FIU holds community leaders summit

Participants provided feedback and made recommendations to be incorporated into the university’s strategic planning.

By Sissi Aguila

On Sept. 9, FIU President Mark B. Rosenberg met with South Florida leaders at the Biltmore Hotel in the first of two summits meant to engage community leaders and elicit their feedback on where FIU should head in the next 10 years.

“We in the business community are invested shareholders in FIU,” said Maria C. Alonso ’91, senior vice president and South Florida market manager for Bank of America, who hosted the event along with Jack Lowell, vice chairman of Codina Realty/Flagler Development Group.

Participants broke up into five groups to discuss FIU’s “Hit the Ground Running” initiative as well as make recommendations and provide new ideas. Feedback from this summit and one next month will be combined and incorporated into the university’s strategic plan in 2010.

After the working sessions, the group reconvened and presented their ideas to President Rosenberg and FIU staff. Suggestions ranged from how to improve FIU’s communication plan with more personal engagement to emphasizing the university’s international programs.

“Celebrate the ‘I’ in FIU,” said President and Chief Executive Officer of the Greater Miami Chamber of Commerce Barry Johnson.

Bruce Colan, a partner at the law firm Holland & Knight, challenged FIU to “raise the community beyond the meritocracy that seems to prevail in South Florida.”

“FIU produces our teachers. It is our marketplace,” added Alberto M. Carvalho, superintendent of Miami-Dade County Public Schools. “We need students embedded in the learning sciences of education from the start.”

In response to Rosenberg’s “we turn the impossible into the inevitable” speech, Johnson declared, “This is the age of the inevitable.”

Watch more highlights from the summit that will help chart FIU’s course for the next 10 years: