UCF in the News

Though conference realignment is usually a complicated process involving everything from population and politics to doctoral degrees and bowl wins, there’s a simple explanation why UCF was promoted and USF wasn’t. It’s not academics. Both are top-tier research universities. It’s not all-around athletics. Both have comparable success in non-revenue sports. It’s not enrollment, market size or location. Both are massive schools in top-20 TV markets in one of the nation’s four biggest recruiting states. It’s football. Then-Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby admitted as much in September 2021 when he said his league wanted schools “we felt would move the needle for us in football first.” Bill Sutton noticed other, everyday changes as the associate director of UCF’s sports management program. He rarely, if ever, saw Knights gear around campus before the stadium, then saw the number of UCF shirts and hats balloon. “It was like an unbelievable transformation,” said Sutton, who later directed USF’s Vinik Sport and Entertainment Management Program and led two Bulls athletic director searches. “I had never seen anything like it.” The fan base swelled. UCF football’s combined following on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and TikTok exceeds 504,000. That’s almost double USF’s following (256,000) and larger than at least three Big 12 incumbents (Baylor, Kansas and Iowa State). Twenty-six UCF games have drawn at least 1 million TV viewers since 2018, according to the website Sports Media Watch. Half topped 2 million. USF has had only seven games hit the 1 million mark with none over 2 million. That matters. One of the reasons UCF appealed to the Big 12 was its “region that is rich in fans,” Texas Tech president Lawrence Schovanec (a former Big 12 board chairperson) said in 2021. Those fans have been energized, in part, by 16 years of on-campus football — 16 more years than the Bulls have.

n two previous articles, Lunar Orbital Congestion Is Gonna Be A Thing and Lunar Orbital Congestion II: Economic and Strategic Drivers, I suggested that orbital congestion and debris will be a challenge around the Moon sooner than expected. To summarize: interest in lunar development is hot, getting to the Moon is getting cheaper, and special factors involving the Earth-Moon system and lunar gravitational anomalies render a very few orbits as high-value real estate which will be quickly snapped up by smart competitors exercising first mover advantage. Just as importantly, tracking assets around the Moon is much more difficult than it is with Earth’s vast collection of satellites and space debris. Nobody really has a good idea of how many objects are orbiting the Moon today. For instance, India’s Chandrayaan-1 was lost back in 2009 and finally found in lunar orbit eight years later by Earth-based radar. A recent paper by Dr. Phil Metzger of the University of Central Florida and James G. Mantovani of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center suggests that particles ejected at very shallow angles under rocket plumes may wind up in space above the Moon. So, why should we care about dust out in cislunar space?

n another market, two competing health systems likely wouldn't collaborate on an issue like a nursing shortage. But here, collaboration beat out competitiveness, said Alexander Cartwright, president of the University of Central Florida — the Orlando-based public research university. Central Florida’s nonprofit health care giants AdventHealth and Orlando Health each contributed $5 million to UCF to become two of its inaugural “Pegasus Partners.” The new partnerships fully fund the balance of the construction cost of UCF’s new 90,000-square-foot, $68 million-plus College of Nursing building at its Lake Nona campus in southeast Orlando, which will help turn out more nurses than ever.

According to those who study tourism, after disasters like the OceanGate deaths, interest often grows. "It will probably make it even more attractive. People are attracted by danger, people are attracted by extreme forms of tourism of all shapes and forms. Will this stop people going down? No, it will probably attract even more people now," said Alan Fyall, associate dean of Academic Affairs and the Visit Orlando Endowed Chair of Tourism Marketing at UCF's Rosen College of Hospitality Management. "In this particular case, I think they understand the risk, because you're going down deep, deep into the ocean. So I can't believe they don't really appreciate the risk they're going into."

Thrill-seekers don't travel to the bottom of the ocean or to the top of a mountain because it's the safe thing to do. But even by adventure travel standards, the now-missing OceanGate Titan submersible was surrounded by extreme danger. The experimental vessel took tourists to the crushing depths of the ocean. And while OceanGate CEO Stockton Rush − who is on board the missing vessel − maintained the craft was safe, even "pretty much invulnerable," he did not seek to hide that the vessel skirted established norms as it catered to wealthy thrill seekers. People know they're taking their life in their hands when they engage in these extreme experiences but it doesn't stop them, said Alan Fyall, chair of tourism marketing at the University of Central Florida. “It's just really, really unfortunate and horrible situation, but it won't stop people from going down. It will probably encourage even more people to go down. That's the irony," he said.

There’s more than one Independence Day in the United States. On June 19, 1865, over two and a half years after the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation, enslaved African Americans in Texas were told they were free. Today, Juneteenth is all about celebrating Black culture, history, and life, bringing people together to honor all those who came before us and fought for the rights and privileges we hold today. “It’s important, especially today, but it was important in the past because you’re talking about a group of people who were in a society, but they were not of the society because they were enslaved,” said Kibibi Mack-Shelton, a Professor of African American Studies at the University of Central Florida.

Cislune, a technology lab working to accelerate the timeline of placing humanity back on the Moon, took home four big wins this year in the form of NASA contracts when the space agency announced the winners of Phase I of its 2023 Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) program on June 5. And for the STTR grants, the first, which was created in collaboration with the University of Central Florida Board of Trustees, is called “refuse-to-get-stuck rovers,” suggesting that lunar rovers must be able to drive quicker and more autonomously.

In the bowels of a Laotian cave, illuminated by faint sunlight and bright lamps, scientists have unearthed the earliest known evidence of our human ancestors making their way through mainland Southeast Asia en route to Australia some 86,000 years ago. Any trace of human remains is a delight for archaeologists – but none more so when they dust off a discovery, date it, and realize it could push back timelines of early human migration in an area by more than ten thousand years. For this new study, the team led by biological anthropologist Sarah Freidline of the University of Central Florida, turned to luminescence dating and other techniques to get an age estimate of the sediments surrounding the newly discovered fossils, the deepest of which was found at nearly 7 meters (23 feet).

Orlando-based Capacitech Energy Inc. is an Orlando Inno 2023 Fire Awards honoree. The firm ranked No. 1 in the Not Just Lucky category, companies that are 7-8 years old. The firm created a revolutionary product: a power cord that also stores energy to make batteries and renewables better. "When we are working on projects with customers, we generally start by understanding their needs and technical requirements," said CEO Joe Sleppy. What’s one big challenge your firm’s rapid growth has created? It has led to larger projects, bigger budgets and greater operating complexities. We are overcoming those through world-class partnerships with companies like Genesis Research & Development and New World Angels. We are at the UCF Business Incubation Program at Central Florida Research Park, which gives us access to engineering talent and lab infrastructure.