Bowman Foster Ashe was the founding president of the University of Miami, a position he occupied from 1926 to 1954. He was born in Pittsburgh, PA, on April 3, 1885. He graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Pittsburgh in 1910, after which he started working as a teacher in English and History. Following a period as the educational and social director for a coal mining company near Pittsburgh, he returned to the University of Pittsburgh as a faculty member and then as an administrative member of the admissions department. The University of Miami then hired him to preside over the institution during its first years. One of his first projects came with a partnership with local indigenous peoples, the Seminoles, with whom he founded the Iron Arrow Honor Society. Under his term, the University of Miami faced the challenges of the 1926 destructive Miami hurricane and the 1929 financial crisis. However, the institution also expanded significantly and added the Schools of Law (1928), Business Administration (1929), Education (1929), Graduate Studies (1941), Marine and Atmospheric Science (1943), and Medicine (1952), as well as the College of Engineering (1947). Ashe passed away at 67, on December 16, 1952. Miami has two buildings in homage to Ashe: the University of Miami’s administration building and an Elementary school in West Kendall.-Vanessa Rodrigues Barcelos da SilvaGraduate Student Assistant for Manuscripts and Archives Management, Summer 2026

Edward Thaddeus Foote II was the University of Miami’s fourth president, a position he occupied for 20 years (only surpassed in length by UM’s founding president Ashe). A successor to former President Henry King Stanford, Foote was born on December 15, 1937 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He graduated from Yale University with a Bachelor’s degree and from Georgetown University Law Center with an LLB. From 1959 to 1962, Foote served as first lieutenant at the US Marine Corps. He started his professional career as a journalist for Washington Star and Washington Daily News in the sixties but developed a career in higher education administration in the 70s. He went from Vice Chancellor, General Counsel to the Board of Trustees of Washington University, where he served until 1981. That same year, he assumed the presidency of the University of Miami, at the age of 43. Under his administration, the University of Miami created three new colleges: the School of Architecture, the School of Communication, and the Graduate School of International Studies. He also served the larger Miami community acting as a founding chairman of the Miami Coalition for a Safe Drug-Free Community. Foote was the recipient of local and national prizes, including the National Conference for Community and Justice’s Distinguished Community Service Award and the Miami Herald/ El Nuevo Herald’s Charles Whited Spirit of Excellence Award. Foote, or just "Tad," was also married to Roberta "Bosey" Fulbright Foote, with whom he had three children. He passed away on February 15, 2016, at the age of 78.–Vanessa Rodrigues Barcelos da SilvaGraduate Student Assistant for Manuscripts and Archives Management, Summer 2026

Henry King Stanford was born in Atlanta, GA, on April 22, 1916. He was University of Miami’s third president from 1962 to 1981, succeeding J. F. W. Pearson. Stanford’s academic career started at Emory University, where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts, followed by an Master of Science degree and a PhD at New York University. Afterwards, he occupied different administrative positions in Emory University and Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) and became the president of Birmingham–Southern College in Alabama, his last appointment before Stanford became the president of the University of Miami. During Stanford’s presidency, the university solidified its administrative structure and research infrastructure, with the creation of the Center for Advanced International Studies (1964), the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Evolution (1964), the Center for Theoretical Studies (1965), and the Institute for the Study of Aging (1975). Stanford was the recipient of several awards, such as the Eleanor Roosevelt-Israel Humanitarian Award, the "Star of Africa" medal, and the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. In 1981, he stepped down from University of Miami’s presidency, and in July 1986, he became University of Georgia’s president. Henry King Stanford passed away on January 1, 2009, at the age of 92.-Vanessa Rodrigues Barcelos da SilvaGraduate Student Assistant for Manuscripts and Archives Management, Summer 2026

Born in Woodsfield, Ohio on May 7, 1901, Jay F. W. Pearson was the second president of the University of Miami, succeeding Bowman Foster Ashe. He had a Bachelor of Science degree in Zoology from the University of Pittsburgh, where he was later a faculty member before becoming a part of the University of Miami in 1926. He also had a PhD from the University of Chicago and worked as the director of exhibits in Biology and Medicine at the Golden Gate International Exposition in San Francisco in 1938. He authored several books, including Record of a Tequesta Burial Mound in Palm Beach, Florida; Studies on the Ecological Relations of Bees in the Chicago Area; and Florida and Its University of Miami, as well as articles in academic journals. Pearson was a prominent member of a variety of academic associations, including the Florida Academy of Sciences, the Florida Association of Colleges and Universities, the American Association of Zoologists, the Historical Association of Southern Florida, and the Association of Urban Universities. Aside from his academic duties, he supervised aviation training at different military installations during WWII. He came to Miami when the university only had 30 faculty members and 300 enrolled students, yet by the time he left in 1962, UM had grown to 13,500 students, graduate degrees were expanded across all its schools, and new doctoral programs were created in a diverse number of fields. It was also during his presidency that the Board of Trustees voted in 1961 in favor of admitting qualified students of color, establishing a precedent for other Florida higher education institutions to replicate. Pearson passed away on August 8, 1965, at the age of 64.-Vanessa Rodrigues Barcelos da SilvaGraduate Student Assistant for Manuscripts and Archives Management, Summer 2026

Donna Edna Shalala was born in Cleveland, OH on February 14, 1941. She was the fifth president of the University of Miami and the first female president of the institution. Shalala holds a bachelor’s degree in History from the Western College for Women (class of 1962) and a PhD from The Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University (class of 1970). In the following two decades, her academic career included holding tenured teaching positions at Columbia University, as well as teaching and administrative posts at the City University of New York (CUNY) and the University of Wisconsin Madison. During her time at Madison, she also served as the chair of the non-profit organization Children’s Defense Fund. In 1993, she was nominated U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services by President Bill Clinton, serving for eight years. From 2001 to 2015, Shalala was University of Miami’s president. Under her leadership, the university held important fundraising campaigns, Momentum One and Two, which together raised three billion dollars from private donors towards the university’s endowment. During the pandemic, she served as a representative of Florida’s 27th congressional district in the U.S. House of Representatives and later returned to higher education administration as the interim president of The New School in New York City from 2023 to 2024. Shalala received a number of awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom (awarded by President George W. Bush) and the Nelson Mandela Award for Health and Human Rights.-Vanessa Rodrigues Barcelos da SilvaGraduate Student Assistant for Manuscripts and Archives Management, Summer 2026

Julio José Frenk Mora was born in Mexico City on December 20, 1953. He started his academic career with an undergraduate medical degree from the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (National Autonomous University of Mexico) in 1979, followed by a master’s degree in Public Health from the University of Michigan, a Master of Arts in Sociology, and a Ph.D. in Medical Care and Sociology. He occupied several important positions in Mexico’s public health administration, including serving as the Secretary of Health of the country. Before assuming the University of Miami’s presidency, he was the dean of Harvard's School of Public Health. During his tenure, the University of Miami’s Health System was significantly expanded and received public acknowledgement. The university also saw the creation of the Frost Institute for Chemistry and Molecular Science and the Frost Institute for Data Science and Computing. Following his tenure at the University of Miami, Frenk was appointed as the chancellor of the University of California at Los Angeles. In addition to his public and private administrative posts, Frenk also served at the Board of Directors of the Commonwealth Fund, the Miami-Dade Beacon Council, and the United Nations Foundation. Frenk was awarded many awards during his career, being named by the Mexican Research System as its National Researcher and as an International Fellow in Health by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation. He also became a member of the US National Academy of Medicine.-Vanessa Rodrigues Barcelos da SilvaGraduate Student Assistant for Manuscripts and Archives Management, Summer 2026