A living legend: President Emeritus Modesto A. Maidique retires from the faculty

Nearly 16 years after retiring as FIU’s longest-serving president, Modesto A. Maidique this week closed the final chapter of his storied academic career.

The president emeritus followed a transformational 23 years as the head of Miami’s public research institution with an impressive tenure as a professor who taught undergraduate students and the founder and director of a leadership program for high-level executives.

The community now sees him off with gratitude and praise as it credits him with building the foundation on which FIU stands today as a Top 50, preeminent university.

A man of vision

Born in Havana in 1940, Maidique arrived in the United States just after high school and went on to earn an undergraduate degree and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from MIT. He served as CEO of semiconductor and genetic engineering companies and senior partner at the world’s then-largest venture capital firm.

In 1986, he accepted the top position at Florida International University, at the time a still-evolving, little-known institution opened in 1972 primarily to educate local residents. His arrival heralded the start of a remarkable expansion of FIU and an emergence on the national scene that would take away the breath of all who worked alongside him.

“For Miami to attract companies, you have to have a top-notch public university,” he announced at a meeting on his first day on the job, recalls former longtime FIU administrator and current benefactor Ruth Hamilton. “‘There are a lot of elements I’m going to bring,’” she remembers him saying with a brashness that had some dubbing him a “Cuban Don Quixote” for his big dreams. “He listed all of the things he wanted to do.”

And he delivered.

Under Maidique’s leadership, the university established rapidly accredited colleges of engineering, architecture, law, public health and medicine; added tens of thousands of students to its enrollment and 55 buildings to campus, or 5 million square feet of new space; earned membership in the Phi Beta Kappa national honors society and achieved the highest university-research designation awarded by the Carnegie Foundation. A Division-1 football team and home stadium followed. At one point, even then-President George W. Bush, as a commencement speaker, famously commented on the university’s phenomenal rise.

Securing the law school proved to be the most herculean of feats, Hamilton says. Maidique had her take busloads of students to Tallahassee no fewer than four times as he led contingents of alumni and community members to petition the state legislature for the university's right to educate future attorneys. With every defeat, he vowed to try again.

“He told me, ‘Until the day I die, I'm gonna fight for it,’” Hamilton remembers of what was a political battle of wills that ultimately saw FIU victorious.

A legacy for the ages

Younger generations, too, feel the impact of Maidique's nearly four decades of influence on what is today one of the largest institutions of higher education in the country.

“He's inspiring to me and to thousands of others whose life he touched by building such a great university,” says Dr. Anna Mueller, a resident physician at Shiley Eye Institute at UC San Diego. She earned a biology degree from FIU in 2018 and an M.D. from the Herbert Wertheim College of Medicine in 2024.

As an undergraduate, Mueller took a “phenomenal” leadership course from Maidique that he taught for the Honors College after joining the business school faculty post-presidency. She eventually served as his teaching assistant and later helped run a leadership training program he designed for Miami-Dade County senior executives.

“I think that Miami and South Florida in general are so lucky that back in the '80s he had a vision for FIU,” Mueller says. “And,” adds the doctor, “we are so lucky that he had an excellent medical school established in South Florida.”

The college of medicine formally opened to students on the very day Maidique officially left office, in 2009, and remains among his crowning achievements. Months before, the FIU Board of Trustees had renamed the main campus in his honor, a reminder that his fingerprints extend to every aspect of the university.

“I want to thank all of you who have accompanied me in this journey, and they are many. They are thousands,” Maidique said at a sendoff attended by hundreds on Thursday morning, during which admirers shared their memories and offered respect.

“And I want to encourage and thank in advance those of you who are going to continue the journey to make this an even greater university.”