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SPEAKING OF EXCELLENCE
UM's Shalala offers tips to students after getting Aquinas honors
By CASSIO FURTADO
cfurtado@herald.com
Caption: Hopeful St. Thomas Aquinas senior Mike Dinnen, standing left, asks University of Miami President Donna Shalala if she would like a date for the Hurricanes' game against Florida State on Saturday. Marsha Halper/Herald Staff
Listen, zigzag if you have to, work harder than everybody else and, by all means, get your values down before you ever go to work in Washington.
If you do all that, you can one day work for a president, run a major university, and -- perk of all perks -- have exclusive access to a VIP box at the Orange Bowl for Miami Hurricane games.
Donna Shalala, President Clinton's Health and Human Services secretary and now president of the University of Miami, offered serious advice in a funny way Wednesday in an informal address before 1,000 students at St. Thomas Aquinas High School in Fort Lauderdale.
Shalala received the school's Excellence in Everything Award, given to visible South Florida leaders who represent diversity.
Shalala's first tip to the students was to listen.
And so she did, tackling a question about how she handled abortion issues while she was in Clinton's Cabinet. Shalala, who is Catholic, said her job at the helm of the DHHS was to enforce the law -- not her personal views.
''The issue is the law and what the law provides,'' she said.
Shalala, a Cleveland native of Lebanese descent, cited her experience as a young college graduate, working with the Peace Corps in Iran in the early 1960s, to inspire the teenagers to learn about the world and other cultures.
The period in Iran working for the Peace Corps ''made me a world citizen,'' she said. ``I was willing to take more chances after the Peace Corps.''
Shalala said preparing students for their jobs after college will always be tough, but that educators must strive to help students develop what she called ``quality of mind.''
''The real test of a good education,'' Shalala said, ``is whether you're going to be prepared for your third or fourth job -- not your first.''
Before Shalala went to Washington, a town she said wasn't the right place to acquire ethics, she was the chancellor of the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She also served stints as president of Hunter College in New York and as assistant secretary for policy development and research for Health and Human Services under President Carter.
To make her point on zigzaging, Shalala drew upon her Peace Corps experience, telling how she had to convince Peace Corps administrators to build a mosque instead of a school in the rural Iranian neighborhood where she was volunteering.
She said the village leader admitted the need for a school only after a mosque had been built.
Shalala said that in critical times like today, when the United States confronts terrorist threats, ``Everyone wants to trim rights for security.''
''It's in times of crisis that you have to be more awake,'' Shalala said.
Dominick Palleschi, a 17 year-old junior, called Shalala's message ``inspirational and funny.''
Alex Jannach, another 17-year-old junior, said Shalala had given ''very good advice'' and welcomed her tips. ''She's a very interesting person with a good sense of humor,'' he said.
But not everyone left the talk completely satisfied. Mike Dinnen, a senior, asked Shalala if she would like a date for the Hurricanes' game against the Florida State Seminoles on Saturday. It was reported recently that Shalala has a VIP box for Hurricanes home games, and that she gives away her extra seats in the prime location to folks in the nosebleed section.
It was no sale.
''I've already got a date,'' she said with a grin.
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