Momentum 2023 | USF Sarasota-Manatee

MOMENTUM UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA SARASOTA-MANATEE 2023

HERE WE...

ELEVATE

INNOVATE DISCOVER

GROW.

USF SARASOTA-MANATEE

FEATURES USF STUDENTS TRANSFORM LIVES 8 Organizers hope donor-backed

mentorship program boosts middle schoolers' reading abilities

MINDFULNESS 12 The ancient practice may combat

stress to improve decision-making and performance outcomes

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MOMENTUM: UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA SARASOTA-MANATEE

RESEARCH 16 STUDENT The 2023 Student Research Showcase featured presentations and posters from students across the university

22 CYBERSECURITY Interdisciplinary team uses new

approaches to protect clients from cyber criminals

WE GROW 26 HERE Expansion projects will reshape

Sarasota-Manatee campus — and the entire community

ON TAP 38 RESEARCH The local craft brewing industry is

booming, and USF Sarasota-Manatee faculty and students are ready to work

Momentum is published by USF Research and Innovation and the Office of University Communications and Marketing on the Sarasota-Manatee campus.

EDITORIAL Director for Research and Innovation Sandra Justice Director of Communications and Marketing Danielle McCourt Editor Danielle McCourt Content Editors Georgia Jackson and Marc R. Masferrer Design Editor Kim McDonald Contributing Writers Kevin Burke Georgia Jackson Marc R. Masferrer USF SARASOTA-MANATEE LEADERSHIP Karen A. Holbrook Regional Chancellor Eddie Beauchamp Regional Vice Chancellor for Business and Financial Affairs Darren Gambrell Associate Director for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Kristi Hoskinson Assistant Vice President for Strategic Initiatives Sandra Justice Director for Research and Innovation Brett Kemker Regional Vice Chancellor and Vice Provost, Academic Affairs and Student Success Danielle McCourt Director for Communications and Marketing Marrie Neumer Associate Vice President of Advancement Greg Smogard Assistant Vice President of Innovation and Business Development Casey Welch Assistant Vice President for External Affairs and Government Relations CAMPUS BOARD

RESEARCH

UNIVERSITY

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PROJECT PARASOL HEARING INTERVENTION CYBERCRIME GLOBAL CITIZENS TRANSATLANTIC PARTNERSHIP

LETTERS FROM LEADERSHIP RECORD GIFT ON THE BOOKSHELF BOUNDLESS BULLS NURSING/STEM

Frederick Piccolo, Chair Lisa Carlton Anila Jain Bill Mariotti Diana Michel Ernie Withers The University of South Florida, a member of the Association of American Universities, is a high-impact research university with campuses in Tampa, St. Petersburg and Sarasota-Manatee.

ON THE COVER Construction is well underway on the student center and residence hall on the USF Sarasota-Manatee campus.

Photo: Austin Lavoie, Communications and Marketing

SARASOTAMANATEE.USF.EDU/MAGAZINE

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FROM THE REGIONAL CHANCELLOR

IN JUNE, THE UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA was invited to join the prestigious Association of American Universities, a high honor that recognizes USF as a preeminent research institution.

USF is only the third Florida university with membership in the AAU. We are also excited about the expansion of our campus with two new facilities, the student center and residence hall and the Nursing/STEM academic building, and the addition of academic programs that will increase our research opportunities. Both of these announcements translate into significant benefits for USF and for our community.

Some of the research we are doing at USF SarasotaManatee with impact for our community is featured in this first edition of our Momentum magazine (formerly Research: USFSM): • Campus Dean Cheryl Ellerbrock of the College of Education and Assistant Professor Lindsay Persohn are leading a program funded by Sarasota philanthropists Joe and Mary Kay Henson for sixth-graders at Booker Middle School who need a mentor to help them experience the joy of reading and learning. Our students are the mentors.

• Michelle Arnold, an associate professor in the College of Behavioral and Community Sciences, is part of a research team that found hearing aids and other interventions can slow mental deterioration in older adults vulnerable to cognitive decline because of dementia or other conditions.

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• Brooke Hansen and Paul Kirchman are among faculty in the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management and the College of Arts and Sciences who are researching how to apply principles of sustainability to fields ranging from cross-cultural tourism communications to liquor distilling and beer-making.

• Jody McBrien, a professor in the School of Interdisciplinary Global Studies, is applying her experiences gained on a recent sabbatical in Europe into a first-ever study of the motivations of expatriate women from the United States and other countries for such travel and the contributions they are making to their communities overseas.

