UCF in the News

On Friday, the University of Central Florida’s College of Nursing broke ground on their new stand-alone building at the Lake Nona Medical City campus. The building will allow more students to enroll at a critical time. There is already a nursing shortage throughout the state and country. According to the Florida Hospital Association (FHA), it’s only going to get worse unless something changes. The FHA predicts that we will face a shortfall of 59,000 nurses by 2035. Dean Mary Lou Sole of the UCF College of Nursing said their current facility is busting at the seams. "We cannot grow," Sole said. "We cannot take more students."

On Friday, January 5, the door plug of a commercial Boeing 737 Max 9 came off as the plane was climbing, opening a large hole on the side of the plane, alarming passengers onboard, and raising new questions about flight safety. For now, certain models of that plane have been temporarily grounded by the Federal Aviation Administration in the US and by several aviation authorities abroad, a move that impacts Alaska Airlines, United Airlines, and other companies that utilize this aircraft. “Commercial aviation today is safe in all sorts of measurable and immeasurable ways,” Timothy Ravich, an associate professor at the University of Central Florida, told Vox, while adding that “reports of operational concerns — from runway incursions to passenger air rage to pilot training concerns to aircraft production” have understandably heightened people’s worries about safety. Experts note that it’s vital for regulators to take an aggressive response to these concerns — in the form of groundings, inspections, and, if needed, new rulemakings — to rebuild public trust and prevent such incidents from occurring.

This article is co-authored by Rosen College of Hospitality Management Interim Dean Cynthia Mejia and senior instructor Michael “Doc” Terry. Gen Z is the generational cohort born between 1997 and 2012, with a U.S. population of 67 million and a global population of over 2 billion. Millennials, or those born between 1981 and 1996, make up 72 million in the U.S. and represent the largest share of the workforce. While Millennials' purchasing power is significant, having reached their peak earnings and spending years estimated to reach $3.4 trillion by 2025, Gen Z's purchasing power will grow more rapidly. It is currently estimated that Gen Z has approximately $360 billion in direct purchasing power, and by 2025, this amount is expected to more than double to over $750 billion. By 2035, Gen Z will make up one-third of global spending power. In terms of sustainability, a 2023 study found that 54% of Gen Z is willing to pay 10% more on sustainable products and services, compared with 50% of Millennials and 23% of Baby Boomers. Although Gen Z does not hold the largest generational spending power today, their habits and proclivity toward sustainable practices, products, and ethical messaging will dramatically shift the marketplace well into the 2030's and beyond.

Out with the old and in with the new. That’s the theme when the year turns over. For 2024, people are taking their lists of what’s “in” and what’s “out” to social media — maybe you’ve seen them floating around your feed. Today we’re making a list of our own: what’s “in” and “out” when it comes to the economy. Sean Snaith has his personal list of what’s in and out this year. At the top of what’s in? A goal we all know well: He wants to exercise more. “This is a form of shaming on a national scale. Perhaps that will make me go to the gym,” he said. That’s one of his promises to himself for 2024. But Snaith, who directs the Institute for Economic Forecasting at the University of Central Florida, said his economic in and out list is more about predictions. And he thinks this year looks a little clearer. “The widespread belief that the U.S. economy is heading into a recession seems to be out,” he said. That out depends on some other ins and outs. For example, Snaith said high levels of consumer spending? Out. What’s also out? “Workers having the strong upper hand over employers,” he said.

The members of The Leatherback Project are nursing warm Cokes and thin coffee at a military base on the edge of Panama City. Nearby, four Panamanian air force mechanics are silhouettes against a sunlit green backdrop of jungle as they huddle around a tiny camouflage-painted Cessna. It is unclear when the little plane last flew, but it is definitely not ready for takeoff. The team’s departure hour on that plane has been a moving target all morning, and now it’s creeping into afternoon. The founder of the Leatherback Project, Callie Veelenturf, doesn’t mind the delay. A marine biologist with wide-set hazel eyes and long reddish hair in a tight braid, she always looks vulnerable and much younger than her age of 31, and today she is a whiter shade of pale. “I just threw up,” she says, rather merrily, as she arrives. “I’m always airsick and boatsick, now. I feel like that all the time.” After she’d earned a degree in marine biology from the University of Rhode Island, she began working with leatherback turtles on the shores of Equatorial Guinea, on a project for a master’s degree in biology. She is now a PhD student in turtle conservation at the University of Central Florida.

Acknowledging what you're grateful for is about more than just appreciating life; it's about maintaining your mental and physical health and being a better human to yourself and others. But being grateful isn’t always easy (especially when you’re having a rough go of it). One easy way to keep our inner naysayer at bay: gratitude journaling. Beyond the personal benefits, says Wong, “people who engage in gratitude journaling were, to put it bluntly, less likely to be jerks,” citing a workplace study done by the University of Central Florida published in 2021. “People who are grateful tend to be more altruistic, more friendly, connect better with other people.”

This April, when a 1,000-year storm drenched South Florida, my father and older sister were among the thousands of people abruptly hit with severe flash flooding. They made it out physically unscathed, but many of their possessions were reduced to waterlogged piles of debris. Among those ruined mementos were sets of baby clothes, which my sister had painstakingly preserved for the future but forgotten during the rush of the flood. People living in hurricane or earthquake zones have long been taught to be ready for the worst, but these new threats make “all hazards” preparedness that much more important for everyone, no matter your location. Emergency-management guidelines in the United States already include recommendations for every household to keep a supply kit on standby, with a more compact version that can be mobilized in case of evacuation. Both should contain emergency medications, copies of identity documents, food, water, and other essentials. Most of the advice about preparing for an extreme-weather-related calamity is extremely practical, for good reason. “First and foremost, we need to safeguard our lives,” Fernando Rivera, a professor at the University of Central Florida who studies the sociology of disasters, told me.

The University of Central Florida's research spending has continued to grow. The Orlando-based university spent $221.49 million on research and development during fiscal 2022, which ranked at No. 122 in the country. The college has grown its spending from $117.99 million in fiscal-year 2010 to a peak of $225.09 million in fiscal 2019, before a slight drop during the Covid-19 pandemic. UCF ranked No. 1 in the state for computer and information sciences spending and No. 2 for engineering. President Alexander Cartwright previously stated his vision for UCF to become a top 50 research university in the nation.

“Do your own research” is a popular tagline among fringe groups and ideological extremists. Noted conspiracy theorist Milton William Cooper first ushered this rallying cry into the mainstream in the 1990s through his radio show, where he discussed schemes involving things such as the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, an Illuminati cabal and alien life. Cooper died in 2001, but his legacy lives on. For one experiment, the study authors also tracked participants’ search terms and the links provided on the first page of the results of a Google query. They found that more than a third of respondents were exposed to misinformation when they searched for more detail on misleading or false articles. And often respondents’ search terms contributed to those troubling results: Participants used the headline or URL of a misleading article in about one in 10 verification attempts. In those cases, misinformation beyond the original article showed up in results more than half the time. “I was surprised by how many people were using this kind of naive search strategy,” says the study’s lead author Kevin Aslett, an assistant professor of computational social science at the University of Central Florida. “It’s really concerning to me.”