Pegasus Magazine Spring 2020

PEGASUS The Magazine of the University of Central Florida

MODELS FOR SUCCESS Patient-specific 3D models printed at UCF are helping surgeons at Nemours Children’s Hospital save lives.

SPRING 2020

F O O D I S LOV E The human experience is meant to be shared, and the most enriching, soulful and unifying moments in life can happen gathered around a table while breaking bread together, as these nearly 500 students can attest to after attending the fourth annual Gather Luncheon on Memory Mall in early February.

Seeing double — or quadruple?

This composite image shows how busy Knightro was while socializing with students at the event.

Inbox

PEGASUS

VO L U M E 2 6 • I S S U E 2 • S P R I N G 2 0 2 0

THANKS FOR THE ARTICLE “LIFE AFTER HATE” (Fall 2019). In our current society, where we have so much polarization, what Ms. King did to change her life should be an inspiration to all who will not open their minds to others of different thinking, starting with an unprejudiced dialogue.

» TIM ACKERT ’70

THANK YOU FOR SHARING THIS INSPIRING STORY (“Life After Hate”). Such a courageous woman. I, too, have seen the power of a kind word or gesture to another. It can be transformative. I am paying it forward through The Dignity Institute. Proud to be a UCF alum.

» MICHELE SIMOS ’80

FACEBOOK University of Central Florida November 3, 2019

The sounds of campus Since 1980, the UCF Marching Knights have been a major force at the university. Now in their 40th season, the 375 current members have more to be proud of than ever.

Learn more about the Marching Knights http://bit.ly/UCF-marching-knights

Pegasus is published by UCF Marketing in partnership with the UCF Foundation, Inc. and UCF Alumni.

821 Reactions 97 Comments 476 Shares

Absolutely love the MKs! ’96 – ’02! Amazing memories, friendships, family, and like many others, I met my spouse there!

Angie Carter Preston Thank you so much to all the Marching Knights for all of your hard work.

I just love to listen to you during the game. You all are amazing and make the game experience so much more fun!!

Opinions expressed in Pegasus are not necessarily those shared by the University of Central Florida.

4 | SPRING 2020

Email:

ASSISTANT CREATIVE DIRECTOR Lauren (Haar) Waters ’06 STAFF WRITERS Bree (Adamson) Watson ’04 Nicole Dudenhoefer ’17 Gene Kruckemyer ’73 Jenna Marina Lee ART DIRECTOR Steve Webb DESIGNERS Mario Carrillo Janeza Dino

PRODUCTION MANAGER Sandy Pouliot

Reneé Cartee

Editor’s Response: Great question! We reached out to the team at Lockheed, and here’s what they had to say: “In general, there are two major classifications of exoskeletons: medical and nonmedical. Medical exoskeletons focus on restoring natural strength and mobility. Nonmedical exoskeletons are focused on enhancing natural strength and mobility. While Onyx is a nonmedical exoskeleton, there are myriad medical exoskeletons in various stages of development and production that could be used to address your concern.”

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Ron Boucher ’92

MULTIMEDIA Thomas Bell ’08 Kim Go Jasmine Kettenacker Nick Leyva ’15

» MICHAEL ARGENTO ’71

» ROBERT DEWOODY ’72

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Laura J. Cole

COPY EDITOR Peg Martin

I THINK YOUR RECAP OF THE LAST 25 YEARS OF Pegasus magazine was very good (“Why We Started Pegasus,” Fall 2019). But you forgot to mention that the first Pegasus was the yearbook, which started in the 1970s. A hard copy publication, it covered student clubs and organizations, administrators, social events, sports, student art, and it was very much a product of the times.

Unlike today’s publication of Pegasus, which is a much more sophisticated and flexible vehicle to communicate with alumni, the Pegasus of the past still stands today as a documentation of those students who are part of the charter classes of the university.

I’M CURIOUS ABOUT the possibility of the Onyx exoskeleton (“Power Move,” Fall 2019) being used to help paraplegics to walk again.

I am 70 years old and have not walked since a serious auto accident I was in almost 10 years ago.

AVP FOR COMMUNICATIONS AND MARKETING Patrick Burt ’08MA

Anthony Kiriazes Really, really happy to see all this great video content from the MKs!!!!!

Brings me joy here in Tennessee! MK Drumline Alum ’10 – ’13 #ChargeOn!

pegasus@ucf.edu

Mail: UCF Marketing P.O. Box 160090 Orlando, FL 32816-0090 Phone: 407.823.1058

Pegasus was recently recognized by the Orlando chapter of the American Advertising Federation as one of the

SOCIAL MEDIA Brandon Brown ’18 Carly (McCarthy) Hollowell ’14 Rhiana Raymundo ’19 Stephanie Rodriguez WEB Jim Barnes RJ Bruneel ’97 Jo Dickson ’11 Kim Spencer ’11 Cadie Stockman Roger Wolf ’07MFA CONTRIBUTORS Jalen Bass Matt Chase Matt Chinworth Camille Dolan ’98 Jeff Kunerth Angie Lewis ’03 Robert Stephens Suht Wong PEGASUS ADVISORY BOARD Chad Binette ’06MPA Richard Brunson ’84 Cristina Calvet-Harrold ’01 ’03MBA John Gill ’86 Michael Griffin ’84 Mike Hinn ’92 Gerald McGratty Jr. ’71 ’72MBA Michael O’Shaughnessy ’81 Dan Ward ’92

best publications in the region. UCF Marketing hauled in 22 gold and silver awards, including 13 for the magazine alone, and received a special judges award in recognition of the breadth of work produced.

©2020 University of Central Florida. All rights reserved.

Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited.

Pegasus is a registered trademark of UCF Alumni.

INBOX SUBMISSIONS Emails to the editor should be sent with the writer’s name, graduation year, address and daytime phone number to pegasus@ucf.edu.

Letters may be edited for length and clarity, and may be published in any medium. Due to volume, we regret that we cannot reply to every letter.

MOVED RECENTLY? NEED TO UPDATE YOUR INFO? Update your contact information: ucfalumni.com/contactupdates

Contents

6 In Focus 12 Briefs 14 On Campus 16 The Feed 17 Industry Watchdog 18 Dream Maker 20 Stylish and Sustainable 21 The Dangers of Binge-Watching 22 How to Hunt a Killer 24 Models for Success 28 Mapping the World 32 Out of Moves 36 Laughter Is the Best Medicine 38 Class Notes 42 Weddings & Births 46 Why I Ride a Bike

PHOTO BY CONOR KVATEK

S E T T I N G T H E S TA N D A R D Just how good was the UCF men’s soccer team in 2019?

They repeated as conference champions, ranked among the nation’s top 10, advanced to the NCAA Sweet 16 for the first time in their 44-year history and saw captain Jonathan Dean ’18 (pictured) and All-American Cal Jennings ’19 drafted to the MLS. That deserves a big thumbs-up.

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In Focus MASTER PLAN Elementary school teacher Kimberly Rougeux ’01 ’19MEd had always wanted to earn a master’s degree. But as a full-time teacher and a busy parent, she struggled to find the time and resources. That all changed when the Lockheed Martin/UCF Academy allowed Rougeux, along with 97 other local public teachers, to earn her master’s degree for free.

The Lockheed Martin/UCF Academy developed the Master of Education in K–8 Mathematics and Science program, which is focused on bolstering STEM education and retaining current teachers while building the talent pipeline.

Last December, 20 Orange County Public School teachers became the first class to graduate with all costs covered.

“Lockheed Martin invests in master’s degrees for educators because we believe in the power of teachers to inspire the next generation of students who will become tomorrow’s engineers, scientists and technologists that’ll shape the future of our world for decades,” says Tom Mirek, vice president of engineering and technology at Lockheed Martin.

The program aims to facilitate Florida’s goal of increasing student math scores, a move that should prepare students for what is projected to be a 10 percent growth in STEM jobs nationally between 2018 and 2028.

As for Rougeux, a 17-year teaching veteran, she’s already seen an impact in how she teaches.

“A lot of what I learned 20 years ago is not relevant,” says Rougeux, who’s teaching her students to understand math rather than just memorize it. “There’s that aha! moment when they realize they understand the concept.

I tell my students I don’t want you to have that moment in college. I want you to have that now.”

“Training high-quality math and science teachers is an investment in our instructors as well as [our] students for years to come.”

— Barbara Jenkins ’83 ’86MEd ’96EdD, superintendent for Orange County Public Schools

To learn more, visit ucf.edu/pegasus.

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8 | SPRING 2020

In Focus EXPANDED STUDIES Designed around people rather than stacks of books, 21st-century libraries, such as the newly renovated John C. Hitt Library, incorporate more natural lighting and more open spaces for learning, studying and collaborating. Books are no longer front and center, but that doesn’t mean they’re gone. Instead, they — along with other reference materials — are stored in an automated retrieval center built to house, protect and provide easy access to volumes with the click of a mouse. So students can spend more time searching for answers rather than looking for Dewey decimals.

“This project is something that has been in development for years based on UCF student feedback, successful practices in other libraries and forward thinking.

People will see sharp differences between old and new spaces, which will motivate us to continue the work we have started.”

— Frank Allen, UCF’s interim director of libraries

47,824

Square feet added to the library

1,055

New seats added

270°

Panoramic view of campus from the new fourth-floor reading room

84

New computer stations

8

New group study rooms

2

New library instruction rooms

To learn more, visit ucf.edu/pegasus.

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In Focus HARNESSING POWER Larry Lentz Jr. is a walking miracle. Literally.

Nine years ago, after a massive stroke, physicians told his parents, Ruth and Larry Lentz Sr., that he would likely not survive, let alone walk again. He was only 39 when he lost the abilities to move unassisted and communicate. As he recovered, his parents explored additional therapies that would help him regain his zest for life.

Soon after, he began receiving intensive therapy at UCF’s Aphasia House, where he worked on improving his speech.

“Larry wanted to recover,” Ruth says. “Aphasia House gave him the skills he needed and, more importantly, also gave him the hope he needed to recover.”

After making strides at Aphasia House, Lentz Jr. now volunteers at Knights on the Go Café, where he uses an integrated harness system to help him wait on customers.

A collaboration between UCF’s School of Kinesiology and Physical Therapy and Aramark, the university’s food vendor, Knights on the Go provides a space for physical therapy students to work with traumatic brain injury survivors to improve their mobility, language and social skills.

The harness system allows Lentz Jr. to move freely from refrigerator to cash register, greeting visitors and enjoying a newfound sense of purpose. Lentz Jr. smiles from the time he starts until his shift is over.

The benefits have been powerful. Lentz Jr.’s balance and walking have improved, and he is learning new words. “His therapists say he can continue improving forever,” Ruth says. “You never know how far people can go.”

“UCF has really been a blessing to us. Aphasia House was just amazing, and the café has helped him in so many ways. I have so much respect for all the therapists and graduate clinicians at UCF.” — Ruth Lentz

To learn more and to support these programs, visit ucf.edu/pegasus.

10 | SPRING 2020

U C F. E D U / P E G A S U S | 1 1

Briefs RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS

SMARTER HOME BUYING The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine awarded UCF Associate Professor Chris Emrich and his team a $3.4 million grant to help people make CHRIS EMRICH better housing choices by analyzing hazard risks. The project aims to give homebuyers a complete picture of what it would take to protect their property against potential risks, such as natural disasters.

STOPPING CANCER

ANNETTE KHALED

UCF cancer researcher Annette Khaled made a discovery that may help detect cancer cells in patients before they have a chance to spread through the body. Current studies will help to determine why escaped cancer cells spread to bones, the brain, lungs and other organs, where they cause 90 percent of cancer deaths.

“Understanding cancer is like trying to solve a giant jigsaw puzzle, and with this discovery, we feel like we’ve found some of the parts that make up the puzzle’s edge.”

— Annette Khaled, UCF cancer researcher

IT’S CHEAPER TO EDUCATE PEOPLE THAN TO INCARCERATE THEM. IT ALSO MAKES OUR WORLD A BETTER AND SAFER PLACE TO LIVE. — Keri Watson, UCF assistant professor and director of the Florida Prison Education Project, on the $60,000 grant UCF received to help educate Florida inmates.

