 8th St., Miami.
“With the College of Medicine, FIU finally has all the major components in place to join the ranks of the nation’s top public research universities, so it is fitting that I am marking the conclusion of this chapter in my life by launching the next chapter for FIU,” Maidique said. “I am proud of what FIU has become during my time as president. This is the university I dreamed of building.”
Monday will be the first day of a week of orientation activities for the medical school class and will include a tour of Jackson North Medical Center, 160 N.W. 170th St., North Miami Beach, from 1:45 p.m. to 4 p.m. Jackson North will serve as the major public teaching hospital for the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine. The week will culminate with the White Coat Ceremony on Friday, where students will receive their traditional white medical coats and formally begin their medical education.
Later in the day on Monday, members of the FIU community will join local leaders in celebrating Maidique’s decades of service to the university at a tribute that will be held from 3-5 p.m. at the U.S. Century Bank Arena at MMC. During the ceremony, President Maidique will officially transfer authority to President-designate Mark Rosenberg.
Once he steps down, President Maidique will continue his service as a professor of management in the FIU College of Business Administration as well as executive director of the Center for Leadership. He will also be FIU’s first President Emeritus, a designation the FIU Board of Trustees conferred on him.
Under Maidique’s leadership, FIU has tripled in physical size; established accredited Colleges of Medicine, Law, Engineering, Architecture and Public Health; doubled enrollment to almost 40,000 students; added 22 new doctoral programs and 18 undergraduate programs; and seen its endowment grow from less than $2 million to more than $100 million and its research expenditures grow from about $6 million to nearly $110 million.
In 1997, thanks to a gift from Mitchell “Micky” Wolfson Jr., FIU acquired the Wolfsonian Museum on Miami Beach and its collection of more than 70,000 artifacts, worth an estimated $75 million. FIU’s 344-acre Modesto A. Maidique Campus also is home to the Patricia and Phillip Frost Art Museum, which is housed in a building designed by renowned architect Yann Weymouth.
Under Maidique’s leadership, FIU has received several major donations, including a record $20 million from Dr. Herbert Wertheim to name the FIU College of Medicine, which also was the recipient of a $10 million donation from Benjamín León, Jr. and family, $5 million from the Green Family Foundation, $5 million from the North Dade Medical Foundation and $3 million from the Batchelor Foundation, among other gifts. These gifts will be matched by the state for a total of $86 million. Other major gifts by Ambassador Steven and Dorothea Green and Ambassador Paul L. Cejas led to the naming of the Steven and Dorothea Green Library and the Paul L. Cejas School of Architecture Building, both on MMC. This year, the university raised a record $77.3 million, ranking it among the top 50 public universities.
During Maidique’s tenure, FIU also established a Division I-A football team; earned membership in the nation’s oldest honor society, Phi Beta Kappa, and was included as a doctoral and research extensive university in the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching classification, now classified as “High Research Activity” university.
Editor’s Note: Media interested in covering the medical student tour at Jackson North Medical Center should contact Sandra Fiedler of Jackson Health System at 305-585-7213 or Sandra.fiedler@jhsmiami.org.
Media contact: Madeline Baró, 305-348-2234
-FIU-
About the FIU Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine:
The College of Medicine was approved in 2006 by the Florida Board of Governors and the Florida Legislature. In 2008, it received preliminary accreditation by the Liaison Committee for Medical Education of the AAMC and will admit its first class in the fall of 2009. Among the innovative elements of the FIU College of Medicine is a program called NeighborhoodHELP, which will send medical students along with their counterparts in social work, nursing and public health, into the community from the onset of their academic programs. The FIU College of Medicine is expected to have a multi-billion-dollar economic impact on Miami-Dade County, bringing thousands of jobs to the area and eventually contributing millions to the state coffers every year. For more information visit http://medicine.fiu.edu/
About FIU:
Florida International University was founded in 1965 and is Miami’s only public research university. With a student body of more than 38,000, its 17 colleges and schools offer more than 200 bachelor’s, master’s and doctoral programs in fields such as engineering, international relations and law. FIU has been classified by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching as a “High Research Activity University” and now qualifies as a “Very High Research University”. In 2006 FIU was authorized to establish a medical school, which will welcome its first class in August 2009. FIU’s College of Law received accreditation in the fastest time allowed by the American Bar Association.
