UCF in the News

The 2024 U.S. election is heightening stress across the country, affecting more than 7 out of 10 adults, regardless of political affiliation. Surveys show that 82 percent of people’s opinions are based on inaccurate information, and 64 percent feel their rights are under threat. The relentless nature of social media, with its constant flow of election-related content, has increased passive consumption of social issues and elevated anxiety, particularly in our youth. In the face of rising political tensions and societal challenges, more than half of youth and young adults in the U.S. are feeling pessimistic about their future. Some experience a “pre-election mental health crisis,” marked by sleep issues, worsening depression, catastrophic thoughts about the future, and even hallucinations. This distress in our youth often stems from an acute awareness of societal forces shaping their lives, coupled with a sense of powerlessness to influence change. How can we support our youth through these challenges?

Food Insecurity on Campus: The UCF Knights football team will host undefeated Brigham Young University on Saturday. BYU Cougars fans are putting a twist on their game day tailgating. They’re bringing clothes, canned goods, and other critical supplies to their tailgate area at Carillon Elementary School in Oviedo. BYU Alumni Chapter Chair for Orlando Christian Rasband joins Engage to tell us how the Cougs Care program will support UCF students and the Knights Helping Knights Pantry this weekend. The Knights Helping Knights Pantry was created by UCF students who wanted to help their classmates struggling to access or afford essential items like food, clothes, or personal hygiene products. UCF senior Chloe Milliron started volunteering with the Knights Helping Knights Pantry as a freshman and is now the manager of the student-run organization. She joins Engage to discuss the resource to combat food insecurity on campus.

With hypersonic travel, people can fly from New York to London in less than 15 minutes or explore space — and the University of Central Florida wants a piece of the action. The school launched a new center to study the technology for hypersonic travel — which is up to 17 times the speed of sound or 13,000 mph. UCF President Alexander Cartwright celebrated this week’s opening of the Center of Excellence in Hypersonic and Space Propulsion — or the HyperSpace Center — in the Central Florida Research Park by the main campus. “What we create here and across UCF will define the aerospace and defense industries for generations,” Cartwright said in front of U.S. Reps. Darren Soto and Daniel Webster and State Rep. Susan Plasencia as well as other officials. At the new center, UCF faculty, graduate students and undergraduates will be working to develop the technology fueling hypersonic travel. The school has received millions of dollars in U.S. Department of Defense grants.

Navigating the Dark Side of the Moon America is looking to return to the moon – it’s been more than fifty years since the last Apollo mission and the Artemis program has set a goal of putting people back on the lunar surface by 2026. The mission is focused on the moon’s south pole, where there is believed to be a presence of ice. Because this is an relatively unexplored region, NASA has initiated a challenge to professional and citizen scientists – devise a navigation and mapping system to help astronauts orient their way to and from a lunar lander without getting lost. This may seem like a simple concept in 2024, but remember – this is the moon: no GPS, no compasses, no Google Maps or Waze. The prospect of getting lost on the lunar surface is terrifying so we asked Dr. Addie Dove, a planetary scientist and associate professor in the Department of Physics at UCF to set us at ease.

As office manager of an Indiana recruiting firm, Jolene Rosario enjoyed the predictable nature of her weekly duties – handling payroll and workers’ compensation insurance, paying invoices and answering employment questions from state agencies. Several months ago, her boss asked her to also take on the responsibilities of front-office coordinator after a colleague was laid off because of declining revenue at the firm, called Express Employment Professionals. That meant responding to in-person visitors (from the UPS delivery person to job applicants), interviewing job candidates, onboarding new employees, sometimes answering phone calls and more. Some experts also worry about burnout, which was widespread when many Americans left the labor force in the early days of the pandemic, leaving colleagues with bigger workloads. "When your work increases beyond the point where you have the resources to succeed and successfully do the work...you do get burnout, fatigue and workers looking for other jobs," said Mindy Shoss, a professor of industrial and organizational psychology at the University of Central Florida. "It's a well-being crisis, it's a public health crisis and it's an economic crisis." Such a scenario harms both workers and their employers, she said. At the same time, she said, if workers are given the tools to do their jobs, increasing their skills and responsibilities can help them advance in their careers.

