Category: Featured

Monthly Hispanic Celebration Comes to Life Through Alumna’s Personal Story

Amanda Conde

Alumna Amanda Conde at graduation

Celebrating Hispanic Heritage Month is a time of pride for Nova Southeastern University – the largest private university in the U.S. that meets the U.S. Department of Education criteria as a Hispanic-serving institution. It’s also a time of reflection for NSU alumna Amanda Conde, a first-generation American.

“This month is a celebration of who I am and where I come from,” said Conde, a graduate of the H. Wayne Huizenga College of Business and Entrepreneurship. “It holds special meaning, symbolizing my culture and the resilience it has instilled in me.”

To mark the month, NSU’s Belonging, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion Council is promoting several Hispanic-themed events featuring music, dance, food, and guest lectures being offered across the university community. Among them:

  • Sept. 1-Oct. 20: “Figuration in Latino American Art” exhibit at Sherman Library
  • Sept. 30:  The Future of Spanglish – A roundtable presentation and discussion
  • Oct. 10: Marinera Forever – Peruvian Dance and Cultural Fest at Sherman Library
Amanda with her mother and father

Amanda with her mother and father

Calling herself a “tri-citizen” born in Cuba, moving to Spain during her early childhood, then coming to the United States, Amanda sees this month as a time to reflect on the importance of her family and their support.

“Being an immigrant family, we never had a lot, but my parents made sure to give me everything they had and more,” Amanda said. “They worked extremely hard to guarantee we had a home, food, clothes, and a good education.”

That same work ethic was instilled in Amanda, who put herself through NSU with the help of scholarships and a full-time job. She earned her finance degree in 2023, her MBA in 2024, and was recently offered a job at Morgan Stanley.

“My parents told me to always give 100% in anything I did because no one else would do it for me,” she said. “I was able to get this done because of them.”

SharkBytes On Summer Hiatus, To Be Upgraded in Fall

This is the final edition of SharkBytes for this academic year. We’ll introduce this fall a new faculty and staff e-newsletter, including a digital bulletin board for your community news submissions. In the meantime, if you have news for the university community, submit it to Mako Media’s Christiane Delboni at cdelboni@nova.edu. You also can continue to send news to Irv Harrell in Public Relations at sharkbytes@nova.edu.

NSU Director Made University Her Home During Its Infancy

Melissa Dore, the director of academic support and administration for the Halmos College of Arts and Sciences

Before Nova Southeastern University became Nova Southeastern University, Melissa Dore was here.

Dore was raised in rural Maine, far from the glitz of South Florida and its enticing beaches and balmy temperatures. She was drawn to the small South Florida school formerly called Nova University because of her love for marine studies. It was January 1992. Nova U. had the only master’s program in coastal zone management she could find.

Without realizing it, Dore found herself catching the wave of three decades of historic growth on the once fledgling campus. In 1994, Nova University merged with Southeastern University of Health Sciences, which added colleges of Pharmacy, Optometry, Allied Health, Medical Sciences and Dental Medicine, to form Nova Southeastern University.

For Dore, it was the right place at the right time.

After receiving her master’s degree in Marine Biology/Coastal Zone Management, Dore was hired in 1997 as an administrative assistant at the Oceanographic Center. She now is the director of academic support and administration for the Halmos College of Arts and Sciences.

“Since I have been here, NSU has provided me opportunities I wouldn’t have been able to get in the Northeast,” she said. “In my current role, I am the liaison among student services, students, faculty and administration for the college. I collaborate with others in the dean’s office to streamline processes to benefit the students and to uphold academic integrity.”

Dore’s first studied ostracods – minute aquatic crustaceans – in the marine environment. She worked with scanning electron microscopy to determine the environmental history of a place by using the ostracods as environmental indicators.

“Throughout my time at NSU, the most exhilarating research I participated in was working with the Broward County Sea Turtle Project back in the early 1990s,” she said. “Seeing what hard work we did then continue to grow and come to fruition now is amazing.”

Dore has used her extensive educational background to amplify her impact at NSU.

With her doctorate in higher education leadership, Dore helped develop retention plans at the undergraduate and graduate levels at NSU. Using her M.S. in College Student Affairs, she has explored how to help students enter the university. Her M.S.in Law, which she’ll complete this summer, has enabled her to research artificial intelligence in higher education and its legal ramifications.