The grant will allow UCF to develop online courses and establish a scholarship for people in prison.

PREVENTING

ALZHEIMER’S Amount awarded to UCF from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Solar Energy Technologies Offices to lead a national team to study the performance of floating solar panels, and how it impacts the water quality and biodiversity in Florida, California and Colorado.

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UCF researchers are developing a way to remove the plaque buildup that causes Alzheimer’s devastating symptoms of cognitive decline, dementia and memory loss. By discovering an enzyme that cuts away the building blocks that form brain plaque linked to the disease, they hope the treatment will potentially prevent Alzheimer’s and improve brain function.

PEGASUS

LISTEN AND LEARN

AND

THE EMMY GOES TO… WUCF TV won an Emmy at the 43rd Annual Suncoast Regional Emmy Awards for the documentary Space Chase USA, which tells the story of the Apollo human spaceflight program and its effects on Cocoa Beach, Florida.

The UCF Listening Center recently partnered with Orange County Public Schools to provide Lake Como Elementary students who are deaf and hard of hearing and their families access to listening and spoken language services from graduate clinicians in speech-language pathology.

EDUCATING

THE EDUCATORS A critical shortage of teachers in Lake County has led to a partnership between UCF and Lake County Schools to foster a new generation of teachers by creating a pathway for high school prospects to earn a bachelor’s degree and become certified teachers.

1

#

Workforce supplier of graduates to U.S. aerospace and defense industries.

(Aviation Week Network)

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2

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Graduate video game design program in North America (The Princeton Review and PC Gamer) UCF Cheer team in the nation — and the third national championship in the program’s history (UCA National Championship)

Volleyball team in the American Athletic Conference for second year in a row Collegiate cybersecurity team in the nation (Department of Energy’s CyberForce competition)

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UCF’s programming team earned bronze at North American competition

#

Top-Value School in Florida (WalletHub)

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Undergraduate video game design program in North America (The Princeton Review and PC Gamer)

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Online undergraduate programs in the nation (U.S. News & World Report)

GENDER CHANGE After experiencing a number of medical complications, Juleigh Mayfield, who was born intersex, needed to change her sex on her birth certificate but found the legal process difficult to navigate. She received legal assistance from UCF associate lecturer Irene Pons ’98 and her legal studies class, who helped to create a petition for a gender marker change that was brought before the court in January.

24 #

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Consecutive semesters student-athletes averaged a 3.0 GPA or better

UCF Football final 2019 ranking (Associated Press Top 25 and Amway Coaches national polls)

Best Value College (The Princeton Review) U C F. E D U / P E G A S U S | 1 3

FEB.

1

Civil engineering student Sidnee Ryan built a canoe for the annual ASCE Concrete Canoe Competition.

MAR. 5 Accounting student Catherine Bendyk practices a dance combination during a class at the School of Performing Arts.

FEB.

2

A student looked for supplies at the new Knights Helping Knights Pantry at the Rosen campus.

DEC.

4

Knugget booped fellow minihorse Honey. Both were on campus to help students relieve stress during finals.

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OCT.

18

Students lined up to run into the Reflecting Pond for a chance to nab a rubber duck during Spirit Splash.

JAN.

22

Political science student Shayna Lurie took one of the new Spin scooters for a ride near Memory Mall.

DEC.

13

Neel Shah ’19 accepted a congratulatory hug from his mom after earning his bachelor’s degree.

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The Feed Find more @

ucf.edu/news

@UCF

@University of Central Florida

Next Steps

Recent graduate and UCF quarterback McKenzie Milton ’19 talks about overcoming his leg injury and staying optimistic about the future. bit.ly/ucf-next-steps

Coast to Coast

A first-of-its-kind partnership with the Florida Park Service will turn a former restaurant in Econfina River State Park into a research station to better understand threats to coastlines around the world. bit.ly/ucf-coast

Inn-terstellar

Set for launch this year, The Celeste Hotel at UCF plans to offer an outof-this-world experience for guests. bit.ly/ucf-inn-terstellar

A pilot study by UCF researchers found that judo may help children with autism spectrum disorder. bit.ly/ucf-judo-style

Black Excellence

Founding member Roland Williams ’71 ’78MS and his wife, Wiletha Williams ’70, reminisce on the start of UCF’s Black Student Union and how it nurtured diversity on campus. bit.ly/ucf-black-excellence

WHAT’S TRENDING ON...

UCF TODAY Swan Song

Professor of music and director of choral activities David Brunner retires after 31 years at UCF and reflects on how music changed his life. bit.ly/ucf-swan-song

TWITTER

FACEBOOK

Oct. 18 @TinyPackage_ Homecoming 2018 & Homecoming 2019.

University of Central Florida January 7, 2020

Did I break any records?

For those who dream of space, UCF is the place SpaceX Starlink 2

@Jordan Sirokie

Paying It Forward

Juan Diego Villa ’19 shares how he paid off over $30,000 in debt in six months while still living his best life. bit.ly/ucf-paying-forward

Dec. 6 @ERFiss

The Perfect Tune

of my 1st semester, but then decided

Transgender student Ren Joseph discusses struggling to fit in, discovering a love for music and finding an inclusive community at UCF. bit.ly/ucfperfect-tune

Was going to write a lengthy summary nobody would read it.

So my

summary statement is: it has been the most wonderful first semester. I love Orlando, I love @UCF, I love @UCF_CJ, I love @UCF_VAW, I love my co-workers, I love my students.

Feb. 22 @SWilkenJCA Sorry I ran out of characters but @UCF

Jay Whiting 2012 grad! Now working for the Space Force Ted Dixon Watched the moon launches while at UCF (FTU) and

is amazing and every single program

we’re still looking upwards. Great shot. Class of ’73.

both academic and athletic is amazing

Melissa Woolm Tomasso Stunning. UCF. The place to dream and

thank you for coming to my TED Talk #ChargeOn

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2.7K Reactions 96 Comments 348 Shares

think big. Then make it happen.

ECONFINA RIVER STATE PARK PHOTO COURTESY OF PAUL MARCELLINI. BLACK STUDENT UNION PHOTO COURTESY OF UCF ARCHIVES AND SPECIAL COLLECTIONS.

Judo Style

Artifact

Industry Watchdog Since the 1960s, beloved Peanuts character Snoopy has been an icon for safety in the aerospace industry.

BY BREE WATSON ’04

H

e’s not a trained astronaut, yet Snoopy has been on dozens of trips to space. His mission: to inspire and honor those who make spaceflight as safe and successful as possible.

In the aftermath of the Apollo 1 tragedy that took the lives of three crew members, officials at NASA reached out to Peanuts creator Charles Schulz for permission to use Snoopy as the symbol for a new safety program. Schulz happily agreed and got to work sketching the cosmic canine — a collaboration that endures today.

The Silver Snoopy Award, presented by astronauts to professionals in the aerospace industry who support them, is a sterling silver lapel pin that was flown in space. Since its creation in 1968, the Silver Snoopy has been awarded to fewer than 1 percent of the aerospace workforce — about 15,000 people. And last year, Greg Plettinck ’09 became one of them.

“I was both humbled and excited to receive this recognition,” says Plettinck, a systems engineer for United Launch Alliance (ULA). “Most professionals who receive this award are presented it by one astronaut. I was privileged to have seven astronauts that I work with directly present the award. It was even more personally meaningful because the pin flew with astronaut Eric Boe on STS-133, which was the last space shuttle mission I worked on.”

Plettinck’s current role includes training the ULA ascent team and conducting simulations in support of Boeing’s CST-100 Starliner crew capsule and NASA’s Artemis program, which is set to land the first woman and next man on the moon by 2024.

Asked about Snoopy’s long-lasting relationship with space exploration, Plettinck says, “Snoopy is very recognizable and relatable to generations worldwide.

He represents the childlike wonder and curiosity that humans have to seek, explore and discover.”

HERE ARE A FEW MORE FACTS ABOUT SNOOPY THE ASTRONAUT: A LOVE OF FLIGHT Long before he left Earth’s orbit, Snoopy had earned his wings as the imaginary fighter pilot Flying Ace. It was in a March 1969 comic strip that Snoopy landed his doghouse on the moon — four months before Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made history.

COVETED AWARD The Silver Snoopy is just one of the motivational and recognition awards given through the NASA-managed Space Flight Awareness program, but it’s considered the most prestigious since the recipients are chosen by astronauts. The award consists of a sterling silver pin, commendation letter and official certificate.

MANNED FLIGHT’S BEST FRIEND In the later years of the shuttle era, flight manifests listed hundreds of Silver Snoopy pins among the cargo carried into space. On average, there were 145 pins on each shuttle mission.

FROM THE ARCHIVES Equipped with a space suit, helmet and oxygen tank, the 10-inch Snoopy figure featured left was released as a promotional item for the Apollo 10 launch and is one of many space memorabilia housed in UCF’s Special Collections.

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The recently opened Games and Interactive Media Maker Space at UCF Downtown was built to foster creativity and collaboration through a practice known as “critical making.”

BY GENE KRUCKEMYER ’73 In this new state-of-the-art environment, which opened in November in the Communication and Media Building, students and faculty have access to a digital fabrication lab with high-performance equipment that allows them to experiment and create games, web designs and interdisciplinary projects with other departments and colleges.

“Students benefit from this environment by collaborating and sharing ideas in a space that promotes community and interdisciplinary work,” says Jordan Lipscomb, who manages the makerspace.

“A major theme of the programs within the Games and Interactive Media department is the ability to collaborate with others and create something that is more than the sum of its parts. Digital Media students take workshops in their final semester to fulfill this ideology.”

3D PRINTER The Ultimaker S5 is a powerful 3D printer that uses plastic to create detailed sculptures and functional prototypes. Students can use the printer to make custom controllers, figurine miniatures for board games, and other items for gaming.

Built to foster “critical making” — the concept of combining critical thinking with making something using your hands, the space offers students the opportunity to learn through experiments and teaches them how to engage in peer-based collaboration, prototyping and entrepreneurship.

Here’s a look at some of the digital and analog equipment housed in the 3,500-square-foot space.

MA

DREAM 18 | SPRING 2020

VIRTUAL REALITY The Oculus Quest is a virtual reality headset that is lightweight and doesn’t require cables to operate controllers. This makes it easy for game developers to take their projects with them to conferences and events to show how their systems work.

AUGMENTED REALITY An augmented reality system, the Magic Leap allows students to develop applications that can be used for games, education and simulation. The wearable computer does this by assessing the size and shape of the immediate surroundings and superimposing digital images into the headset.

LASER CUTTER The Glowforge is a user-friendly laser cutter that uses a beam of light the width of a human hair to cut, shave and engrave wood, metal, and other materials. Students use this instrument to create artwork and intricate “physical computing” projects that can sense and respond to the world around them.

RECORDING STUDIO The Maker Space recording studio has two rooms — one for editing audio/video projects and another for sound dampening — which game design students use to add voice-overs, sound effects and instrumental work for games being developed.

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Launchpad

STYLISH AND SUSTAINABLE This alum-led startup is taking a stand in the sand to offer more eco-friendly fashion.

T

WHO Kelsey Bressler ’14 THE PITCH Stylish beach essentials — from swimwear to totes and towels — produced ethically and sustainably THE INSPIRATION As a native Floridian whose family hails from Trinidad and Tobago, Bressler grew up at the beach and was always on a quest to find the perfect bikini.

So she decided to start making her own and wanted her line to be environmentally conscious.

BACKERS 122 backers pledged $12,454 through Kickstarter WHERE YOU CAN FIND IT SocaBlue.com Pop-up shops in South Florida (advertised through social media @shopsocablue)

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he transaction flashed across her screen — Kelsey Bressler ’14 sold a bathing suit she designed to someone in New Jersey, and she knew right then she had a viable business plan.

“I literally did the happy dance. They weren’t one of my backers. They weren’t on my email list. They weren’t a friend, or a friend of a friend,” says Bressler, a Jupiter, Florida, resident.

“They found me organically, and that was amazing.”

In 2018, Bressler started Soca Blue, a company that offers sustainable swimwear, hats, totes and towels. She earned her degree in sport and exercise science but says she always had an entrepreneurial drive and envisioned running her own company, so she minored in business.