On Episode 133 of This Week In Space, Rod Pyle and Tariq Malik talk with Greg Autry on the progress of the Artemis moon program, space science, and the challenges posed by a fast-rising Chinese space program. Dr. Autry is the Associate Provost for Space Commercialization and Strategy at the University of Central Florida, visiting Professor at Imperial College London, former NASA transition team member, and author of "Red Moon Rising." We'll also highlight the recent launch of SpaceX's Starship and the amazing catch of the booster by the Mechazilla Launch tower, Michael Bloomberg's recent article condemning the slow progress of the Artemis program, and this weekend's Orionids meteor shower!

Mandatory evacuations along Florida's west coast are underway as Hurricane Milton churns toward the state and could make landfall as one of the most devastating hurricanes to hit the area in over a century. "Milton has the potential to be one of the most destructive hurricanes on record for west-central Florida,” the National Hurricane Center said on Wednesday. "The wide continental shelf with shallow water allows storms like Helene and Milton to create very large storm surges," Thomas Wahl, an associate professor of civil engineering at the University of Central Florida who studies flood-prone areas, tells NPR. Excessive rainfall and elevated river discharge can combine with storm surge to create what's known as compound flooding, Wahl says. Excessive rainfall and elevated river discharge can combine with storm surge to create what's known as compound flooding, Wahl says.

Millions of Americans are still struggling to find their bearings after Hurricane Helene made landfall last week, killing at least 230 people across six states, washing away homes, and leaving thousands without clean water or electricity for days across the southeastern United States. Given that there are so many variables in natural disasters and the communities they afflict, how do you gauge whether your government is doing a good job against a force of nature? And when things go sideways, when should you blame your mayor, your governor, or your president? I posed these questions to Claire Connolly Knox, who founded the Emergency and Crisis Management program at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. She spoke to me from her home in Florida where she was making preparations for Milton’s arrival. There are a number of things. This is going to be one for the record books. One is that it highlights that so much of the conversation focuses on disasters, hurricanes specifically, and the immediately impacted area. Everyone was really concerned about Florida and the Big Bend and Tallahassee, and rightly so, because everyone primarily looks at where the eye of the storm is going and then looking at those initial brunt forces and the impacts. . I think what this hurricane is teaching us is that there’s so much more to hurricanes that we sometimes forget: That’s the rain. That’s the storm surge. That is the spin-off tornadoes. Those cascading impacts we frequently do not focus on. With the Helene system going into North Carolina, the amount of rain that fell is very reminiscent of Hurricane Harvey with the amount of devastation and the flooding that took place.

Hurricane Milton is hurtling toward the western coast of Florida, and thousands of people are fleeing their homes for inland counties—or even other states. Fifteen counties, which include the populous Tampa Bay area, have issued mandatory evacuation orders for those living in high-risk storm surge and flood zones. Traffic has been massively congested, and some gas stations report running out of fuel. The Category 4 storm is approaching on the heels of Hurricane Helene, which struck Florida and ripped through five more states two weeks ago, killing more than 200 people. Many people, still trying to recover their lives amid the aftermath, are now bracing for this new system—which may bring storm surges twice as high to the Tampa Bay area. “Our ground is completely saturated,” says Claire Knox, a professor and director of the Master of Emergency and Crisis Management program at the University of Central Florida, “and now you’re having this massive system that’s going to bring anywhere from eight to 12 feet of storm surge on the west coast [of Florida], probably about five to seven on the [state’s] east coast.” What factors are considered for hurricane evacuation orders? KNOX: There are a lot of things in play. FEMA [the Federal Emergency Management Agency], in partnership with two other agencies, has a tool called HURREVAC in which emergency responders can look at nearby hazards, potential evacuation zones, different scenarios, different categories of the hurricane, anticipated time of landfall. All those go into play, and the tool will help make assessments: What's your clearance time? How many hours is it going to take to evacuate different [storm surge and flood] zones, different populations? You want to get your more socially vulnerable, your coastal areas, individuals in mobile homes and camp sites out first.