UCF in the News

During the COVID-19 pandemic, the University of Central Florida opened an on-campus food pantry to help students struggling to eat. Now, workers at the pantry say they’re helping in record numbers because of rising inflation. Lincy Antoine says she relied on the food pantry as a freshman. Antoine says she was so impressed with their services, she became a volunteer herself. “It’s just an amazing resource,” Antoine said. The pantry relies primarily on volunteers and donations, so they’re asking the community for help. “We want to help as many students as possible,” Knights Pantry Assistant Manager Nicholas Aixala said. “So definitely, we want to spread the word that the pantry’s here and ready to help.

As Florida schools work diligently to fulfill thousands of teacher vacancies across the state, Orange County Public Schools had a "signing day" Wednesday for future teachers, reminiscent of the athletic Signing Day. It’s all about teacher recruitment. Wednesday’s Teacher Quality Partnership is a partnership with Orange County Public Schools and the University of Central Florida. The mission is to recruit, prepare and retain teachers.

University of Central Florida Biomedical Science Major Alexis Holmes says her new service dog, Eada, has become a key part of her journey as a college student. The Black Lab comes from a funded organization called Step at UCF. It pairs UCF students like Holmes up with a service dog totally free of charge to help them navigate campus.

Researchers say they are making progress toward discovering why about half of the green sea turtles in the Indian River Lagoon are covered with tumors. The tumors can grow inside and outside of the sea turtles’ bodies, obstructing internal organs and affecting eyesight and mobility. A new University of Central Florida study zeroes in on how genetics might affect the turtles’ immune systems. Researcher Katie Martin says that could help identify more vulnerable turtles. “That might be a population or an area where we say, OK, we need more environmental protection for these individuals, or we need to monitor them more closely because it’s possible they are more susceptible to disease.”

For eight years, the University of Central Florida’s Limbitless Solutions has been on the cutting edge of outfitting children who have lost limbs with new 3-D printed bionic prosthetics that revolutionize their lives. Now, the organization is reaching for the next level of that mission, partnering with children’s hospitals to research the effect of these devices on young patients’ brains. “The idea for this study came about several years ago and we proposed it to the hospital after presenting it at a conference,” said Albert Manero, president of Limbitless Solutions. “They were so receptive to being able to do this type of work, and it really is a cutting edge look at the brain and how it evolves from using prosthetics.”

Central Florida is one of the leading places where people with communications disorders can get treatment. WFTV takes a tour of UCF’s Aphasia House, one of the top treatment centers in the country. Amy Engelhoven is the director of the Aphasia House, which is part of the University’s Communication Disorders Clinic.

How does space travel affect the human body? A team of doctors from the University of Central Florida's College of Medicine is working to find those answers when the first four civilians travel to the International Space Station on Friday. Axiom and SpaceX's first all-private crew will be part of a study that's looking into how a trip into orbit affects your eyes and your brain. "Depending on what we're able to see even on this first mission, it might influence change in terms of what NASA does for pre- and post-astronaut travel to see the things that they screen for and look for," ophthalmologist and assistant professor of medicine at UCF Dr. Mehul Patel said.

Swarming across an archaeological pit, University of Central Florida students wielding hand tools are carefully unearthing a long-hidden Ais Native American gathering place near the Banana River — where prehistoric stone spear points date back to 6,000 years old. "We've found lots of these shell clusters that were in these very centralized kind of pockets, that almost look like (they) would have been maybe an eating area," said Amanda Groff, UCF senior lecturer of anthropology, standing at the dig site at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station.

The Small Business Institute, the premier provider of professional development for those engaged in experiential student team consulting and related entrepreneurship education, research and activities and the link between business, education and community, recently announced that a student team from the University of Central Florida’s College of Business Administration and College of Engineering was a winner in its annual Experiential Learning Project of the Year competition, taking 1st Place in the 2021-22 ‘Graduate Comprehensive’ category.