“My current work is building resilience in students, staff, faculty and administrators in higher education,” she said. “I am the educational chair of the Academic Resilience Consortium and I have been developing and running a monthly webinar series focusing on how to create mental, emotional and social resilience in all stakeholders in higher education.”

Dore grew up surrounded by great aunts, uncles and grandparents who loved nature and showed her lakes, ponds, streams, bogs and glacial moraines in the Highlands of Maine. There, she learned how to identify animal tracks, birds and animal calls.

“I grew up swimming, boating and mucking around in these glacial waters,” she said.

Among Dore’s most influential role models were Dr. Lynn Margulis, an evolutionary biologist and huge proponent for the significance of symbiosis in evolution, and physicist and oceanographer Allyn Vine, a leader in the development of submersibles to explore the deep sea.

Education has been Dore’s foundation throughout her life, and her positive experiences in that realm at NSU have kept her here.

“One of the driving forces in higher education for me has been the ability to continue to expand my knowledge and work in a collaborative atmosphere,” she said. “Also, the fact I was allowed to see areas of concern and had the ability to develop solutions for the benefit of the students.”

When Dore is not researching or working with students, faculty and staff, she sings and volunteers. She has been singing with the Nova Singers since 1995. This year marks the 48th concert season of the Nova Singers, NSU’s community chorus made up of 140 members — from undergraduate students to older residents. When the 14th Dalai Lama made a historic visit to campus in 2004, Dore was among the singers at the ceremony at the Alvin Sherman Library, where the religious leader honored the university with a “prayer wheel” and received an honorary doctorate of humane letters from NSU.

“We have traveled to Europe, sung in the Vatican and Carnegie Hall, too,” she said. “I also volunteer for the Little Free Libraries in Fort Lauderdale. We stock all the small free libraries around the neighborhoods so everyone has a book to read.”

Head of Army ROTC Programs Tours Davie Campus

U.S. Army Major General Antonio Munera meets with NSU’s ROTC cadets.

U.S. Army Major General Antonio Munera, who leads the U.S. Army Cadet Command’s Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC), visited NSU’s Fort Lauderdale/Davie Campus on Tuesday, Jan. 30.

Munera sought to familiarize himself with universities and colleges in South Florida, gain a better understanding of the education track at NSU and discuss growing the ROTC program at NSU.

Major Gen. Munera has lunch with Dr. Moon.

Munera’s met with ROTC cadets, thanked them for their service, reminded them how good the NSU program is and told them about his plans to expand the program at NSU.

“The Army is a people business,” he said. “Your mission is to make subordinates and peers better than they thought they could be.”

He cautioned the cadets to think about their “digital footprint” and how they promote themselves online. The meeting culminated in a photo shoot with the cadets at Forman Field at the Armed Forces Service Flag Plaza outside the Horvitz Administration Building.

Munera visited the Alan B. Levan I NSU Broward Center of Innovation. He toured the center’s cybersecurity range, which equips organizations with the knowledge and skills to tackle cyber threats. He also was introduced to the center’s volumetric capture studio, a leader in 3D content creation.

NSU cadets prepare for a rappelling exercise atop the Alvin Sherman Library.

Munera met Dr. Harry K. Moon, NSU’s executive vice president, chief operating officer and president-elect; Dr. Brad Williams, vice president of student affairs; Terry Mularkey, executive director of development and community relations; Kimberly Durham, dean of the Abraham Fischler College of Education and School of Criminal Justice; Lt. Col. Ken Green, head of the Broward County Junior ROTC program; and Sandra Wendland, director of NSU Military Affairs. The group discussed NSU’s collaborations and commitment to the military.

NSU cadets staged an afternoon rappelling demonstration for the major general from atop the Alvin Sherman Library. The demonstration was coordinated by military instructor Sgt. First Class Jamie Howard.

Posted 02/04/24

NSU Celebrates Legacy of Carl DeSantis at Anniversary Event

Carl DeSantis’ son Damon address the crowd at the anniversary ceremony.