• Criminologists and cybersecurity experts are working together to develop means of protection from threats in the online world to our money and safety.

• Lisa Penney, professor of management in the Muma College of Business, is researching how mindfulness can lead to better decision-making, especially in moments of stress.

All of this wonderful work, and more, by our faculty and students is occurring at an exceptionally exciting moment in the history of the Sarasota-Manatee campus.

Consolidation of all three USF campuses has also allowed us to expand the opportunities for our students in their classwork and research. Rather than having 40 majors for them to consider, 220 majors are now open to all students.

We plan to expand pre-professional programs in the health sciences and start new programs in collaboration with the College of Engineering and others being developed at Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport. We will discuss some of these exciting ventures in a future issue.

I invite you to enjoy this magazine and the interesting work that these stories recognize.

Karen A. Holbrook Regional Chancellor, USF Sarasota-Manatee

LETTERS FROM LEADERSHIP BRETT E. KEMKER, Regional Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs and Student Success and Vice Provost The University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee campus is a vibrant academic community made up of accomplished students, faculty and staff who find it the perfect place to pursue and nurture their aspirations in the classroom, laboratory and beyond.

We remain committed to strengthening our campus community as we continue to grow with the Sarasota-Manatee area that has been our home for some 50 years. Student enrollment boomed, from about 6,800 students in 2018 to almost 14,500 this year, as we expanded our academic offerings, both at the undergraduate and graduate levels, to meet student interest and employer demands in myriad fields, including education, tourism and hospitality management, cybersecurity and risk management and insurance.

USF’s admission to the elite Association of American Universities (AAU), a recognition of what we have accomplished with our research and other endeavors, as well as planning for a new Nursing/STEM building, will create even more opportunities to elevate the Sarasota-Manatee campus’s academic reputation and the demand for what we offer.

We are also growing physically. When our new student center and residence hall opens in the fall of 2024, our campus community will be forever transformed. The new building, which is quickly taking shape, promises to be a center of living and learning overlooking Sarasota Bay, and a point of Bull pride, that will foster a new, dynamic community for the 200 students who live in the building — and anyone else fortunate to study, teach and work on the Sarasota-Manatee campus.

This magazine celebrates the impact of the wonderful research and other work being done by our faculty and students across our campus and in the communities we serve, from a Sarasota middle school to local craft breweries and distilleries to overseas “classrooms” in exciting locations like Serbia and France.

And it looks forward, like everyone who loves the USF Sarasota-Manatee campus, with relentless optimism to the new, stronger communities we are helping to build.

SANDRA JUSTICE, Associate Director of USF Research and Innovation Researchers at USF SarasotaManatee generated more than $5 million in research expenditures to support advances in immersive technology in hospitality, employee engagement and leadership, inclusive hearing health, arts-integrated education and cybersecurity. The mantra of National Science Foundation Director Sethuraman Panchanathan, "Innovation anywhere, opportunity everywhere," underscores how critically important it is to activate talent, invite ideas and optimize innovation ecosystems.

Today’s students are tomorrow’s leaders. STEM-degree graduates are in high demand, pursuing careers that are more recession-proof, and earn significantly higher salaries than non-degree jobs. The planned Nursing/ STEM building on the USF Sarasota-Manatee campus will help remove barriers for students seeking STEM degrees, which is crucial to maintaining global competitiveness.

Kudos to our faculty for their awards, for demonstrating their dedication to excellence and for advancing the knowledge enterprise. Cihan Cobanoglu, McKibbon endowed dean of the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management, received the McCool Breakthrough Award for his innovative achievements in the hospitality industry. Faizan Ali, an associate professor in the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management, received an Outstanding Research Achievement Award for distinguished contributions to the field, particularly for developments in recent research methodologies for consumer behavior and human-computer interaction in the industry.

Denise Davis-Cotton, director of the Florida Center for Partnerships in Arts Integrated Teaching (PAInT) received $2.6 million from the U.S. Department of Education to bring arts-integrated pedagogy to civics classrooms. Over three years, the project, titled “Bill of Writes Storytellers,” will bring together 24 classroom teachers from Illinois, California and Washington D.C., 12 teaching artists and 24 community members in 12 nonprofit public charter school organizations to encourage student involvement through project-based learning and promote artsintegrated pedagogy.

I hope that you enjoy learning about the research happening here, and I invite you to visit the campus. Here we grow!

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Camp at College

HospitaBull

BUILDING MOMENTUM.

Student Center & Residential Housing Groundbreaking

College of Education Signing Day

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MLK Day Food Drive

USF Sarasota-Manatee student mentors a sixth grader at Booker Middle School in Sarasota.

