A national championship celebration

Welcome to the summer at Miami University. Thanks so much to faculty and staff for all that you have done during the last academic year. I can’t wait for Convocation in August, when our first-year class arrives. In the meantime, I thought you might get pumped up by this video of Miami's Mock Trial team celebrating its national championship in Minneapolis.

Your ideas for Miami Stories are always welcome. Send them to me at President@MiamiOH.edu.

Three things I want you to know ...

Thank you to the Diversity & Inclusion Working Group: I have received the Executive Summary and recommendations of the Diversity & Inclusion Working Group report, which I commissioned last fall in our efforts to continue building a welcoming Miami community. I am sure it will continue the caring and productive interactions we have been having around campus. By the end of the summer, we will have the entire report prepared to share with the campus community, along with a presentation by Professor Rodney Coates, chair of the working group. A special thank you to Professor Coates and the entire working group of students, faculty and staff. To read the recommendations, please visit this page on Miami's Diversity and Inclusion site.

Demonstrating the value of Ohio public universities: We know at Miami the value of public universities, preparing our graduates to be workforce leaders and contributing to Ohio’s prosperity. A new report shows that Miami added $2.3 billion to the Ohio economy in 2016-17. Surveys confirm that Ohioans recognize universities as anchors of our state’s future. Now Miami is joining Ohio’s 13 other public universities in a statewide campaign through 2018 to raise awareness of how universities are addressing Ohio’s “talent gap” and helping the state grow and prosper. I encourage you to visit www.forwardohio.org, and share the stories of personal growth, creativity and collaboration with your family and friends.

Miami is looking outward for partnerships: We have launched a Corporate & Foundation Relations working group to assist our faculty researchers, as well as our advancement team, engage with industry and foundation partners. Our vision is simple: to use our talent, scholarship and expertise to elevate Miami, the state, our nation and the world around us. I strongly believe in such collaborations to unite the discovery-driven environment of the university with the innovation-driven environment of our partners. Expanding partnerships with foundations also can be a valuable source of ideas and resources. Universities that do this well not only enhance their own teaching and research, but supply valuable human and intellectual capital to collaborators.

Now let's meet a few members of our Miami family

Staff - Cassie Wilson

Cassie Wilson knows how to practice wellness skills – just follow the routine offered to Miami employees.

“I love it. Every single day is something different,” says Wilson, Miami’s assistant director of employee wellness. “I always like to think of it as a day in the life of a Miami employee. We have so much going for us here, with the beautiful outdoor spaces and all the staff and research faculty who are great collaborators.”

Thanks to Wilson and others, employee wellness is another thing Miami has going for it. This spring, we were named one of Greater Cincinnati’s 25 healthiest employers.

Wilson is a yoga instructor and also a certified exercise physiologist. After one stint at Miami, she worked at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston before returning to Oxford. She has children ages seven and five now, limiting her exercise time.

“I try to do something in the morning before they get up,” she said, including meditation and yoga classes “a couple of times a week.”

Student - Chris Mattress

Chris Mattress says when he arrived at Miami in the fall of 2014, “adjusting to my classmates was kind of a challenge."

“But once I got used to it, I kind of realized that there are a lot of things that can change," says Mattress, a first-generation college student who was raised by his mother in one of Cincinnati's rougher neighborhoods. "I thought I might as well use my dollars wisely and try to change the situation.”

At Miami, Mattress got involved – search committees, Tri-Council president, Real Talk, working with the Office of Diversity Affairs. Now he is a newly minted Miami graduate, determined to use his degree in education to ensure that all students can benefit. He is starting in the master's program at Johns Hopkins University.

“I want to be a change agent in the education system,” he says. “It’s time to get a seat at that table for someone who can talk that language.”

Faculty - Melissa Thomasson

Melissa Thomasson remembers her testimony last fall to the Senate Committee on Homeland Security & Governmental Affairs – senators coming and going, and legislative assistants scurrying around.

“What I learned from that is that young people run DC,” says Thomasson, a professor of economics and director of graduate studies in the Farmer School of Business, who has been at Miami since getting her doctoral degree from the University of Arizona 20 years ago. “There were famous people going this way and that way, but these aides and legislative assistants are really doing a lot of the heavy lifting in Washington.”

Thomasson has proven herself a national expert on the economics of health care, and why the current system can’t sustain itself.

“The future of health care really depends on payment reform,” she says. She believes the Affordable Care Act helps give people more affordable access to health care, but says that “if healthy people don’t buy health insurance, it will be increasingly unaffordable for those who are sick.”

Thomasson says Miami students get better and more prepared each year – although she prohibits using laptops and other electronics in the classroom. Students are “more engaged and have better performance,” she says.

Staff - John Burke

John Burke knows the challenge of keeping the Gardner-Harvey Library at Miami's Middletown campus relevant for today's students and faculty. That's why he came up with the "maker space."

Instituted in fall 2014 with a dedicated space starting in 2016, it includes laser engravers and cutters, 3-D printers and other equipment to help provide the latest learning opportunities.

"We buy a lot of things so other people don't have to, so we thought it would be a good idea to try it with equipment," says Burke, who has been at Miami for 15 years. "It's something we really kind of grew into."

Students love the space in the busy library, which hosts up to 400 people a day during the academic year. But the national trends are clear: University libraries are getting smaller. Gardner-Harvey is no exception, with smaller collections of things like periodicals and about 30,000 volumes now, significantly less than 15 years ago.

"We're just kind of opening up space where we can and seeing what people want to do with it," Burke says. "We're keeping pace with the academic community we are serving. We're doing what we've always done, but just doing it in a different way."

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