The H. Wayne Huizenga College of Business and Entrepreneurship paid a special tribute on Dec. 16 to the late Carl DeSantis during a 20th anniversary celebration of the Nova Southeastern University building named in his honor.

For more than two decades, DeSantis was instrumental in moving NSU forward as a highly respected higher education institution when it comes to educating future business leaders and entrepreneurs.

Born in Massachusetts and raised in Florida, DeSantis was a lifelong entrepreneur with a natural flair for business and marketing. He launched Sundown Vitamins in his garage and built it from a mail order company into the world’s largest vitamin manufacturer. The company would later become Rexall Sundown, growing into a Fortune 100 company while revolutionizing the health supplements industry.

In 2000, Rexall Sundown was sold for $1.8 billion. DeSantis immediately began to invest in—and pioneer—a series of companies while also continuing to be a passionate philanthropist. DeSantis was inducted into NSU’s Entrepreneur and Business Hall of Fame in 1998. In 2002, DeSantis pledged a leading gift to the campaign to relocate NSU’s business college from a small off-site space to a 261,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art facility on the NSU Fort Lauderdale/Davie Campus. In January 2004, the Carl DeSantis Building was opened as the home of the H. Wayne Huizenga College of Business and Entrepreneurship (HCBE).

Among those on hand for the anniversary celebration were HCBE Dean Andrew Rosman, NSU President George L. Hanbury II, Provost Ronald J. Chenail, Dean Emeritus Randy Pohlman, Carl’s son Damon, Carl’s daughter Debbie, event co-chair Arlene Pecora of the Signature Grand, and Jeff Perlman of CDS International Holdings.

Posted 01/14/24

Halmos Faculty’s Book Assesses Seafloor Biodiversity

Jose V. Lopez, Ph.D.

Assessing the biological diversity that lives on the seabed across more than 70% of the planet’s surface, also known as the “benthos,” provides a challenge and task that will endure well into the future. Jose V. Lopez, Ph.D., and professor in the Department of Biological Sciences in the Halmos College of Arts and Sciences and Guy Harvey Oceanographic Research Center (HCAS) decided to take up the call by writing a comprehensive reference book called Assessments and Conservation of Biological Diversity from Coral Reefs to the Deep Sea: Uncovering Buried Treasures and the Value of the Benthos(Academic Press Publishers). This decision was based on his past collective research experiences and resulted in the publication 2023.

The benthos encompasses all the organisms at the seafloor. Although daunting, Lopez was assisted by the realization that many communities of benthic organisms remain a black box.  Many benthic descriptions and conservation activities understandably occur and concentrate near coastlines, which allow easier and less expensive access for researchers.  For example, many studies appropriately focus on shallow coral reefs because they are considered to hold the lion’s share of biodiversity or species (estimated at ~25%) on the planet.  This may be true, and many researchers and decades of study have yielded fascinating facts about reefs, such as the phenomenon of singled celled green algae and stony coral hosts living in an obligatesymbiosis (distinct organisms united to compose a whole organism) as the crucial basis for the ecosystem’s structure.  Nonetheless, the very deep ocean benthic zones that lie below 800 to 4000m (bathyal zone) and 4000 to 6500 (abyssal zone), represent the largest surface habitats on the planet and have been understudied.  These zones have extreme living conditions (4oC average temperature and high hydrostatic pressures). However, deep sea expeditions require much planning and can be expensive.  In the book, Lopez describes how more often remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) or sonar must be applied to obtain useful views of the deep seabed.

These understudied seabed habitats will undoubtedly yield many biological surprises –   what may live there and how they survive. The new Assessments… book connects various topics (genomics and cryptic taxa) related to biodiversity via data, review articles, anecdotes, public policy and even art.  For example, besides sporadic mining operations, or the search for sunken treasures (or wrecks such as the RMS Titanic), the deep seabed has not been accurately mapped.   This may change over the next few decades. Overall, Lopez recounts that “we know the surface of the moon better than we do what lies on the bottom of the ocean, even though the latter is closer”.  His laboratory research on the microbial communities of marine sediments and reading the whole genomes of benthic invertebrates attempts to add to the scientific knowledge of the benthos. For information about the book, see https://shop.elsevier.com/books/assessments-and-conservation-of-biological-diversity-from-coral-reefs-to-the-deep-sea/lopez/978-0-12-824112-7 

Posted 01/14/24

College of Pharmacy Named for Barry, Judy Silverman

On Tuesday, Nov. 28, 2023, Nova Southeastern University renamed its College of Pharmacy the Barry and Judy Silverman College of Pharmacy.