Although she maintains a 9-to-5 job as a private banker, she says she has a passion for fashion and wants her company to have a larger purpose.

“When I found this fabric that uses half as much water [to make], produces half as much waste, and uses recycled materials such as plastics, I thought, ‘I can actually be proud of what I’m doing, and I’m not leaving this horrible footprint on the Earth,’ ”Bressler says.

The fashion industry is one of the environment’s worst offenders. According to the United Nations, it accounts for about 10 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions. If nothing changes, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation estimates “the industry will use up a quarter of the world’s carbon budget by 2050.” In addition, clothes release millions of tons of microfibers into the ocean every year, equivalent to more than 50 billion plastic bottles.

After researching online, Bressler found Vita by Carvico, a fabric made in Italy from recycled materials, including fishing nets, carpet fluff and other discarded nylons. She also found an ethically certified manufacturer in Bali to craft her designs.

Her Kickstarter campaign funded her first collection, and she sold her product to customers worldwide.

Within the same year, she began designing and producing her second line, but she realized her goal of breaking into major retailers such as Bloomingdale’s and Saks Fifth Avenue was a little too ambitious for the current size of her company. So she re-evaluated and slowed down but is as committed as ever to being successful.

“I offer really unique products, and I learned there’s nothing wrong in keeping it that way. I don’t need to go commercial,” Bressler says. “Sixty percent of my clients are repeat customers, and that’s the best compliment I could receive about my product.

I plan to stay true to what the brand stands for and continue to produce something that I love.”

PHOTOS BY CAITLIN K’ELI PHOTOGRAPHY, MICHAEL MEHDIPOUR, ERIC BRESSLER AND @THEFRESHSCOOP

BY JENNA MARINA LEE

PEGASUS

T H E DA N G E R S O F

A study led by a UCF professor has found binge-watching could be deadly.

BY NICOLE DUDEHNHOEFER ’17 In a time when streaming platforms such as Netflix and Hulu reign supreme, most of us are familiar with the delightful feeling when a new season of our favorite show drops. We curl up, grab some snacks and binge-watch our way through hours of entertainment until we’re left longing for more. And while we are getting more, it’s leaving us less healthy.

Regularly spending four or more hours a day watching television can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease or early death by 50 percent, according to an American Heart Association (AHA) study led by UCF Assistant Professor Jeanette Garcia.

The study followed more than 3,500 black residents of Jackson, Mississippi, for about 8.5 years.

Nearly 44 percent of black men and 48 percent of black women living in the United States have some form of cardiovascular disease, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Although the study focused on a specific demographic, Garcia says the findings provide benefits for any population since heart disease is the leading cause of death for Americans of every background.

More people are also living increasingly sedentary lifestyles. In 2018, the AHA found an 83 percent increase in desk jobs since 1950, with those who work in offices spending more than 89 percent of their time sitting. On top of that, there’s also an increase in commute times and accessibility to streaming services.

“Some of the questions our researcher had were, ‘Is all sedentary behavior created equal? Is sitting during a workday worse than watching television?’ ” Garcia says. “The answer is no — there are more harmful effects from sitting and watching TV.”

While most office workers spend their day at their desk, they often have interruptions, leading them to walk more often than the average television watcher.

No matter how small, each movement matters.

“Even sitting for just one prolonged period of time, you’re still going to notice things like your muscles getting tight,” Garcia says. “Movement or exercise creates an insulin-like effect where your glucose uptake is increased. When you’re sitting for a long period of time, very little uptake happens. That’s why there’s also a risk for Type 2 diabetes with prolonged sitting.”

Regularly spending four or more hours a day watching television can increase the risk of cardiovascular disease or early death by 50 percent, according to an American Heart Association study led by UCF Assistant Professor Jeanette Garcia.

As alarming as the findings in Garcia’s study are, it doesn’t mean you have to give up TV watching altogether. The risks are significantly lower if you watch less than two hours of TV a day and take breaks.

“A lot of times we focus on physical activity and emphasize getting a certain amount of exercise, but I think it’s easier to focus on decreasing or breaking up sedentary behavior instead,” Garcia says. “Going for a run can be intimidating for some people, so I think it’s more manageable for some people to stand up, stretch or take walks.”

Reducing Risks: PRIORITIZE STAYING ACTIVE Although exercise can’t completely undo the effects of prolonged sitting, making sure you get moderate to rigorous physical activity each day can help. The Mayo Clinic suggests getting 30 minutes of exercise a day, but for serious binge-watchers Garcia suggests aiming for up to 60 minutes. You can even watch a few episodes while breaking a sweat on the treadmill, elliptical trainer or stair-stepper.

SWITCH UP THE SNACKS Eating and watching TV often happen together. Swap out unhealthy, processed snacks like chips, buttery popcorn and sweets for fresh fruits, vegetables or nuts. Studies also show watching TV while you eat can lead to binge-eating, so try to stick to a certain calorie limit, be more mindful of what you consume or even cut out snacks.

REPROGRAM YOUR TV SCHEDULE Aside from keeping your daily sedentary TV time below two hours, Garcia emphasizes taking a break at least every 60 minutes. While it’s tempting to end a long day with back-to-back episodes of your favorite show, Garcia says watching TV close to bedtime can disrupt your sleep pattern, which also plays a factor in cardiovascular health.

U UC C F. F. E ED DU U// P PE EG GA ASS U U SS | 2 1

BY LAURA J. COLE

A

ll it would take is one ill-fated asteroid colliding with Earth to go from a bad day to the end of days.

Such was the course of dinosaurs.

But unlike in the Mesozoic Era, today we have the tools to help us detect — and hopefully deflect — what UCF Professor and Robinson Observatory Director Yan Fernandez calls “civilization busters.”

That’s where researchers at UCF and the UCF-managed Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico come into play. Thanks to a $19 million grant from NASA, they’re working to characterize asteroids and comets so that governments and teams, such as NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, can make informed decisions on how to protect our planet.

“You have to know what the asteroids are really like to have an effective mitigation strategy,” Fernandez says.

For example, “If you tried to blow up an asteroid that’s very porous with a nuclear device, the asteroid could end up just absorbing the blow rather than being dismantled completely,” says Anne Virkki, planetary radar group lead at Arecibo, which is home to the largest, most sensitive radio telescope in the world.

“Then you might end up with radioactive pieces of asteroid still hitting the Earth.”

By collecting and analyzing data about each asteroid’s fundamental properties — such as its mass, rotation, size and surface composition — scientists are not only making some pretty stellar discoveries about the more than 20,000 space objects whirling past our precious home planet, but they’re providing vital information that can “mean the difference between missing the Earth and hitting it,” Fernandez says. Here’s how.

DID YOU KNOW? 22 | SPRING 2020

THE DANGER ZONE

NEO s

1,000%

meteoroids whose orbit is between Mars and

number of Great Pyramid-sized NEOs

the sun, posing a danger of collision.

discovered soaring past our planet has

460

increased by more than 1,000 percent

Near-Earth objects are asteroids, comets and

FEET

As a result of advances in science, the

since 2003.

“NASA would define a potentially hazardous asteroid as one that’s 140 meters [or 460 feet] or more in diameter,” Virkki says, which is slightly taller than the Great Pyramid of Giza.

4.5

955,656 MILLION MILES

Hazardous asteroids are also defined as “passing the Earth closer than 19 lunar distances or 4.5 million miles,” Virkki says.

Number of currently known asteroids

3,611

Number of currently known comets

UCF researchers are also part of NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission, which has sent a spacecraft to take a sample of the asteroid Bennu. One of the team’s recent discoveries found the asteroid is shooting out plumes of dust — a phenomenon never witnessed before — which indicates the asteroid is active. • Some asteroids and comets are light enough to float. “We all intuitively think that rocks are going to sink in the water, but some asteroids

ILLUSTRATION BY MATT CHINWORTH

The work being done by researchers at UCF and Arecibo Observatory could help protect our planet from a fatal impact.

PEGASUS IDENTIFIED FLYING OBJECTS DISCOVERED: June 19, 2004 SIZE: 1,100 feet wide

SIZE: 66 feet wide

DISCOVERED: Oct. 22, 1969 LAST VISITED BY: Rosetta spacecraft in 2014–16 SIZE: 2.5 miles wide

ASTEROID : APOPHIS When it was initially discovered, scientists calculated that the asteroid Apophis had a 2.7 percent chance of hitting Earth. “Arecibo’s radar was able to show that though its orbit is going to go very close to Earth, it isn’t going to hit us,” Virkki says. “Instead, we can prepare our telescopes to observe it when it goes by.” Which it will, when on April 13, 2029, it will become the closest asteroid of its size to fly by Earth — at about 19,400 miles away.

1

METEOROID : CHELYABINSK While scientists are able to discover many asteroids and comets, there are some that slip by undetected. Such was the case with the Chelyabinsk meteoroid that entered Earth’s atmosphere over Russia on February 15, 2013, injuring at least 1,200 people from the shockwave. Scientists believe it is a fragment of an asteroid that gained speed when it was ejected from the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. “I think it was pretty porous — it just broke in the atmosphere when it got low enough,” Virkki says.

COMET : 67P/CHURYUMOV-GERASIMENKO “Some asteroids can look like comets, some comets like asteroids,” Fernandez says. “In the old days, scientists believed that comets and asteroids were totally separate things, but in the last 20 to 30 years, we’ve discovered there’s really a continuum.” For example, the rubber duck-shaped comet 67P/ Churyumov-Gerasimenko looks like an asteroid in that it consists of two lobes attached by a narrow neck, which is known as a “contact binary.” Prior to images of it taken in 2014, no one had seen a comet look quite like that.

WHY ARECIBO? Radar telescopes, such as the one at Arecibo, emit radio waves from large antennas, which bounce off an asteroid and are reflected back, providing powerful data that helps scientists determine an asteroid’s orbit, rotation, shape, size and surface composition. “Arecibo’s radar is the most powerful in the world, which can transmit up to one megawatt of power,” says Virkki. “And we also have the biggest antenna, about 305 meters [roughly 1,000 feet] across to collect the reflected signal.”

3

2

“WE CAN DO SOME SERIOUS ANALYSIS ABOUT WHAT THESE ASTEROIDS ARE LIKE WITHOUT HAVING TO SPEND A BUNCH OF MONEY TO SEND A SPACECRAFT THERE.” — YAN FERNANDEZ

WHAT TO LOOK FOR

DISCOVERY AND ORBIT

DENSITY AND MASS

While optical telescopes are still the best way to find NEOs and estimate their orbits, radar telescopes are powerful tools in improving orbital predictions.

How do you weigh something that you can’t get close enough to touch? “Mass and density were very difficult problems to solve in planetary science for a very long time,” says Fernandez.

“It’s really hard to figure out the mass of things unless you use tricks, right?” That’s where moons can help. According to NASA, nearly 400 asteroids have a small companion moon, and its orbit can help determine the mass of the primary body.

“If you can figure out the shape and volume of the asteroid, that gets you density,” Fernandez says.

SURFACE COMPOSITION By bouncing radar signals off the surfaces of asteroids, Arecibo can provide valuable information about their physical characteristics. “Radar allows us to see up to one meter below the surface,” Virkki says, which helps determine composition.

“For example, some of the asteroids could be so fluffy that if you tried to hit one with a projectile or something to knock it off course or break it up, the projectile could just get sort of embedded in it instead,” Fernandez says.

SIZE, SHAPE AND ROTATION Radar images can also help reconstruct an asteroid’s size, shape and rotation with a level of detail that can otherwise only be obtained by a spacecraft.

“For example, in 2018, we were observing a very rare type of binary asteroid called equal mass binary, where you have two pretty much equally sized lobes orbiting each other,” Virkki says.

and comets are actually less dense than water,” Fernandez says. • Arecibo’s location in Puerto Rico provides optimal celestial viewing. “Being this close to the equator helps us see objects on the ecliptic plane better,” Virkki says. • Asteroids can impact their own orbit. By absorbing sunlight and re-emitting that energy as heat, asteroids get a small propulsion, which “acts as a mini thruster that can slowly change the asteroid’s direction,” Fernandez says. • Water is more prevalent in the solar system than previously believed. This discovery could help propel space exploration further.

