UCF in the News

It's a first for the police department at the University of Central Florida: a full-time, in-house mental health counselor to assist officers when they're dealing with students in crisis. Delaney Kirwin, a mental health clinician and licensed clinical social worker, was hired by the police department in part because of her prior experience with the Orange County Sheriff's Office in its Behavior Response Unit. Kirwin said clinicians working alongside police is the future of law enforcement. Mental health counselors don’t go to school to learn how to ride around with a police officer responding to calls, so when a counselor joins a police department for that purpose there is a learning curve. But Kirwin already learned what it’s like in her 2 years at the sheriff’s office. “That experience provided me with a framework of how law enforcement responds to mental health calls,” Kirwin said. “Having this collaboration with mental health, it’s not in any way taking away from the importance of what law enforcement does, it’s very much working together and helping each other and being a resource,” Kirwin said.

The University of Central Florida (UCF) announced this week that it is partnering with SkillStorm to expand access to high-demand, industry-recognized technology credentials. UCF was asked to join a consortium of colleges and companies in launching Upskill Together, a SkillStorm effort. Upskill Together intends to address the IT industry’s problem in attracting and training job seekers with the necessary skills. Through the partnership, UCF students are able to take courses that lead to credentials from the country’s largest IT businesses, including AWS, Salesforce, CompTIA, and Pega. The initiative will provide online, instructor-led training for learners at UCF and other partner universities to earn credentials for in-demand fields like cloud computing, salesforce, and automation. “Unleashing the potential of all learners in our community is core to our mission at UCF,” says Thomas Cavanagh, vice provost for Digital Learning at UCF. “Upskill Together will help UCF enhance our ability to provide the training and skills that prepare learners to succeed while creating opportunity and upward mobility.”

Kids might think they know everything about vampires and witches thanks to movies and TV—but their favourite Halloween costume is likely rooted in much older global history. And learning a little more about the culture behind the character can be an added treat this Halloween. Halloween itself is rooted in the ancient pagan Celtic festival of Samhain, when folks lit bonfires and likely wore animal skins to confuse the spirits thought to be walking the Earth that night. People also were thought to have left food and drink outside as an offering to these supernatural beings. The Celts’ descendants were believed to have gone from house to house performing songs or dances in exchange for food and drink, says Natalie Underberg-Goode professor of digital media and folklore at the University of Central Florida. And though the modern Halloween costumes that most kids know today—vampires, werewolves, zombies, witches—come primarily from movies, “each of them has a connection to folklore,” Underberg-Goode says. Here are some traditional Halloween ghouls your kids might be dressing up as, and the spooky-but-true history behind them.

NASA is sponsoring research proposals from three university-based teams over the course of the next year to examine the economic, social, and regulatory concerns related to space sustainability as part of its efforts to address orbital debris. Human-made objects orbiting Earth that no longer serve a purpose are considered orbital debris. Such “space junk” includes mission-related and fragmentation debris, abandoned rocket stages, and nonfunctional spacecraft. “Communication and Space Debris: Connecting with Public Knowledges and Identities,” submitted by Patrice Kohl, Sergio Alvarez, and Philip Metzger of the University of Central Florida.

Just when we thought we had COVID-19 beat, it comes right back with a different strain and different symptoms. "The reality is that we are learning to live with COVID," said Ben D. Sawyer, the director of LabX at the University of Central Florida. For the past two years, scientists have been using data and computers to predict where the virus will spread next and how many people may get sick. Now, scientists are testing a new method of forecasting COVID that could help cities prepare information that is localized, much like a daily weather forecast.

With so much strife in the world, it’s time to celebrate something good — the people who work tirelessly to make the community we all call home a better place to live. The idea of this annual feature is to spotlight those who don’t normally make headlines but who definitely make a difference. Readers nominated close to 200 people for this year. That says a lot about about how much good we have going on. One of those people is Maya Tolentino, a UCF police officer. Most police officers are brave public servants. But Maya Tolentino has repeatedly gone above and beyond the call of duty. She spends her own time volunteering with nonprofits that help underprivileged kids learn to do everything from tell stories to start businesses. Yet she’s also a leader within the department. When UCF needed a chaplain for its stress-management response team, Tolentino went to school to get her degree. She was honored for her crisis-response work a few years ago after answering a call involving a potentially suicidal student — one who would later say Tolentino’s team helped save his life.

While working on camera targeting for an Apache helicopter during his internship with Lockheed Martin, Alex Ward discovered that at minus-40 degrees Celsius the camera was not meeting a prescribed time requirement for it to properly focus at that temperature. Ward, who participated in the UCF Lockheed Martin College Work Experience Program, went to work on testing a drive screw fixture and putting it through all the necessary system checks to achieve the desired result.

For breast cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy, bone damage is a common and painful side effect. New research by University of Central Florida faculty finds nanoparticles could help cancer patients undergoing radiation therapy reduce their risk of bone damage. UCF professor of medicine, Melanie Coathup, said radiation makes bones brittle, and women are more susceptible. “It becomes weaker, it becomes more fragile and more likely to fracture,” she said. “In breast cancer patients, for example, that can increase the likelihood of long-traumatic rib fractures.” The researchers designed a cerium oxide nanoparticle and treated animals with it. “When we gave … nanoparticles, the bone maintained its strength, it maintained its air, we didn’t get this loss of bone,” she said.

Experts say that roads submerged under flood waters for days and weeks following Hurricane Ian may have lasting damage. Carolina Faircloth, the Homeowners Association president for University Acres, says more than half of the homes in her community were destroyed by flooding. On top of that, after days of flooding, she said she noticed new cracking on the streets once the waters receded. “These cracks — we started noticing them once the water started receding and they have not been here before,” said Faircloth. “So we are getting concerned about the integrity of the roads now.” University of Central Florida professor of civil engineering Manoj Chopra visited the area with Spectrum News to check out the roads in University Acres. “Under this asphalt there is soil — that’s the soil bed and if it gets weaker, from flowing water over it or standing water, it’s possible it’s much weaker, and over time we may see more and more cracking,” said Chopra.