Roxanne Greitz Miller came to the University of Miami as a first-generation college student. Merit- and need-based aid covered her education in full. She graduated in 1990 with a B.S. in Biology (Honors), minors in Chemistry and Secondary Education, and the School of Education Senior Scholar Award, a distinction that recognized her as one of the School's standout graduates.
Thirty-six years later, she has funded an award that does for another student what that recognition did for her.
“This award exists because dedicated alumni helped me finish my UM education during student teaching, and I have not forgotten it,” Miller said.
Miller's gift establishes the Roxanne Greitz Miller '90 Senior Student Teacher Award in the Department of Teaching and Learning. The award carries an annual prize of $5,000 and goes to an outstanding senior completing full-time, unpaid student teaching who demonstrates exceptional promise as an educator. The Chair of Teaching and Learning administers the fund.
“UM didn’t just prepare me to teach science to adolescents. It prepared me to lead complex and diverse teams in the real world,” Miller said.
The timing of the award matters as much as the amount. Student teaching asks candidates to work a full school day without pay while they finish coursework and cover tuition, fees, and living expenses. Miller designed the award to ease that semester, and recipients may apply the funds to any of those costs.
She built her own career on the foundation UM gave her. Miller began teaching secondary science immediately after graduating from UM with her bachelor’s degree. Miller taught secondary science for nearly ten years, earning her MSEd and EdD through night and summer classes during the first eight years while teaching full time. She then moved into higher education, where she now serves as Dean of the Attallah College of Educational Studies at Chapman University.
Miller created the award to recognize excellence, to provide support at the point where students need it most, and to encourage each recipient to pay it forward.
Her path runs from a scholarship-funded undergraduate seat in Coral Gables, through nearly a decade teaching secondary science, to a deanship in California, and back to the School she started in. The next senior to receive the award will begin somewhere close to where she did.
“For these new award recipients, paying it forward means becoming that support for someone else,” Miller said. “This award carries my family's name so that this story keeps moving forward, with each new chapter written by the UM future teachers we are investing in today.”