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24 | SPRING 2020

AT THE UCF 3D PRINT LAB, RESEARCHERS ARE PRODUCING 3D MODELS OF PATIENTS THAT HELP DOCTORS AT NEMOURS CHILDREN’S HOSPITAL NAVIGATE COMPLEX SURGERIES.

BY ROBERT STEPHENS

O

n a Sunday evening, Jack Stubbs’ phone rings. He thinks about letting it go to voicemail until he notices who is calling: a doctor from Nemours Children’s Hospital. A small child with badly impacted teeth needs surgery right away, but it’s complicated, possibly life-threatening. The medical team looks to Stubbs for help.

Stubbs is not a doctor. As the director of the Prototype Development and 3D Print Lab (PD3D) at UCF, he’s basically a gadget guy. His demeanor is as casual as the jeans he wears to his office at Central Florida Research Park. Here, Stubbs shows what first appear to be toys. Behind him, the constant drone of printers creates a soothing backdrop of white noise.

“This is the cool stuff,” Stubbs says.

What you see barely begins to convey

what he means. Over here is a head small enough to be on an American Girl doll — except it’s more humanlike.

Hey, isn’t that a heart? It’s remarkably realistic. Oh, and there’s a rib cage with slime around a kidney.

“That’s a patient-specific replica of a child’s midsection,” says Stubbs. “The green stuff [represents] the tumor. We don’t know the child’s name or where the family lives, but I’m guessing it’s a girl, about 5 years old.”

In other words, we’re looking at the closest depiction possible of a body part of an actual child. We’re also looking at her cancer.

“A tumor isn’t the nice, tidy lump you see in pictures. In real life it’s messy, and it makes the job of a physician challenging. That’s why these models are so valuable. We’re helping doctors save lives,” Stubb says.

TO HELP A 15-YEAR-OLD PATIENT BETTER UNDERSTAND HOW A HEART functions and how his particular condition affects it, doctors at Nemours Children’s Hospital used this model, which combines colors and labels to illustrate the patient’s anatomy. For example, the dark blue region in the front is a pulmonary artery, magenta is the right ventricle and yellow is the left ventricle.

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P

“To be able to look at a model of a tumor from all angles, without the restrictions of an image on a computer screen, is completely changing how we are planning complex surgery,” says Physician Craig Johnson, who is enterprise director of interventional radiology at Nemours Children’s Health System and chair of the department of radiology at Nemours Children’s Hospital in Orlando.

THIS MODEL OF AN 8-YEAR-OLD PATIENT’S severe scoliosis allowed doctors to show and explain to the patient and his parents exactly how the child’s spine was curving. It also allowed surgeons to determine a surgical plan that would be almost impossible to visualize and plan using CT images alone.

26 | SPRING 2020

hysician Craig Johnson chairs the department of radiology at Nemours Children’s Health System. He sees the young lives that are at stake and talks with the families trying to cope. He also appreciates the importance of Stubbs’ contributions.

“The key to advancing medicine and saving lives is to combine the minds of doctors, clinicians and engineers,” says Johnson.

“That’s why Jack’s patient-specific models are game changers. You have to remind yourself that each model is an exact replica, down to 0.1 millimeter of what is actually inside that child.”

The phone call Stubbs received on Sunday helps illustrate the lifesaving process. A doctor tells him about the patient’s teeth being buried deep among neurological tissues. Highly developed MRIs and CT scans are helpful only to a certain point.

“Can you help us?” the doctor asks.

This is what enticed Stubbs and Fluvio Lobo, principal research and development engineer at PD3D, to leave their lab at the University of Minnesota and take positions at UCF. Here, they have the opportunity to combine technology, healthcare and education to do something incredible — one precious life at a time.

A few hours after the phone call, Stubbs’ team receives images of the child’s skull.

Then the magic happens. PD3D director of generative design Jim Inziello and researcher Robert Sims ’19 add color-textured surfaces and features that will allow the doctors to better visualize the focal points of the surgery.

The information is fed into a Stratasys Polyjet J750 printer — one of the most advanced 3D printers of its kind, and one of the first to use

FDA-approved software to develop anatomical models. Soon, a replica of the child’s jaw will be in Stubbs’ hands. He will deliver it to the physician, who in turn will use it with a team of neurologists, reconstructive surgeons and nurses. They will see the jaw and the buried teeth and the brain, not in pictures, but in the closest thing to real life. Then they will practice the surgery before the surgery.

“It takes out the guesswork, big-time,” says Johnson. “The surgeons can see everything the way they’ll see it when they open the actual body rather than on a two-dimensional flat-panel TV. Sometimes they’ll change their approach, maybe change an angle to remove a tumor and also save a kidney rather than taking it all out.”

It’s something Johnson could barely imagine when he and a colleague first saw a 3D printer at Best Buy in 2014 and thought, “What if?” The future seemed to arrive fast when Nemours partnered with the PD3D lab three years later. Their first case together provided the ultimate test.

“We had a teenager whose family had been told there was no way to treat a tumor that had grown to the size of a small basketball,” says Johnson. “The tumor was around too many of his organs, and it had blood vessels around it. Chemo wasn’t working. He had no more options.”

The Nemours doctors weren’t sure how helpful a model from the PD3D lab would be.

Pushpak Patel, a radiology technologist, leads 3D printing services at Nemours and works with the hospital’s CT and MRI groups to make the right imaging for the models.

PEGASUS

At UCF’s PD3D lab in Central Florida Research Park, Director Jack Stubbs, Principal Research and Development Engineer Fluvio Lobo, Director of Generative Design Jim Inziello and artist Robert Sims ’19 collaborate with Nemours to produce the final 3D-printed surgical planning models.

CLEAR PLASTIC WAS USED TO CREATE a model of 3-month-old conjoined twins to allow doctors to clearly see where their blood vessels are located. Craniopagus twins, those who share a skull but not a brain, is a rare phenomenon and separation surgery requires surgeons to navigate delicate networks of arteries and veins that can often be tangled.

But they practiced on the model prior to the surgery and strategized how to specifically and safely remove the tumor. The boy walked out of the hospital three days later.

“It’s been two years, and he’s had no recurrence of the cancer,” Johnson says.

While Stubbs and Lobo don’t have direct contact with patients, they do hear the good news from the doctors. “Hearing that … it means a lot,” says Lobo.

Word has started to spread. The UCF team has provided patient-specific models for hospital teams as far away as Seattle and San Francisco. Lake Nona Medical City will present more opportunities as it grows. Stubbs does admit frustration about moving this technology out further and faster, even though the 3D-printed models are being used in 113 hospitals in North America and more than 250 worldwide.

“That isn’t enough. There are thousands of hospitals around the world,” he says, holding a replica of a rib cage. “This only costs $1,200 to print. We have an opportunity to change healthcare — to make it more affordable and to save lives.”

Hospitals, despite copious financial reserves, cannot realistically do what’s being done at UCF. It isn’t just a $400,000 3D printer. It’s literally a village, where expertise in computer science, mechanical engineering, biomedical sciences, psychology and architecture can make these tiny heads and hearts come to life.

“Art students are as important as anyone,” says Lobo. “They paint each model to look the way a doctor will see it in surgery. They don’t make it pretty — they make it realistic.”

Stubbs hands over a model of two conjoined heads, so small they both can be held in one palm. With this model, two lives could be saved.

“It’s hard to describe how motivating it is when we hear what we hear on the other side of this procedure,” says Johnson, referring to a child in post-op. “It’s more than a black and white image or a piece of plastic. It’s a living child.”

In the laid-back office at Research Park, a printer continues to hum. The model of the child’s impacted teeth should be ready later this afternoon. Stubbs will deliver it himself to the surgical team, who will be given the chance to see the nuances and angles they hadn’t seen previously. They will operate tomorrow.

“This is as real as it gets,” says Stubbs. “How cool is that?”

THE YELLOW OBJECT DEPICTS A TUMOR within the abdomen of a 3-year-old patient.

Surgeons used the model to determine how to remove the mass, which was growing between his kidneys (shown in dark red) and his pancreas (teal), while being sure to not rupture any of his veins (blue) or his arteries (orangish-red).

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DRISHTIE PATEL ’08 ’12MNM IS PART OF A TEAM MAPPING THE WORLD’S MISSING ROADS TO PROVIDE LIFESAVING RESOURCES TO PEOPLE DURING TIMES OF CRISIS.

BY LAURA J. COLE

28 | SPRING 2020

PEGASUS

hat would become the largest and most complex outbreak of the Ebola virus to date began in December 2013 with an 18-month-old boy. The outbreak would last for more than two and a half years, with more than 28,600 cases reported across West Africa and more than 11,325 deaths.

As a then-geographic information systems (GIS) analyst at the Red Cross, Drishtie Patel ’08 ’12MNM was responsible for providing relief workers on the ground with accurate geographic data, so they could locate and assist people even in the most rural parts of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone.

She knew one problem would be the same as it had been for the many relief efforts she’d been a part of up to that point: Uncharted roads, bridges and physical structures would make finding those who were infected difficult, especially as they had a tendency to flee their villages and move to more remote locations out of shame.

“Outside of the cities, these countries are mostly forest,” Patel says. “As people moved farther away, we couldn’t track them. There was no easy way to contain the movement of people in one area, so the disease spread farther.”

This left patients unnecessarily vulnerable and at risk. The other problem: While that missing information was being collected, the outbreak was gaining traction, costing valuable time.

“Thousands of towns and cities are invisible on the world map,” Patel wrote in an article during the outbreak. “This makes it difficult for disaster responders to come to residents’ aid when an earthquake, landslide or typhoon strikes.”

Though catastrophic, the Ebola outbreak was only one out of the more than 60,000 disasters the Red Cross responds to each year.

That’s a lot of information just waiting to be collected that could mean life or death for hundreds of thousands of people.

Realizing it would be helpful to have data-rich maps prior to a disaster, Patel became part of a team that set out to pre-map areas in countries that often receive the least resources. Today, she’s expediting that process as part of a Facebook team that uses artificial intelligence to improve the detail, quality and accuracy of maps in less time.

Many of us take maps for granted. Whether lost in a city or on a nature trail or heading to a new place for the first time, we turn

to our phones. In the palm of our hands is any number of web mapping services, such as Google Maps, ready to help us find our way.

But if you’ve ever traveled to a remote location and found yourself sans internet or staring at a giant swatch of beige or green with only a single blue dot to guide you, you’ve probably realized how important maps are.

“Maps are incredibly powerful and highly visual,” says Timothy Hawthorne, UCF associate professor of GIS. “They are able to share information quickly to show a challenge or opportunity and inform decisions across organizations, so people in need get resources in a more timely manner.”

Getting resources to people in need relies on disaster-relief mapping, or humanitarian mapping. An attempt to ensure communities in need get help during political crises, epidemics and natural disasters, humanitarian mapping has been around for decades. But its latest iteration started in 2004, after the Boxing Day tsunami hit 13 countries in Southeast Asia and killed more than 230,000 people.

“It took weeks for actual maps of any value to be made [available] for people,” says Dale Kunce, who previously led the international data and maps team at the American Red Cross. “There’s this very famous story of a gentleman deploying with a map that was 50 years old, the best map he had for Banda Aceh, Indonesia [where the 9.1 magnitude earthquake that set off the tsunami hit].

Banda Aceh, Indonesia, does not look like that anymore, nor had it in the last 20 years before the tsunami happened and 30-foot waves rolled over everything.”

Today, there is a global network of volunteers who come together online and on the ground after a disaster strikes to compile maps that help responders reach those in need. These volunteers use an open source web platform called OpenStreetMap (OSM), which was founded in 2004.

“OSM is commonly referred to as the ‘Wikipedia for maps,’ ” says Patel. “It’s essentially a crowdsourced mapping project that brings together mappers from around the globe to collaboratively build and maintain a free editable map of the world.”

U C F. E D U / P E G A S U S | 2 9

PHOTO COURTESY OF THE AMERICAN RED CROSS

While organizations such as the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT) specialize in responding to international humanitarian crises by connecting OSM volunteers to help impacted areas remotely, it still takes time to coordinate, map and clean the data before it can be used. Responders were getting better information but losing valuable time.