NSU Board of Trustees Vice Chair and Chair of the NSU Health Professions Division Board of Governors Dr. Barry Silverman and his wife made a transformational gift to the university, with the goal of enhancing the growth and continued impact of NSU’s pharmacy program not only in Fort Lauderdale but also at our Palm Beach and San Juan, Puerto Rico campuses.

A crowd of more than 300 turned out for the unveiling of the college sign, including Pharmacy Dean Dr. Michelle Clark; President and CEO Dr. George L. Hanbury; and President-elect, Executive Vice President and COO Dr. Harry K. Moon; the NSU Board of Trustees, and a host of NSU faculty, staff, students and administrators.

“The Silvermans’ gift will aid the college tremendously in providing a world-class education to students, allowing them to achieve the NSU edge,” Dean Clark said.

Posted 12/10/23

‘A Day for Children’ Builds Community on Campus

Joe DiMaggio Children’s Hospital’s annual health literacy event, “A Day for Children,” was hosted by Nova Southeastern University’s Alvin Sherman Library on Saturday, Oct. 21, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the university’s Davie Campus.

For more than two decades, “A Day for Children” has been a beacon of knowledge, providing essential medical information to more than 100,000 residents, empowering them to make informed health decisions for their children and families.

“A Day for Children” was an opportunity for local families to access free and low-cost health and wellness services for children aged from birth to 16 years. NSU Health students and faculty were on hand to offer comprehensive health care education and activities, covering vision, medical, speech, behavior, and dental health, as well as physical and occupational therapy.

Among the participants, performances, and activities were cloggers, prize drawings, theater performances, face painting, book giveaways, Clifford the Big Red Dogs, a teddy bear clinic, Feeding South Florida food giveaways, Davie Police and Fire Departments, and the Broward County Sheriff’s Office.

The Alvin Sherman Library staff also were present at the event, offering Alvin Sherman Library cards to children and their families. The librarians also provided valuable information about the library’s vast resources on health and wellness, ensuring that families had access to reliable and up-to-date information long after the event concluded.

Posted 11/05/23

Interprofessional Education, Simulation to Open Gateway to Future of Health Care at NSU

For years, NSU has been raising the bar on health care in South Florida through interprofessional education and simulation. Our philosophy and practice have focused on training future professionals to interact with patients and collaborate as members of health care teams before practicing in real-life health care environments.

To enhance and expand our current world-class health care facilities, NSU Health is seizing the opportunity to put them under one roof at the future site of a brand new, standalone Interprofessional Simulation Complex, or SimCom.

This facility – spearheaded by EVP and COO Dr. Harry Moon and NSU Health – will serve as the cornerstone of NSU’s health care footprint on the Fort Lauderdale/Davie Campus, strategically located near the health care colleges, NSU Health’s clinics, the Center for Collaborative Research, and the HCA University Hospital. The facility’s infrastructure will be used by students on campus as well as all regional campuses virtually. Slated to open in 2025, SimCom will be supported by NSU Health’s new Interprofessional Simulation Institute – led by Executive Director Dawn Wawersik. The Institute – which already oversees the administration and operations of simulation activities for the university.

These cutting-edge endeavors will culminate in a uniquely beneficial asset to NSU students, educators, and researchers across all our regional campuses, as well as the health care community and industry at large. The much smaller former Dolphins training facility building, previously considered to house SimCom, will be repurposed to address much-needed office and classroom space on campus.

Learn more about these exciting endeavors.

Posted 09/26/23

Shark Cage Event Showcases Latest Student-Run Businesses

On Friday, Sept. 1, the Huizenga Business Innovation Academy held its Shark Cage Grand Opening event at the Shark Cage and Mako Hall Lawn. The event provided an opportunity for students to showcase NSU’s newest student-run businesses.

The businesses offered delicious food, amazing products, and beneficial services. You can expect to see these business circulating around campus this semester.

Posted 09/10/23

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