After decades of fighting to shed its party-going, Club Med-type reputation, the University of Miami appears to have done exactly that. UM these days is a hotbed of research activity, as well as the favored destination for some of the nation's brightest high school seniors.
U.S. News & World Report magazine is the latest true believer in the ``new'' UM, as the magazine last week ranked UM 47th in the nation among all national research universities -- high enough to be Florida's top-ranked school.
UM, ranked 50th last year, has never held the state's No. 1 spot before. The longtime owner of that title, the University of Florida, dropped from 47th to 53rd this year.
``We obviously are in the top ranks of American universities now,'' UM President Donna Shalala said. ``The only way you move up in the rankings is by getting better.''
Just nine years ago, UM ranked 67th in U.S. News' annual tally. Jumping 20 spots in less than 10 years is a rare feat, and almost certainly makes UM the envy of many other schools.
The 2001 hiring of Shalala -- who served as secretary of Health and Human Services in the Clinton administration -- on its own served to bring a certain level of gravitas to UM's lushly-landscaped Coral Gables campus. In both 2004 and 2008, UM hosted a U.S. presidential debate, and Clinton himself was at UM in April after choosing the school as the site of his most-recent Clinton Global Initiative University forum. ...
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