Relief organizations such as the American Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders realized a need to do more.

Thus was born Missing Maps, a partnership between the American Red Cross, the British Red Cross, Doctors Without Borders and HOT to map the most vulnerable areas in the developing world before disasters occur. Here’s how it works: Remote volunteers from anywhere on the planet trace roads and buildings using satellite imagery into OSM. Community volunteers on the ground confirm data and add local details, such as street names, road conditions and building types. And humanitarian organizations use the collected data to plan for crisis responses.

Missing Maps partners working with OSM completely changed how relief organizations respond.

“Missing Maps started with disaster response, but now it’s pretty much used for the entire planning phase — everything from preplanning to post-planning,” says Patel, who was one of the founding members of the Missing Maps project at the American Red Cross.

The project also helped show the impact building materials have on health.

“The data was also used in a separate health project, and the team involved

realized all of the people who lived in temporary mud houses were having health issues, such as persistent asthma,” says Patel. “The problem was actually the infrastructure of the houses, and that correlation wouldn’t have happened if it wasn’t made available visually. As a result, another service was created to help rebuild permanent structures made of brick, which resulted in drastic health improvements.”

Patel never planned on being a cartographer.

There are people who are self-proclaimed “mapaholics.” They talk about things like Mappy Hours and Mapternoons — where humanitarian-driven volunteers contribute a significant amount of time to map entire countries with other community-focused individuals.

But for Patel, mapping is simply an offshoot of her real calling: to help people in need.

She grew up in Zimbabwe under President Robert Mugabe in a middleclass family, where she acknowledges she had a comfortable, somewhat privileged upbringing. But around her, chaos started to unfurl just as she was entering her teenage years. Upheavals began in the African nation in 1999 after the World Bank and IMF suspended aid. What followed were years of food shortages, economic hardship and political unrest.

“Zimbabwe was a pretty amazing country to grow up in until I hit my teens,” says Patel. “It just became [constant chaos] — shortage of gas, standing in lines for basic things and no power most of the time.”

Drishtie Patel ’08 ’12MNM (center) works with locals to map their community in a remote area of Rwanda, close to the Burundi border. “Cyahinda is a region that is prone to landslides, mosquito-borne illnesses, and is going through a food shortage — but its people aren’t even visible to most of the globe,” she says.

We’ve now processed the whole world — every single road — using AI. We’ve open-sourced that entire data set, and we keep updating it. This would have taken decades to do manually.

DRISHTIE PATEL

In times of plenty, the governments of many countries are able to provide assistance to their people. In times of need, few can. In these times, people turn to nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), such as the Red Cross, to help them survive.

Patel knew then she wanted to work with the helpers, even volunteering with the Red Cross during high school.

“I think I’ve always just been drawn to a nonprofit mission,” she says. “A lot of times it’s the NGOs who end up coming in on the ground to provide support, and they make a real difference. That’s when things get better, whether it’s for refugee movements, a health outbreak or a political crisis.”

When the situation in Zimbabwe became dangerous, Patel’s family applied for the U.S. green card lottery and won a few years later. Patel, who was in high school at the time, didn’t want to move to the United States. Like many teenagers, she didn’t want to leave behind her extended family, friends and everything she knew. But that move would eventually lead her to UCF — where she majored in organizational communication and earned a master’s in

nonprofit management and a graduate certificate in emergency management and homeland security — and help Patel find her niche.

“The nice thing about the nonprofit program was the focus on service-learning and practical experience rather than only the theoretical stuff,” she says. “Every single class, we worked with an NGO. By the time I was hired by the Red Cross, I had gotten a lot of the hands-on experience I needed to jump in and make an immediate impact. I was already familiar with certain processes and fundamental skills in NGOs, such as fundraising and writing grant proposals.”

Her first job at the Red Cross was when mapping became a big part of how she would fulfill her goal of helping others.

Her team was responsible for collecting whatever public information people on the ground needed, such as population estimates, road data, number of buildings and nearby villages.

“I really liked that,” she says, “and I never thought mapping would be a big part of that.

Honestly, it was just something I learned on the job. I saw a gap and was lucky enough to be in the right place at the right time with the right people to be able to push it through.”

That luck led her not only to the Missing Maps project that she helped start at the Red Cross, but also to her current position at Facebook, where she’s using machine learning technology to map the world even faster.

A single magenta line appears over a satellite image of Indonesia. Within a matter of seconds, it has spread into a vast matrix of intersecting lines across the country.

Facebook’s Map with AI is at work, taking high-resolution satellite images and turning identified roads into magenta pixels. Building upon the work Patel and the Missing Maps team did at the Red Cross manually tracing map features into OSM, Map with AI expedites the process by training machines to identify and map roads in seconds — a feat that would take human volunteers years, if not decades.

In only 18 months, Map with AI enabled the team at Facebook to remotely map more than 300,000 miles of roads in Thailand, more than doubling the available road network. That same feat would have taken an additional three to five years using the traditional method, Patel says.

“We’ve now processed the whole world — every single road — using AI,” she says.

The magenta lines indicate all the roads in Jakarta, Indonesia, that have been mapped using Facebook’s Map with AI.

“We’ve open-sourced that entire data set, and we keep updating it. This would have taken decades to do manually.”

That’s not to say the computers are taking over for people. The heart of OSM remains people volunteering from all over the world to create a community map. Mapathons and Mappy Hours aren’t going away anytime soon. Rather, AI helps with some of the mundane parts of mapping, so mappers can focus on adding more local knowledge.

“The tool strikes a good balance between suggesting machine-generated features and manual mapping,” said Martijn van Exel, a longtime leader in the open mapping community, in a release on Facebook’s tech blog. “It gives mappers the final say in what ends up in the map but helps just enough to be both useful and draw attention to under-mapped places.”

During three months last year, volunteers using Map with AI mapped missing roads in nearly 200 countries, including Afghanistan, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, Tanzania and Uganda.

The benefit of being with Facebook, Patel says, is all the ways the company is using data to help communities around the world.

For example, through Facebook Data for Good, the tech giant has launched Disaster Maps and Population Density. During the recent Australian bushfires, which burned more than 42,000 square miles of land, these tools were used by the humanitarian aid organization Direct Relief to distribute more than 500,000 respiratory masks to people in Victoria and New South Wales.

“These are two products that Drishtie made a really strong contribution to,” says Subbu Subramanian, director of engineering at Facebook, who is Patel’s boss.

“She helped work with the various relief organizations, as she clearly understands their needs, given her former role with the Red Cross. She also worked with the mapping and technologies team to offer solutions that have been used in dozens of disasters in the past few months alone.”

And while Facebook has been under fire recently for collecting personal data, Subramanian says none of these projects use or collect personal information.

“For these cases, we don’t need any personal information whatsoever,” he says. “The information that comes to us is primarily from cell towers, which gives us pretty good aggregated, anonymized information as to what areas have been impacted.”

All of that information is available to others to help aid in relief efforts. It’s been so successful that requests have come from across different sectors, including NGOs, private companies and governments.

Though Facebook provides the opportunity to do good on a larger scale, Patel admits she had some hesitation initially switching from working for a nonprofit to a tech giant. It certainly wasn’t what she envisioned back in Zimbabwe or even while completing her studies at UCF. “I didn’t want to work for a tech company after being in a nonprofit,” Patel says.

“Personally, I felt like a sellout and like I was leaving behind what I planned to do my whole life. But once I joined the Facebook team, I realized this felt like another humanitarian project. I get to work with a talented group of people that have the same goals and just want to do good.

“At the end of the day, maps benefit us in so many ways and truly make people’s lives easier. So whether an organization uses it to get you an Uber faster, give you driving navigation, or an evacuation plan, the usage — and benefit — is endless.”

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32 | SPRING 2020

OUT OF MOVES Orlando’s affordable housing is a game of chance.

BY NICOLE DUDENHOFER ’17 In late 2019, Tamara Frazier ’19MPA won a lottery and collected a prize that would change her life.

Although it wasn’t a million-dollar jackpot, her prize — becoming a first-time homeowner — felt just as probable as winning the Powerball.

“I don’t think it’s really hit me yet,” says Frazier, a Miami native who recently acquired her home by winning a lottery for first-time homebuyer assistance. “It’s pretty surreal that I’m securing a foundation of my own and in a home I’ll hopefully have paid off within the next 30 years.”

While this is a goal for many people, 74 percent of people in the U.S. can’t afford a median-priced home in their community, according to a national property database. Housing is considered affordable only if the cost for rent or a mortgage plus utilities is below 30 percent of the household income.

Located in downtown Orlando’s Parramore neighborhood, Frazier’s new $205,000 three-bedroom, two-bath home has beautiful doors and the highest ceilings she’s ever seen in a house. The public administration grad estimates it would have taken her five years to save money for the $16,000 down payment she received in grants from Orlando’s Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA).

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A Historic Problem From the beginning, the federal government’s public housing policies weren’t intended to help the people struggling the most to afford homes.

34 | SPRING 2020

After the Great Depression, federally funded housing was created to revive the dwindling housing industry.

Working-class white people began living in these new, modern units until other housing opportunities became available in the 1950s. The Federal Housing Administration created single-family homes in the suburbs, but with one restriction: Black people couldn’t own them.

So the urban public housing that was once reserved for white people began to house underserved black families.

The shift in who could live there wasn’t the only thing that changed — so did the median income of residents.

In 1950, those living in public housing earned about 57 percent of the national median income. By 1970, they earned 29 percent, and in the 1990s they earned 17 percent, according to The Washington Post.

“In 1974, Section 8 was developed to help address the demand for affordable housing by providing subsidy vouchers for rental payments that allow people, in theory, to access housing in areas they want to live,” says UCF Assistant Professor Caroline Cheong. “But for many reasons, the voucher system has been shown to increase and perpetuate sociospatial racial segregation, and concentrations of poverty are not good for anyone.”

On the supply side, programs like the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit — which provides tax credits to developers who create affordable housing — were developed in the 1980s. But these units may not remain affordable forever. After 15 years, developers can seek to leave the program.

“Between now and 2030, about 7,000 units [in this area] will come out of tax credits,”

says Mark Brewer, CEO of the Central Florida Foundation and member of the UCF Master of Nonprofit Management Advisory Board. “Imagine you’ve lived somewhere for the last 14 years renting an apartment that’s perfectly affordable to you, and now your rent will rise to market rate.”

As low-cost housing has become more difficult to find each decade, the U.S. government is implementing a new resource to address the problem for the first time in a generation. In 2016, the Housing Trust Fund was developed to allocate $174 million, with at least 75 percent of the funds used to support extremely low-income renters.

Low Wages for Locals While construction is a constant in Orlando, the types of dwellings being built are mostly pricier homes and luxury apartments, with the average two-bedroom rental costing $1,200. These properties are out of the price range of the nearly 922,000 Floridians who spend more than 50 percent of their income on housing. They are one missed paycheck away from joining the state’s homeless

population, which is the third largest in the nation, according to the Sadowski Housing Coalition.

“I see every day how people can have different incomes, education levels, backgrounds or ethnicities and become homeless because of a reason they couldn’t have foreseen,” Frazier says. “It could be a medical bill they have to pay or their hours at work were cut, they were short a couple of dollars for rent, and now they’re evicted because they can’t afford their rent.”

The low wages in Orlando have a lot to do with one of the biggest economic drivers in the region: tourism. In 2017, the state’s tourism industry raked in $86 billion. Central Florida alone accounted for $35 billion, making it the biggest contributor in the state, says UCF Assistant Professor Amy Donley ’02 ’04MA ’08PhD. “This area has an image as the No. 1 tourist destination in the country and internationally, which is well deserved. But there are so many people in our community that are struggling,” Donley says. “Our reliance on hourly wage jobs doesn’t allow incomes to match our rent prices or just the cost of living here.”

ILLUSTRATIONS BY MATT CHASE

Instead, she only had to put down $1,000 of her own money.

“I knew that I wasn’t set on moving out of Orlando anytime soon, and just because of how much rent prices are here I thought about home ownership,” says Frazier, who was spending more than half of her income on rent and utilities before purchasing her home.

