UCF in the News

Since the 1960s engineers around the world have been fiddling with a novel type of jet called a rotating detonation engine (RDE), but it has never got beyond the experimental stage. That could be about to change. GE Aerospace, one of the world’s biggest producers of jet engines, recently announced it was developing a working version. Earlier this year America’s Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency awarded a $29m contract to Raytheon, part of RTX, another big aerospace group, to develop an RDE called Gambit. Both engines would be used to propel missiles, overcoming the range and speed limitations of current propulsion systems, including rockets and existing types of jet engines. However, if the companies are successful in getting them to work, RDEs might have a much broader role in aviation—including the possibility of helping revive supersonic air travel. In a nutshell, an RDE “replaces fire with a controlled explosion”, explains Kareem Ahmed, an expert in advanced aerospace engines at the University of Central Florida. In technical terms, this is because a jet engine relies on the combustion of oxygen and fuel, which is a subsonic reaction that scientists call deflagration. Detonation, by comparison, is a high-energy explosion that takes place at supersonic speeds. As a result it is a more powerful and potentially a more efficient way of producing thrust, the force that drives an aircraft forward.

Universal Studios said they are looking into the possibility of building a theme park in the United Kingdom after purchasing a 480-acre parcel of land near Bedford, England. The land was purchased by Universal’s parent company, Comcast Corporation, in August for $271 million, a company spokesperson confirmed. It will take several months before a decision on further plans for the land, the company said. Peter Weishar, director of themed experience programs at the University of Central Florida, said the Bedford location is ideal for a theme park because of its proximity to London and to a large base of theme park-goers. “If they were to create a theme park there, it would be an amazing spot right in a travel hub next to a large population center that’s already a huge fan of their product,” he said. Theme-park enthusiasts ready to book a flight to the U.K. for the new Universal resort will need to be patient; building a theme park takes years. Weishar said a rush job would take three years. Universal announced in 2019 that it would be opening its Epic Universe park in Orlando in 2023, but it’s now delayed until 2025. “It’s going to be many years before we see what they’re planning on doing come to fruition,” he said. “They’re using newer technologies and new ways of entertainment. So everything becomes custom, and that takes awhile to design and build.”

Blue Origin delayed the return to flight of its New Shepard suborbital vehicle by one day as the company’s founder says he will push the company to move more quickly on its various projects. Blue Origin had scheduled a launch of its New Shepard vehicle from its West Texas test site for Dec. 18. However, the company first delayed the launch by an hour, citing cold conditions at the launch site, then scrubbed the launch because of an unspecified ground system issue. Blue Origin said NS-24 will carry 33 research payloads as well as 38,000 postcards from Club for the Future, a nonprofit organization affiliated with the company. No people will be on board. The company did not list the payloads but said that more than half “are developed and flown with support from NASA.” Danielle McCulloch, manager of NASA’s Flight Opportunities program at the Armstrong Flight Research Center, provided SpaceNews with a list of payloads NASA is supporting on NS-24. Many of them also flew on NS-23 last year. Among them: An experiment from the University of Central Florida in Orlando to apply electric fields to a dust simulant (on NS-23).

Rashe Malcolm loves her son Wayne and his girlfriend, but she’d also love it if they could move out of the three-bedroom home in Athens, Ga., that she shares with the couple, both 23, as well as her husband and two of her three other children. But the rent is too high for anyone to go anywhere, at least locally. “If you go to these newer units, I mean if you can get one for $1,800, that’s considered cheap,” said Ms. Malcolm, 48. “For a one-bedroom — a one-bedroom. It’s like $2,100 on average.” Life in Athens, a city of about 127,000 residents, is centered around its largest employer: the flagship campus of the University of Georgia, which enrolls more than 40,000 students and employs about 10,000 people. Like many U.S. cities, it has seen rents rise over the past few years, even as developers have added new units to the market. “College athletics, in particular college football, have become so enormous in this country, particularly in the Southeast, that it has caused this phenomenon of short-term rentals,” said Adrien Bouchet, director of the DeVos Sport Business Management Program at the University of Central Florida. “On one hand it creates value, but on the other hand, it definitely hurts people that have lived in and around the university for a long time.” Mr. Bouchet pointed to similar market trends in Southern college towns like Auburn, Ala., Tuscaloosa, Ala., Gainesville, Fla., and Oxford, Miss., where football rules the economy during the fall. "They have very wealthy alumni that have no problems buying second houses, whether that's for their kids to go there or whether that's just for them to have a good time seven or eight weekends a year," Mr. Bouchet said. "And that's caused the prices of these houses to go through the roof and push people out of these neighborhoods."

Playing roles from an evil king to a steadfast stage manager, here are the 2023 Orlando Sentinel honorees for best featured actor in a comedy, as selected by theater critic Matthew J. Palm. In “Chicken & Biscuits,” Dominique Marshall had the showiest role as flask-sipping, cigarette-sneaking Beverly, and she more than rose to the occasion, with a devilish glint in her eye. But under Beverly’s bold exterior, Marshall showed us the character’s heart, too.

It’s been a good year for guaranteed admission policies. In September, the University of Tennessee at Knoxville announced it would guarantee admission to the top 10 percent of the state’s high school graduates. Later that month, a coalition of 10 Michigan universities promised to guarantee admission to students who met a 3.0 GPA eligibility threshold. Virginia Commonwealth University adopted its own top 10 percent plan in October. Such policies are not new; Texas implemented the first top 10 percent admission plan in 1997, in response to a state ban on affirmative action resulting from the 1996 Hopwood v. Texas case. Even before the Supreme Court’s affirmative action ban this summer triggered a new wave of concern over accessibility and equity, guaranteed admission was lauded for boosting applications from low-income students to selective institutions and improving access at four-year universities. Other states have seen similar success with clear, guaranteed transfer pathways. The University of Central Florida’s DirectConnect initiative is a major enrollment driver: in 2019, nearly one-third of new UCF undergraduates were DirectConnect transfer students from the six community colleges that participate in the program.

Dick Nunis was most well-known for being Walt Disney’s right-hand man in the early days when he was building his theme-park empire, but he also is known for bringing some of ol’ Walt’s famous imagination to UCF athletics. Nunis, who passed away earlier this week at 91, was a visionary in his own right and one of the handful of big-money UCF donors whose financial contributions and innovative thinking helped keep UCF athletics functioning and moving forward during a four-decade journey from rag-tag Division III outfit to the thriving Big 12 program of today. Just as Walt Disney envisioned 43 square miles of Florida swampland as a kaleidoscopic, magical place where dreams could come true, Nunis and others saw UCF’s expansive campus as a virgin landscape where bigtime college athletics could thrive.

The National Football League continues to make incremental, widespread progress in its diversity hiring practices, according to an annual report. Thursday's report card from The Institute for Diversity and Ethics in Sport at University of Central Florida gave the NFL an overall grade of B-plus, which is the highest mark for the league since the study began in 1988. The league received a B-plus mark for racial hiring and a B for gender hiring. There are still a few areas of concern — particularly in the ownership ranks — but TIDES director Adrien Bouchet said Thursday that the report is largely good news. “It’s the most positive NFL report since we started doing them,” Bouchet said. “The league has made major strides over the past decade, and particularly the past few years.”