Tracking Hurricanes

Lieutenant (Junior Grade) PETER MAKI (left), A.B. ’06, 2005-06 UM Student Government president, and CAPTAIN CAREY “MAC” MCINTYRE (right), A.B. ’06, are both serving in Iraq. McIntyre is in the United States Army, 541st Combat Sustainment Support Battalion. He and Maki, his college and fraternity friend who is in the United States Navy, Joint Improvised Explosive Device Defeat Organization, were spotlighted during the College’s 2006 commencement ceremony. Three and a half years later, they found themselves on duty in the Middle East. Captain McIntyre made his way to Baghdad by helicopter for Christmas, where a photograph was taken of them on a roof in downtown Baghdad. Their message: “We’ve got some ‘Canes over here!… even in Iraq.”

 

UM scientist is Assistant Secretary of Energy

Heads Environmental Management at the DOE

UM alumna Inés R. Triay has become one of the top environmental officials in the United States. Appointed by President Obama in May 2009 as Assistant Secretary of Energy for Environmental Management in the Department of Energy (DOE), she leads one of the largest and most technically complex cleanup programs in the world. In that position Triay is responsible for an annual budget of $6 billion and 30,000 federal and contractor employees at the DOE.

Her education at the College of Arts & Sciences — where she was awarded a B.S. in chemistry magna cum laude in 1980 and a Ph.D. in physical chemistry in 1985— helped shape her career. “My years at UM were spectacular from every possible perspective,” said Triay, who was born in Cuba and fled the communist island with her parents at the age of three. “The faculty in the chemistry department initiated a love affair with science that has been dominant in my life. They showed me how science could change the world.

“UM is also one of those places that are so diverse,” she added. “It was an eye-opener not just academically but also from a cultural standpoint. Working with people from so many different countries, who spoke just about every language you could think of, helped me appreciate that everyone has something to contribute.”
Los Alamos National Laboratory recruited Triay when she received her doctorate. In 1999, she joined the DOE, where among other things she led a national effort to accelerate the cleanup of waste sites that were legacies of the Cold War—enough radioactive waste to completely fill the Louisiana Superdome.

Triay stresses the importance of the environment as a key issue on the national agenda, and she praises the efforts of her boss Secretary of Energy Steven Chu, a Nobel laureate in physics. “Dr. Chu is an amazing visionary who, like the president, wants to concentrate on energy independence and what we must do—from the small things, like turning off the lights and replacing our light bulbs with energy-efficient ones; to bigger things, like establishing a new energy portfolio for the United States.”

That Triay is qualified to help Chu realize such visions is shown in some of the honors that pepper her career. They include the Presidential Rank Award, the American Society of Mechanical Engineers’ Dixy Lee Ray Award for Environmental Protection, and numerous awards from the DOE and Los Alamos National Laboratory that recognized her excellent performance. “The only person who can limit you is yourself; as long as you have a dream, pursue it with courage,” she said. “And education is extremely important. My parents’ [emigration] experience taught me that all your possessions can go away instantly and the only thing you will have to press forward with is your education.”

When she visits her alma mater, the caliber of students at UM always makes her proud, Triay says. Her advice to the next generation of achievers: “Study hard, understand your field, and aim to accomplish goals much bigger than yourself to leave the world better than you found it.”

 

Graduate has high-tech career in Washington, D.C. & private sector

Frank Jimenez’s professional experience at the upper echelons of public service and private enterprise began at the University of Miami, where he initially hoped to become a doctor. But his experiences in the classroom, with faculty that included religious studies professor Stephen Sapp, and outside the classroom—particularly in student government—led him away from medicine and toward a career in law.

Jimenez credits his academic experience at the College of Arts & Sciences with “fostering discipline and providing exposure to a wide range of subjects in the classroom,” while extracurricular activities on campus engaged him in service to the greater good and taught him how to accommodate multiple constituencies. Among other leadership positions, he was a CAS senator in the undergraduate student government, vice president of the student body, and president both of Omicron Delta Kappa and Mortar Board, leading eventually to induction into Iron Arrow.

After receiving his Bachelor of Science degree in biology from UM in 1987, Jimenez earned a J.D. from Yale Law School in 1991, an M.B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in 2005, and an M.A. in national security and strategic studies from the U.S. Naval War College in 2009.

Today Jimenez is the general counsel of ITT Corp. in New York, one of the world’s largest high technology engineering and manufacturing companies, having left his previous position as general counsel of the Navy in April 2009. Jimenez also did stints with the U.S. Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and Florida Governor Jeb Bush. Along the way, he clerked for a federal appellate judge and worked as a litigation partner at one of Miami’s premier law firms.

When asked what the government gains from private-sector executives spending time in public service, Jimenez explains that while “the backbone of government continuity” is the career civil service, the government also benefits when “new blood brings fresh perspective” to federal or state agencies. When, as in his own career, these officials return to industry, they bring to the job the perspectives of leaders who define objectives more broadly than in just dollars and cents. “After serving in my home state’s capital and in the Pentagon, the aperture on my ‘lens’—the way in which I view the world and others in it—has opened much more widely,” he said.

Given Jimenez’s diverse academic and professional achievements, what career advice would he give to current undergraduates at the College of Arts & Sciences? “Follow your heart,” he said. “Do what you love.”

 

Fostering the Art of Printmaking

Knight award helps UM alumna create a communal print shop in Miami.

Kathleen Hudspeth is a talented artist, but these days she is playing the role of entrepreneur. The John S. and James L. Knight Foundation awarded Hudspeth, M.F.A. ’09, a $150,000 matching grant this past fall to create Turn-Based Press, a communal print shop to promote a culture of printmaking in the South Florida community.

The new printmaking shop, planned for downtown Miami, will offer expertise, tools, and materials to artists so that they may produce book arts and prints while learning more about the art form. “Prints are one of the most difficult kinds of artwork to create because of the materials involved, such as large presses and chemicals,” Hudspeth said. “They are hard to do by yourself, so printmakers are often collaborating with each other. But there aren’t many public spaces to access unless you are a student at a university.”

Hudspeth received the grant as part of the Foundation’s Knight Arts Challenge, a five-year $40-million initiative to bring South Florida’s diverse community together through the arts. The challenge includes endowment grants to leading arts institutions and a community-wide contest to fund the best ideas for the arts.

Hudspeth’s attraction to printmaking derived partly from an interest in science, having been a geology major for two years as an undergraduate. Hudspeth says she enjoys the balance of the art and science of creating prints, as in precisely manipulating machinery and substances to get the job done with distinction. Her work has been exhibited at local and national venues, including the Fredric Snitzer Gallery, the Bass Museum of Art, and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Washington, D.C. Hudspeth also teaches printmaking at the New World School of the Arts in downtown Miami.

“I could not be more pleased about Kathleen’s winning the Knight Foundation grant,” said Lise Drost, chair of the College’s Department of Art & Art History and its head printmaker. “She has the background to make this project work, and her connections to the arts community will assist her as well.”

Hudspeth plans to open Turn-Based Press within the year.