In 2019, Orlando was ranked the worst metropolitan city in the nation for affordable housing by the National Low Income Housing Coalition, with only 13 units available for every 100 extremely low-income renters — those whose income is at or below the poverty guideline. So local government and nonprofits are developing programs to provide solutions to the region’s housing problems.

Frazier is one of 17 homeowners in Parramore, a historically AfricanAmerican community that has a median household income of about $15,000, to receive aid from CRA’s program for first-time homeowners.

Another 42 homes in the community will become available for those who qualify for the program in the future.

The program requires recipients to secure a $120,000 loan and have ties to Parramore or work in public service, which Frazier fulfills as the coordinated entry supervisor for the Homeless Services Network of Central Florida.

“I’ve always been a grateful person, but seeing how people become homeless on a daily basis because they can’t afford to meet their basic needs makes me even more appreciative of the opportunity I was given,” Frazier says.

In the most basic sense, the affordable housing crisis in Orlando exists because the supply isn’t here to meet the demand of its 2.57 million residents. And as about 1,500 people move to Orlando each week, action is needed. So while these 59 homes will be life-changing for dozens of people, they are just one small solution to a systemic problem that began with the federal government decades ago.

About 280,000 hospitality workers across the metro OrlandoKissimmee-Sanford area make up the region’s largest workforce. These workers have a median hourly wage of $13.60. But adults in Orange County need to make at least $25 an hour to support themselves and one child, according to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s living wage calculator.

“You look at places like San Francisco, which is well known for having exorbitant housing prices, but their median income is so much higher because there are so many high-wage workers there,” Donley says. “We’re dealing with a larger base of lower-wage workers, so raising wages is essential to help the affordable housing problem. Every person should be able to afford housing, to eat and to get to work.”

Filling the Missing Middle One solution that Orange County is implementing is the recently approved Housing for All Task Force’s 10-year action plan, which UCF Assistant Professor Chia-Yuan Yu helped develop. By 2030, the goal is to preserve and create 30,300 affordable housing options. In December 2019, the Orange County Commission approved a $160 million housing trust to support the plan.

Within the task force, Yu served on a committee that analyzed the region to determine the best locations to create new housing, which would include single- and multi-family homes, multiplexes and townhomes.

They see the “missing middle” as one of the best options for these developments.

“Orlando is urban-sprawl development, so regions like Lake Nona and downtown Orlando are far away from each other,” Yu says.

“Instead of continuing to build sprawling developments, which make it more difficult to access jobs because Orlando doesn’t have a mass transit system, we are looking to utilize the space in between existing ones to fill the vacant land — the missing middle.”

Preserving Communities While locals wait for tens of thousands of residences to be built in Orlando’s missing middle over the next decade, thousands are

already popping up in the city’s downtown community as the region tries to address its current 60,000 housing unit shortage, according to Brewer.

“I do feel like there’s a lot happening so fast,” Frazier says.

“Just driving through the neighborhood every day, you see different properties being built and how downtown is developing. From my hometown in Miami I’ve seen what happens when the city goes in and uplifts a community and that can lean toward gentrification.”

Last year, the Central Florida Foundation created the Central Florida Regional Housing Trust (CFRHT) to address this concern by preventing home and rental prices in the area from potentially rising after the opening of UCF Downtown. From CFRHT’s inception, UCF faculty and staff have worked with the organization to develop plans that protect the community’s already existing residents.

“However much housing we build here, with 1,500 people a week moving here, we would never build our way out of the affordable housing problem,” Brewer says. “We have to find ways to repurpose and reset the market to allow access to housing for the talent pool of people living and trying to work here.”

To begin accomplishing this, the CFRHT partnered with the Florida Community Loan Fund and New Jersey Community Capital to create the Parramore Asset Stabilization Fund. By May 2020, the fund will provide refurbishments for 83 occupied homes in the community.

The residents in these homes were also given new annual leases with an average rent of about $600 a month with a guarantee their rent won’t increase by more than 2 percent a year for the next 10 years.

“UCF was very much one of the founding partners of the concept that ultimately became the Parramore Asset Stabilization Fund because the university wants to be a good partner in the community,” says Rob Panepinto, UCF’s director of Innovation Districts Strategy and Partnerships and chair of CFRHT’s Housing Action Team (CFHAT).

“As the Creative Village is expanding, there are concerns about folks being

pushed out of their homes, and we want to make sure we minimize that impact as best we can.”

Had the trust decided to entirely rebuild the homes, the average rent would have needed to be double because of the cost of construction, says CFRHT CEO Frank Wells.

“We talk a lot about new construction, but it actually costs close to $200,000 to build a new unit these days in this region,” Wells says. “We need to talk about how we preserve things that are already affordable because it’s certainly cheaper to buy and rehab something than it is to build something new.”

Funding Florida’s Affordable Housing In 1992, Florida created the Sadowski Affordable Housing Trust Fund to support affordable housing programs.

However, over the past decade legislators have redirected more than $2.2 billion from it to cover other costs. Sometimes these projects are housing

A Place Called Home Both Wells and Panepinto, among other experts, recognize that no single government program, action plan or housing trust has the resources needed to solve Orlando’s housing crisis.

“The reality is we collectively are probably going to need to do a hundred things, and when you add them all up, hopefully they’ll have the impact we all want on the community,” Panepinto says. “This is an issue that needs the public, business and philanthropic sectors working together effectively.”

To facilitate these partnerships, CFRHT created a $100 million fund through the CFHAT to incentivize private developers to build, renovate or save 25,000 affordable homes over the next decade. As each neighborhood is unique, Wells says it will take a lot of time and work to create appropriate solutions for each one.

“I think that we should feel hopeful about affordable housing solutions in Central Florida because now you’re seeing more strategic initiatives around this issue that we didn’t see two or three years ago,” Panepinto says.

Despite the troubling conditions around housing in Orlando, those who live and move here know there’s immense potential for a better life in this community as public and private institutions work together to solve the problem.

“Now that I have a place I can afford, I don’t see anything trying to pull me away from Orlando at all right now,” Frazier says. “So it’s really nice to come home every day to a place I can call my own.”

related, such as the $115 million in 2019 that went to the Panhandle to cover Hurricane Michael repairs, or it’s used to balance the legislative budget.

Experts agree in order to address the affordable housing crisis in Central Florida, it’s essential the Sadowski Fund go toward its intended purpose. In March, the Florida House and Senate agreed for the first time in 13 years to leave the entire fund untouched, dedicating $370 million to affordable housing programs for the 2021-22 fiscal year.

UCF Assistant Professor Amy Donley ’02 ’04MA ’08PhD sees another option for funding affordable housing: using Florida’s tourism tax. Other cities, such as Las Vegas, use their tourism tax to address major issues related to housing, such as homelessness and transportation. The funds raised from Florida’s tax are mainly spent on tourism and marketing for the region.

“I think it’s time we think about tourism as a bigger resource to support more essential needs for the actual residents of this community and the workers that are making the tourism industry happen every single day,” Donley says. “And that can only happen with legislative change.”

U C F. E D U / P E G A S U S | 3 5

AlumKnights

Laughter Is the Best Medicine

BY ANGIE LEWIS ’03

Blake Lynch ’14 is providing comic relief to nurses around the world.

Blake Lynch ’14 knows firsthand the pressures that nurses face.

They make important decisions that can have life or death consequences, and help people who often feel — and sometimes act — their worst. Where some might see an opportunity to complain, Lynch saw an opportunity to provide some comic relief.

“The male onesie [had just] come out, and I was like, ‘Oh my gosh, I have to make a scrub onesie!’ ” Lynch says.

That idea became a YouTube video, called “Scrub Romper,” in which he turns a pair of scrubs into a men’s romper and dances by a pool.

He posted it on his Facebook and YouTube pages and watched his online popularity soar.

“I got messages and comments from nurses and nursing students [from] all over the world,” Lynch says.

Today, “Nurse Blake” has almost a million Facebook followers, more than a half million Instagram followers and more than 86,000 YouTube subscribers. Through his social platforms, he shares light-hearted, self-made videos that include everything from “What Nursing Students Say” to “Medical TV Shows Be Like...”.

36 | SPRING 2020

“The turnover rate is high in nursing. Burnout is high. So I wanted to develop this community of nurses that can relate to one another and laugh. It’s OK to laugh about our jobs and laugh at ourselves,” Lynch says.

And while other medical professionals have received backlash for using patients as the butt of their jokes on TikTok and other social apps, Lynch consciously focuses his material around the lives of nurses and some of the funny things about the profession in general.

theatrical sets, lighting and video screens — attracts sold-out crowds comprised mostly of nurses and nursing students across the country.

“With my tour, I’m able to be myself and have my platform with my peers,” he says. “I surprise them because they don’t know a lot about me personally, and I take them through my whole nursing school and nursing journey.

It’s like a rock concert! They are so loud. We’re laughing the whole time, and then we’re crying. Then we’re laughing again. It’s so much fun.”

The turnover rate “ is high in nursing ...

Seas-ing the Opportunity

“It’s important that I put out content that uplifts nursing in a positive way and in one that doesn’t negatively affect our profession in how people see and treat nurses,” Lynch says.

As he’s grown his online community, Lynch wanted to do something that was beyond Nurse Blake. Having attended many conferences over the years, he says they’re often not the most fun or innovative. So he created his own: NurseCon at Sea, a cruise that includes nursing continuing education courses.

The first event, NurseCon at Sea 2020, sold out in two minutes. Setting sail out of Miami on April 27, the conference’s mission is to provide fun and engaging experiences where nurses and nursing students can come together, interact and share ideas.

“We have no sponsors. Everything we do is for the nurses,” Lynch says.

Calling Nurse Blake

Leading the Charge

I wanted to develop this community of nurses that can relate to one another and laugh.”

After participating in countless speaking engagements, Lynch decided to turn his stories and insights into his own personal show. Nurse Blake: The Call Light Tour — complete with

Before conceiving of Nurse Blake, Lynch used the power of social media to petition the Food and Drug Administration to amend an outdated policy that prevented gay

and bisexual men from donating blood, regardless of their health.

He discovered the policy after visiting a blood bank to help a classmate who got sick and needed a transfusion. Because he’s gay, Lynch was turned away and told he was banned from donating — for life.

Refusing to accept discrimination based solely on his sexual orientation, Lynch established Banned4Life, which sought to change the FDA’s policy. It took about two and a half years, but thanks to his determination and countless supporters, the movement succeeded in getting the FDA to revise its recommendations.

“As a nursing student from Orlando, I was able to take on the FDA,” he says.

“I realized the strength of my peers and the people who supported me because we can’t do things alone.”

The Face of Modern Nursing

As UCF celebrates its 40th anniversary of nursing excellence, the College of Nursing celebrates the evolution of the nursing industry and alumni like Lynch, who are influencing positive changes within it.

“With the power of the internet and social media, a lot more people are able to get a glimpse into what a nurse’s life is like on the clock and off,” Lynch says. “I think we’re getting to that point where there are so many of us, we [as nurses] have to realize that we do have the power to create change.”

PEGASUS

U C F. E D U / P E G A S U S | 3 7

Class Notes

Kristen Wiley ’14 and Theresa Joseph ’17 launched Statusphere, a marketing platform that connects social media influencers with brands. Wiley, an advertising and public relations major, is the founder and CEO. Joseph, a finance major, serves as director of operations.

Radio-television grad Brian Kleinschmidt ’04 and his wife, Mika, have a new show on HGTV called “100 Day Dream Home.” As part of the show that premiered in February, the husband-wife duo conceptualize, build and personalize homes from the ground up to be move-in ready in 100 days. “It’s very stressful, but also very rewarding when we see the smiles and excitement on our clients’ faces when they see their dream home for the first time,” he says.

To read more, visit bit.ly/UCF-HGTVSeriesAlumnus.

1974

1980

1992

1997

Philip Bates was listed in The Best Lawyers in America.

W. Dale Dietzman was inducted into the Florida DeMolay Hall of Fame.

Ron Boucher was named Art Director of the Year by the Orlando ADDYs.

Randy Chase is the co-owner and chief strategist at Rocket Chimp.

1975

1983

1994

Anne Kennedy Krieger is a senior sales consultant for Playmore West.