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I was a student when President Maidique first started at FIU. In fact, I was on his Student Advisory Board. He has done so much for the advancement of young minds. He was definitely an inspiration to me. He will be missed.
Kelly Gallagher
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All the accomplishments sound great but why then does FIU still have economic issues? The basis of this article is to express the great work of FIUs President it is clear FIU has prospered in that endeavor, but if Modesto has done such an outstanding job and FIU has such large amounts of money (as it appears in this article) why is FIU in an economic struggle. http://president.fiu.edu/budget_qa.html
In addition who are the people that assisted Maidique; surely you can't expect us to believe that he did it all alone. Who did the research on all these endowments, donations, the actual following up to receive them? Conferences, dinners and receptions aside honestly who else took part to establish all these accomplishments for FIU? Why are they not getting an FIU building named after them? These are questions that came to mind when reading this article. I see all these numbers and all this money, yet all I hear from students is the lack of good professors and staff along with undergraduate program cuts.
Mi alma mater sigue creciendo y el Dr. Maidique fue mi profesor de management.
FIU's financial troubles stem from the fact that the State of Florida consistently underfunds the University and chooses to provide greater funding to University of Florida and Florida State University. Both Universities are overrepresented in the Florida legislature. Until FIU graduates begin to infilitrate Tallahassee we will not see significant changes in funding for the institution.
I thank President Maidique for his service and as well to those who supported him in making those efforts a reality.
I totally agree with Alfredo! Mr. Maidique did not accomplish all this alone and as an alumna, I am appalled that with the economic hardship the university is currently in, that the Board would decide upon themsleves to honor a, yet sill living individual, with the renaming of the campus and spend so much money in changing all the signs, letterhead, envelopes, etc! This should have been brough up to a vote to include alumni. Mr. Maidique, as he has stated, is begining a new chapter in his life. We really do not know what those accomplishments might be. They could very well be accomplishments that would embarrass the university that bears his name. Oh wait, that has already happend!! Dig deep into his accomplishments and you will find shady dealings.
I don't think he is a good president of university, but a politican with power tactics.
@Alfredo: It's actually pretty typical of this community to ascribe credit for broad accomplishments to a single individual. Dr. Maidique certainly fits the requirement for a hero in the FIU community. (There are few enough "heroes" there.)
As to why he hasn't been able to save FIU from fiscal concerns, that's another question. While he clearly cannot be blamed for an economic downturn in the nation's economy which no doubt has effected the FIU numbers, and he cannot be held responsible for the lunatic and borderline criminal actions of the Florida legislature, he nonetheless is directly responsible for a spending binge that depleted what might have been a much healthier endowment and may have precluded talk of tuition increases. The man quite simply has not exhibited the quality of patience when it comes to expanding his legacy.
The educated observer cannot lay all the credit for progress at his feet without also laying blame for the deficiencies there as well.
I agree with Sean. It's still an 'Ole Boys Network in Tallahassee and FIU alumni don't have the stronghold (yet!) in Tallahassee. I would also like to thank President Maidique for devoting the last 23 years of his life to this university. Has he made mistakes? A bunch of them, and a few of them were whoppers that hurt the university. But there's no questioning the fact that he is a true visionary who gave all of us something to reach for. He set the bar higher than many thought possible, and we're where we are today because he was relentless and single-minded in his pursuit of that goal. Without us — FIU students, faculty, employees, alumni — FIU wouldn't be where it is today, but he's the one who crafted the vision we bought into. Give credit where credit is due. In terms of the renaming of the campus, you critics should give it up. No one has said we are going out and spending money to make new signs, letterhead, etc., right this second to reflect the new name of the campus. In fact, I think it has been conveyed that we will only change the signs, letterhead, catalogues, etc., in the normal depletion/wear-and-tear of these items. You may not like that you weren't asked (I work here and I wasn't asked either), but stop saying that money is being spent needlessly to reflect the new name of the campus because it isn't. To spin it otherwise is being disingenuous.