The University of Miami’s new Academic Provost Joel Hassman Samuels joined the Student Senate for the first time to answer its burning questions about issues affecting students across UM on Wednesday, Feb. 18. The general body meeting was open to anyone who wished to attend.
“Engaging with student government is a huge priority for me,” Samuels told the Senate. “I desperately miss teaching, and student government is a group I would love to spend time with to fill that gap.”
Samuels joined UM on Aug. 11, 2025, after serving as the Dean for the College of Arts at Sciences at the University of South Carolina since 2021.
Speaker of the Senate Alexei Darling led most of the Senate’s questioning. Samuels wasted no time in getting to the point: UM’s career services need a lot of work.
“I want UM to have one of the top five 5 career services in the country in the next five years,” he said. “Toppel Career Center does great work, but it has a very small staff, and UM’s career services focus only on the student’s first job, not their whole career.”
Samuels promised to reorient UM’s career services to focus on students’ careers and futures “from the day you are admitted,” saying he is committed to invest an additional $2 million and hiring additional staff to further this goal. He also teased that he is in the process of bringing in a candidate to lead these efforts to improve UM’s career services. While he would not name the candidate just yet, he said he wants to arrange a special session between the Senate and the candidate once they have been hired.
Senators asked Samuels how else he planned to improve UM’s career services. Samuels credited Dr. Patricia Whitely with providing some help in this area, while also mentioning his close working relationship with Toppel’s staff, efforts to improve alumni and employer engagement and bringing in elements of AI into the space.
The Provost also discussed the pending changes to cognates at UM. He confirmed that while there is a desire to change how cognates work among UM faculty and administration members, he does not want to make changes without accommodating for students who want to pursue double or triple majors or dual degree programs, which would be inhibited by changes to cognates such as the removal of individualized cognates. Samuels said that, realistically, no changes will be made to the cognate system for at least two to three years.
“Nothing is happening yet,” Samuels said. “The question here is, how do we make changes without compromising students’ ability to pursue those double and triple majors, which is such a unique aspect of UM? No one has shown me a solution yet, and the Faculty Senate might not even agree at first if and when we find one.”
Alexa Young-Tem contributed to the reporting of this article.