Randy Forrest retired after 34 years of service with the Florida Department of Corrections.

Scott Cookson was listed in The Best Lawyers in America.

1976 Rufus King retired but continues to assist with medical technological quality control at American Family Care.

1977

1984 John DeRosia retired from the Boeing Company after 34 years.

1985

W. Robert Vezina III was listed in The Best Lawyers in America.

Marisa Moks-Unger was named to the board of directors for the International Women’s Writing Guild.

1979

1986

Bill Trahan was selected as a Five Star Wealth Manager. He is a partner and certified financial planner at Carroll Financial Associates in Charlotte, NC.

Susan Bubbers is a dean, seminary professor and priest at the Atlas Theological Center in Celebration, FL.

1988 Gwenn (Morse) Marsh is the director of conference sales for the American Retirement Association.

38 | SPRING 2020

Holly Dorman is the assistant manager for community corrections with Orange County Corrections in Orlando.

Melissa (Lesser) Malone is a product owner at Ceridian, a human resources software and services provider.

1996 Agie Prissamto is a managing director at Global Innovation Resources in Indonesia.

Brian Slaughter earned a master of strategic studies from the U.S. Army War College. A lieutenant colonel, he serves as chief of staff for the U.S. Army Reserve Sustainment Command and as director of military solutions at Axon.

Craig Evans is the vice president for development at Rochester Regional Health.

1998 Nicole (Crisman) Milone is a financial advisor at Money Counts in Charlotte, NC. Gregory Kuzma represented the U.S. in the 2019 Interallied Confederation of Reserve Officers Military Pentathlon Competition in Tallinn, Estonia.

Dwight Morgan is the president and CEO for Associates Recruiting Talent.

2000 Kelly (Fitzgerald) Ashley is the owner and director of Kelly Ashley Consultancy, an education consulting and training company in England.

PEGASUS

2001 Heather (Hernandez) Maloney is a development director for the American Heart Association.

2002 Harsh Arora is a partner at Kelley Kronenberg in Fort Lauderdale, FL, where he manages the business litigation and corporate transactions department.

Evan Siegel was promoted to lieutenant colonel in the U.S. Air Force Reserve. He is a civil engineer officer under the 432nd Wing at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada.

Ryan Vescio joined ShuffieldLowman after serving 15 years as an assistant state attorney.

2004 April (Foster) Schoellnast teaches history at Palisades Charter High School.

2005 Taylor (Burgess) Gothard is the director of operations, registrar, and financial aid and distance education coordinator at Wright Graduate University in Chicago.

Joey Conicella is the co-founder of Yum Yum Cupcake Truck and opened Hungry Pants restaurant in Orlando.

Meghan Garvey was promoted to director of ticket operations for the Brooklyn Nets.

Vanja Grbic ’06MBA is an animal welfare activist and vegan blogger who launched Vanja’s Vegan Challenge.

Alexis (Hague) Daly is vice president for operations at 317 Virtual Services.

Stephen G. McCosker ’08MS ’08MPA retired after 27 years with the Ocoee Police Department and has taken a job with the Crestview Police Department.

Derek Nankivil was promoted to principal engineer of vision products at Johnson & Johnson Vision Care in Jacksonville, FL.

2006 Elizabeth Eichinger is senior coordinator of programs at Emory University.

Ashley (Garner) Witkovich was elected to Northglenn City Council in Colorado.

Ryan Young is associate director of residential living at Temple University.

2007 Kristin Aiello ’10MPA is the director of communications for the Preservation Foundation of Palm Beach, FL.

2010 Armando Diaz is a vice president at Cornerstone Government Affairs in Washington, D.C. Matt Goodyear is head of human resources for Wild Fork Foods in Doral, FL. Brett Hodges is the owner of Cyberblack, a cybersecurity consulting firm in Washington, D.C.

Nicholas Fouraker was elected mayor of Belle Isle, FL. He was also listed among Orlando Business Journal’s 2019 40 Under 40.

Lisa Kipersztok is a primary care physician and maternity provider at Virginia Garcia Memorial Health Center in Beaverton, OR.

Katie McCain won an Emmy for her role as lead producer of Nike’s “Dream Crazy” commercial. She is a senior producer at Wieden+Kennedy.

Jennifer Jacobs started Wandering Whisk Bakeshop in St. Petersburg, FL, and was featured on Food Network’s Holiday Baking Championship: Christmas in July.

Jason Ring is the global director of travel for Houlihan Lokey.

Bill Schrader is the president and owner of Discount Water Supply, a water conditioning, treatment and filtration provider in Sanford, FL.

Joseph Meuse is an account manager at Flip.to, a social platform that helps businesses attract customers.

Vanessa (Rivera) Dutcher is a tax manager at Westgate Resorts.

Raul Roman wrote two articles for Advanced Aquarist magazine: “A Detailed Look at the Home Aquarium Husbandry of the Spotted Garden Eel” and “The Internet Accessible Aquarium for the Budget Conscious Aquarist.”

2011 Tara Adams ’18MBA is a financial analyst at Lockheed Martin.

Kamar Aiken opened a Miami Grill franchise in Orlando.

Christine (Disturco) White ’14MA is an academic coordinator at Palm Beach State College.

2012 Ashley Bolling is the owner of Closet Freekz International clothing company.

Spencer Frank earned a PhD in mechanical engineering from University of California, Berkeley.

He is an algorithm engineer at Dexcom in San Diego.

2008 Ryan Diaz ’10MS was named among NJBiz’s 2019 Forty Under 40 winners.

He is a sales engineer for DelRen HVAC. Joshua Johnson is supervisor of warehouse operations at PSAV, an event production company.

Sarah (Wood) Flischel graduated from the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants’ Leadership Academy.

2009 Jason DelGrosso is the associate director of sales at Hyatt Centric in Fort Lauderdale, FL. Ryan Ernde is the multimedia manager at Levo Health in Tampa.

Anthony Fernandez is the owner of Sole Premise, travel bags designed to carry and protect shoes.

Jen Rosen was nominated for an Emmy for ABC’s Shark Tank. She is casting manager for the show.

Cristina Venturini is the director of marketing and sales for the Orlando Philharmonic.

Two Knights reached new heights after hiking all 2,200 miles of the Appalachian Trail.

Randy Forrest ’83 (above) took on the journey after retiring from the Florida Department of Corrections.

Ricardo Luna ’18 (left) completed the trek before becoming a research assistant in the Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences.

U C F. E D U / P E G A S U S | 3 9

Erica Spitzley is the social media coordinator for Not Your Mother’s Hair.

Ruben Vazquez earned a master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Florida.

Kaylin (Woodring) Arellano is a marketing coordinator at AdventHealth.

2018 Jared Cole is a financial representative at Northwestern Mutual.

Perri (Faulk) Ritter is the owner of Parties by Perri, a Central Florida event-planning business.

Rachel Meinke wrote the YA book Along for the Ride, which was optioned by Picturestart.

Aneshai Smith is the owner and CEO of Grand Openings, a marketing agency.

Tiffany Smith is a case manager supervisor at Devereux Advanced Behavioral Health.

Linh Dang ’93 (right) may have graduated from UCF, but her passion for the university never ended. As the chief development officer at Addition Financial Credit Union, where she oversaw the company’s recent rebranding, the accounting major has worked to strengthen the relationship between her employer and alma mater. For her service to UCF, as a member of both the UCF Alumni Board and the College of Business’ Dean’s Advisory Board, Dean Paul Jarley recently presented her with an Honorable Knight Award during the college’s Hall of Fame gala.

Kelly (Hodges) McKinnon ’14MAT teaches AP English at St. Petersburg Catholic High School.

Jacob Mitchell is an account executive at Groupon.

Kathryn Nagib ’16MNM received Volusia County’s 2019 Young Professional of the Year Award.

She is a development director at Halifax Health.

2014 Edan Cummings is a piping engineer at Siemens.

Jennifer (Zambrano) Jones is an associate broker at Foundry Commercial in Orlando.

2015

2013

Peter Reyes is the director of services at Renaissance Birmingham Ross Bridge Golf Resort & Spa in Alabama.

Elizabeth Joseph is the owner of the Joseph Law Firm.

Justin Schmidt earned an MBA from the University of Kansas.

Christopher Orlando earned an MD from Xavier University and is working as a transplant surgery and medical genetics research assistant at Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, FL.

Keith White earned a JD from Western Michigan University.

Isabelle Saint Joy is an academic advisor at Valencia College.

40 | SPRING 2020

2016 Alaa Fadhel is a lecturer at Al-Furat Al-Awsat Technical University in Iraq.

Tom Hall is the director of the Coalition for a Drug-Free Community for Florida’s Orange County.

Erika (Johnson) Talley teaches third grade for Hillsborough County Public Schools.

Amy Maitner is an attorney with Winderweedle, Haines, Ward & Woodman.

Julie Vincent is the vice president and chief clinical officer for AdventHealth’s operations in Flagler, Lake and Volusia counties in Florida.

2017 Sierra Brown is a kindergarten teacher at Chester Shell Elementary School in Hawthorne, FL. Isabel Enriquez received a Florida 2019 Excellence in Education Award.

She teaches at Keene’s Crossing Elementary School.

Kevin Green will represent the U.S. at the Invictus Games in the Netherlands in May 2020.

2019 Victoria Pace is a licensed real estate agent with Coldwell Banker in Lake Mary, FL.

In Memoriam Anna Gietl ’09 died on October 4, 2019.

Associate lecturer Cyrus Azimi died on January 14, 2020.

Former art professor Jagdish Chavda died on November 4, 2019. He joined FTU in 1972 as a lecturer and went on to become the first tenured professor to teach in the graphic design program at UCF. He worked at UCF for 39 years before his retirement in 2011.

Former men’s basketball head coach Chuck Machock died on January 4, 2020. He led the Knights from 1983–85 with a 2531 record, and ushered the team into the NCAA Division I ranks.

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ALUMNI AUTHORS

Casey Tennyson ’83 wrote Catalyst in Palm Beach.

Anh Nguyen Phillips ’94 co-wrote The Technology Fallacy: How People Are the Real Key to Digital Transformation.

Joseph Brazer ’95 wrote A Different Shade of Travel (Home and Abroad).

Bridget Holder ’98 wrote the children’s book Sunflower Field.

KNIGHT RIDE

Kelly (Fitzgerald) Ashley ’00 wrote Word Power: Amplifying Vocabulary Instruction.

Luis O. Ramos Jr. ’10 co-wrote the children’s book When Pencil Met Eraser, which was named one of the 30 Best Kids’ Books of 2019 by Parents magazine.

KnightYourRide.com

Elaine Ewertz ’17 wrote The Devil You Know.

*Plus taxes and renewal fees. Funds support the future of UCF.

NCAA COMPLIANCE

assistant coach provided or arranged for the

On July 19, 2019, the NCAA Division I

prospect to receive impermissible lodging

Committee on Infractions panel approved

and transportation.

The UCF Athletics Compliance office

found that UCF’s former head women’s cross

conducted an investigation and promptly

country/track and field coach (head coach)

self-reported violations after an athletics

violated NCAA head coach control rules

staff member notified the compliance

when she did not promote an atmosphere for

staff that the prospect commented about

compliance and failed to monitor a former

practicing with the team. Following the

assistant women’s cross country coach

self-report, the institution and enforcement

(assistant coach). The former assistant coach

staff conducted a collaborative investigation.

violated NCAA ethical conduct rules when

The committee approved UCF’s and the

he refused to participate in an interview with

Enforcement Staff’s agreed-upon penalties,

the NCAA enforcement staff after separating

including a one-year probationary period

from the university.

from July 19, 2019 through July 18, 2020.

Specifically, during the Fall 2017

ORDER ONLINE Skip the line at the tax collector’s office. Upgrade to the UCF plate today — just $25*.

Alexa Riccardi Cabal ’12 ’16MS wrote Get More Than Coffee: The Ultimate Internship Guide & Planner.

a negotiated resolution agreement, which

NEW!

UCF will continue its efforts of promoting

semester, the head coach and the assistant

a culture of compliance throughout the

coach impermissibly permitted a prospective

university community and its goals of

student-athlete (prospect) to engage in

becoming a national model for athletics

practice and other team activities with

compliance. If you have any questions,

the women’s cross country and women’s

please call UCF Athletics Compliance

track and field programs. Additionally, the

at 407-823-3089.

SHARE YOUR NEWS Send us your announcements and high-resolution photos (minimum 3 megapixels, 300 dpi).

Submissions are included as space permits. Class notes may be edited for length and clarity, and may be published in any medium.

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PHONE

407.823.2586 U C F. E D U / P E G A S U S | 4 1

Weddings & Births 1

1

Gwenn Morse ’88 ’90MBA married Cliff Marsh on July 12, 2019.

17 Michael Byrd ’09 and wife Sanna welcomed Samuel Henry Leon on August 9, 2019.

2

David Keller ’99 and wife Andrea welcomed Easton John on March 29, 2019.

18 Douglas Del Vecchio ’09 married Marissa Hoover on May 11, 2019.

3

Corey Appelbaum ’00 and wife Jyl welcomed Benjamin Elijah on September 21, 2019.

19 Ryan Ernde ’09 and wife Tina welcomed Grace Harper on December 28, 2018.

Laureen (Johnson) Swaby ’00 and husband Kevin welcomed Lorenzo on July 18, 2019.

4 Jonathan Sanchez ’02 and wife Nicole welcomed Sia Brielle on April 29, 2019.

20 Aubrey Gainey ’09 ’15MA and Justin Shmalberg welcomed Norie Cove on September 26, 2018.

21 Cassandra Lake ’09 married Daniel Smith ’07 on February 28, 2019.

5

Lauren (Chmiel) Betancourt ’04 ’10MS and husband Steven welcomed Summer Jolie on July 29, 2019.

22 Randi (Shaw) ’09 and Chris Whitcomb ’08 welcomed Tyler Knight on October 9, 2019.

6

April Foster ’04 married Eric Schoellnast ’11 on July 20, 2019.

23 Lauren (Yon) ’09 ’17DNP and Chris Morata ’09 welcomed Alden in March 2019.

7

Melissa (Lanzone) ’06 and Steve More ’06 welcomed Hudson Edward on July 14, 2019.

24 Katelyn (Judge) ’10 ’13MEd and Ryan Diaz ’08 ’10MS welcomed Summer and Cheyenne on October 27, 2018.

8

Christine (Avery) ’07 and Andrew Bradley ’03 welcomed Dean Maverick on July 8, 2019.

25 Sarah Peerani ’10 married Colin Forward ’12 ’13MBA on July 5, 2019.

9

Ashley (Squillante) ’07 ’09MA and Patrick McDaniel ’07 welcomed Kelly Rose on January 19, 2019.

26 Lydia Pinho ’10 and Otavio Martins ’10 welcomed João de Moraes on April 5, 2019.

10 DeeDee ’07 and Rich ’83 Walker welcomed their first grandchild in April 2019.

27 Cassie (Policastro) ’10 and Chase McCue ’18 welcomed Carina Ruth on January 29, 2019.

11 Jenna (Barnes) ’08 and Wesley Halliwell ’03 welcomed Catherine Raye on June 25, 2019.

28 Vanessa Rivera ’10MST married Randall Dutcher ’11 ’12MSA on October 26, 2019.

12 Amanda (Burd) ’08 and Gary Englander ’07 welcomed Allison Jane on July 21, 2019.

29 Tom Whitcomb ’10 and wife Cayla welcomed Reagan Mae on October 18, 2019.

Daniel Elkin ’08 married Erica Novak on November 16, 2019.

30 Brendan Davis ’11 ’15MS married Taylor Williamson on June 6, 2019.

13 Annie (Fleming) ’08 ’10MBA and Mike O’Donnell ’07 ’09MA welcomed Luke on January 14, 2019.

31 Kasey (Harrell) ’11 and Brendan Albright ’12 welcomed Dylan James on September 28, 2019.

14 Victoria (Franzese) Nuss ’08 ’10MA ’17EdD and husband Steve welcomed Hudson Michael on September 29, 2019.

32 Kelly Jacob ’11 married Adam Edwards ’14 on October 20, 2019.

15 Joshua Johnson ’08 married Erin Esche on May 19, 2018.

16 Daniela (Adarve) ’09 and Adam Hafley ’09 welcomed Brooks Makena on July 10, 2019.

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33 Erin (Potoka) ’11 and Rick Klemowich ’10 welcomed Crew on November 1, 2019.

34 Lisa (Sternschein) ’11 and Garrett Dunn ’09 welcomed Max Danger on March 19, 2019.

35 Tyler Winik ’11 married Nick Oyler ’15 on September 7, 2019.

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Weddings & Births 36

36 Angelina (Barone) Hill ’12 and husband Mark welcomed Nathan James on September 9, 2019.

51 Samantha Castro ’16 married Francisco Huaitalla ’16 on June 8, 2019.

37 Alexandra Hayth ’12 married Brian Hill on October 26, 2019.

52 Cristina Figueroa ’16 married Jose Hernandez Garzon ’17 on October 9, 2018.

38 Kelly (Hodges) ’12 ’14MAT and Taylor McKinnon ’13 welcomed Fallon on June 11, 2019.

53 Lianny Hernandez ’16 married Laurenzo Richardson on November 8, 2019.

39 Allison (Miller) ’12 and Josh Hurtado ’10 welcomed Olive Joan on October 3, 2019.

54 Joseph Holland ’16 married Karly Whitehead on October 6, 2018.

40 Juliana Divito ’13 married John Conley ’13 ’15MA on June 8, 2019.

55 Erika Johnson ’16 married James Talley ’16 on November 16, 2018.

41 Vanessa (Escobar) ’13 and Mitchell Johnson ’13 welcomed Nolan on March 1, 2019.

56 Jillian Manz ’16 married John Costallos ’14 on November 3, 2019.

42 Evija (Vilde) Shulman ’13 ’14MBA ’15MS and husband Jeremy welcomed Mila on September 19, 2018.

57 Vanessa Rinker ’16 ’18MA married Sage Stephens on October 11, 2019.

43 Rima Alicka ’14 married Giorgio Filosa ’15MD on August 3, 2019.

58 Heather Falcon ’17 married Ephraim McCormick ’09 on October 6, 2019.

44 Danielle (DuBois) ’14 and Trey Schexnayder ’14 welcomed Luke on September 25, 2019.

59 Danyella Rojas ’17 married Rubin York ’16 on May 4, 2018.

45 Carly McCarthy ’14 married Aaron Hollowell ’14 on November 2, 2019.

60 Ashley Vassar ’17 married Cody Johnson on May 10, 2019.

46 Cristina (Perez) ’14 and Tim Griffin ’14 welcomed Aubrey in July 2019.

61 Kaylin Woodring ’17 married Alex Arellano ’14 on October 20, 2019.

47 Kort Rantala ’14 married Kinsey Stephens on September 1, 2019.

62 Michelle Bhagwandin ’18 married Michael Jones II on October 17, 2019.

48 Galo Reyes ’14MA and wife Tabitha welcomed Eros Nicolá on May 9, 2019.

63 Michelle (Burque) ’18 and Carlos Dawson ’12 welcomed Sebastian on August 2, 2019.

49 Jennifer Castano ’15 married Nikolaus Honaker ’15 on December 29, 2018.

64 Rachael (Shoemaker) ’18 and Eric Hodges ’12 welcomed Jack on September 6, 2019.

Emily Layton ’15 welcomed Layton Rain Matthews on May 28, 2018.

65 Breena McCarthy ’18 married Gabriel Babilonia ’16 on October 13, 2019.

50 Brooke (Allen) Boughner ’16 and husband Jacob welcomed Charlotte Mae on August 18, 2019.

Anna Scott ’19 married Quentin West on October 19, 2019.

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Why I _____________________

BY JEFF KUNERTH A writer I admire equates reading to travel: No matter where you are, no matter what you are reading, it takes you to a different place.

I equate riding a bicycle to freedom: No matter what you ride, no matter where you go, you are getting away.

My love of bike riding began as a child. Learning to ride extended the range of my world growing up in Ames, Iowa.

I was beyond the reach, sight and influence of my parents.

I rode from the familiar to the unknown. The bike took me places far beyond the range of my feet: all the way to downtown Ames and beyond where the houses ended and the cornfields began.

Bike riding as a boy was all about independence, never about fitness.

As an adult, cycling is my favorite form of exercise. It’s my ride to a healthier lifestyle. But it is still about freedom.

A car can get you where you want to go faster, but it can’t go farther than a bike. It’s possible to ride across a state — which I have — or the nation.

My home state is host to RAGBRAI, or the Register’s Annual Great Bike Ride Across Iowa, a seven-day, cross-state bike ride organized by The Des Moines Register that annually attracts 10,000 cyclists.

You can drive a car across Iowa’s 310 miles in about six hours. But what you miss are the small farm towns spaced about 10 miles apart, the distinct Iowa downtowns, the way cornfields wave in the wind, and the genuine hospitality of Iowans.

Along the RAGBRAI route, Iowans offer you homemade rhubarb pie, free water, fresh fried pork chops. The money raised by RAGBRAI riders funds high school senior trips to Washington, D.C., volunteer fire departments, and small Methodist churches with their fine spaghetti dinners.

The distance between overnight host towns varies from 50 to 80 miles with a 100-mile option available during the ride. To many people (including my sons when they were young), riding a bike 80 miles seems more like a punishment than pleasure. But for me it is pure freedom: freedom from work, freedom from bills; freedom from habit and routine; freedom from television, computers and the internet; freedom from obligations, responsibilities, duties and chores.

Long-distance cycling distills life to what is important in the moment: the next mile, the next town, reaching the final destination. There is an acute awareness of which way the wind is blowing. You hear from parts of your body you did not know existed. When all you have to do that day is ride a bike, life can seem pretty simple.

46 | SPRING 2020

RAGBRAI, now in its 50th year, begat other cross-state rides. I’ve cycled across Florida, Georgia, North Carolina and Virginia. Because of my bike, I know the roadside version of those states through the vistas of hills, fields, woods, farmhouses, small towns and cities.

As a transplanted Iowan, I was involved in the Orlando Sentinel’s bike ride across Florida in the 1980s, which lives on — 40 years later — as the Florida Freewheelers club’s Florida Bicycle Safari.

Through the years of biking across Florida, I’ve gained a closer relationship with a state that is unfriendly, if not hostile, toward cyclists. According to a 2019 report from AAA, Florida is the deadliest state for cyclists, and the Tampa-St. Petersburg area, Jacksonville, Orlando and Miami claimed the top four spots for deadliest metro areas in the nation. In exercising your freedom here, you may jeopardize your life.

The antidote to potentially getting run over by a car is to use the growing number of paved bike paths throughout the state. I’ve ridden them all while compiling a book, Florida’s Paved Bike Trails, which includes 76 bike paths from Pensacola to Key West. More paved trails are on the way, including plans to link existing paths from Titusville to St. Petersburg in the 250-mile Florida Coast-to-Coast Trail.

One of those many bikes paths, the Seminole Wekiva Trail, passes near my home. I can ride my bike on it from Altamonte Springs to Lake Mary and cross a bridge over I-4 to the Cross Seminole Trail that takes me through Winter Springs and into Oviedo. From there, I can ride the Cady Way Trail, which runs through Winter Park to join the Orlando Urban Trail that ends — for now — in downtown Orlando.

A ride like that takes all day. You end up exhausted but exhilarated, tired but stronger.

Over the course of my life, I’ve ridden my bikes thousands of miles. These days, while I’m still working, I get out a couple of times a week — never less than 20 miles and seldom more than 50.

But there’s one thing I’ve noticed: The older I get, the better, lighter, more expensive bike my body needs — it’s easier on the legs and needs less effort to go longer or faster.

Freedom, as they say, isn’t free.

Jeff Kunerth is a lecturer in journalism at UCF. He joined the faculty after 41 years as a reporter with the Orlando Sentinel, where he won numerous awards including being named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in 2013.

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PURPLE MARTINS MAJESTY Assistant research scientist Anna Forsman adds nesting gourds to one of 12 poles that were recently placed around UCF’s main campus for the Purple Martin Project, which will help students study the bird’s nesting habits.

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