USF STUDENTS TRANSFORM THE LIVES OF SARASOTA MIDDLE SCHOOLERS Organizers hope donor-backed mentorship program boosts middle schoolers' reading abilities

BY MARC R. MASFERRER

M

ore than two dozen students from the University of South Florida’s SarasotaManatee campus took on a bold mission during the 2022-23 school year: With the support of Sarasota philanthropists Joe and Mary Kay Henson and their Henson Fund, USF students became mentors for sixth graders from one of Sarasota’s most economically disadvantaged public middle schools, taught them about the transformative power of reading and demonstrated the

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campus’s ability to address an issue challenging the community.

And they created friendships that may change lives.

The school year ended in May and early indications, based on feedback from Booker Middle School officials and interviews project organizers have conducted with some of the 24 USF mentors, suggest they made a big difference for the middle schoolers and in addressing the Hensons’ goal of having all children read at grade level.

“Booker has told us that their assessment scores have improved for their sixth-grade group,” said Lindsay Persohn, an assistant professor of literacy studies on the Sarasota-Manatee campus and one of the leaders of the project. “They said their reading scores were higher than they’ve been.”

The Booker Literacy Project, however, was not

Transforming Lives

primarily about raising scores on standardized tests. The bigger goal was to have the USF students establish caring, mentoring relationships—even friendships as “adult others” — with 27 sixth graders at Booker and foster in them a belief in themselves and an appreciation for, if not a love of, reading and learning.

Leadership at the USF Sarasota-Manatee campus and at the College of Education are excited about the program’s possibilities.

“We are delighted to work in partnership with Joe and Mary Kay Henson to support our local schools. This project is one example of how the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee campus and dedicated community members can address a pressing need in the community and change the lives of school children,” said Brett Kemker, vice provost and regional vice chancellor at the Sarasota-Manatee campus.

“Through the generosity of Mr. and Mrs. Henson, the commitment of the College of Education and its faculty, support of the USF SarasotaManatee campus leadership and partnership with Sarasota County Schools, we were able to successfully pilot a literacy initiative that has the potential to change the lives of youth in Sarasota. As dean of the College of Education, it is initiatives such as this that make all we do worthwhile,” said Anthony Rolle, dean of the College of Education.

Cheryl Ellerbrock, dean of the College of Education on the Sarasota-Manatee campus, was one of the organizers of the Booker project.

“Our goal is for these amazing sixth graders to

become life-long readers and learners, that they quest for knowledge and understanding and that they realize they have the potential inside themselves to achieve their dreams,” Ellerbrock said.

Booker is the only Title I middle school in the Sarasota County School District. About four out of five students receive a free or reduced-price lunch each day. Both a magnet and a neighborhood school, it draws students of varying reading abilities from across Sarasota County.

The USF students had contact with just about every sixth grader at the school as they assisted teachers in their classrooms as tutors each Friday. But it was their one-on-one mentoring of a select number of students that made the Booker Literacy Project unique.

Based on survey information the USF organizers gathered from the mentees and mentors — for example, what kinds of books do they like to read? — Booker officials matched the USF students with sixth graders in a “Secret Society Cherly Ellerbrock was of Readers,” to one of the organizers of make it more the Booker project. like a club built on relationships rather than another remedial program that might carry a social stigma.

How the relationships between college students and middle schoolers started and evolved was entirely up to them. Organizers provided professional learning and gave the mentors prompts, but what resulted was entirely organic, made possible just by the USF students’ willingness to be present and attentive to the Booker students.

“They’re not quite an authority figure like a teacher

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“

would be, but they’re not background is and what another sixth-grade student,” their home life looks like. said Dulcey Hunter, an Then they work to support Our goal is for these amazing education doctoral student their students to really find sixth graders to become lifeand one of the organizers of success in their schooling long readers and learners, that the initiative. “They really look and, of course, ultimately in they quest for knowledge and up to the college students. their lives.”

They just think that they are As in any true friendship, understanding and that they so amazing and the coolest the Booker students were not realize they have the potential people in the world. By their the only ones who benefited. inside themselves to achieve very presence and sharing Hunter and Karyn Mendez, their dreams. their own experiences, the a doctoral candidate helping - Cheryl Ellerbrock USF students are affirming to organize the project, and reinforcing the idea that recounted how some of you can do this, too, one day. the mentors told them You can continue to learn and that participating in the to give back to your community.” project had renewed their own appreciation for reading, Hunter called it a “near peer” relationship. Ellerbrock especially for enjoyment. Reconnecting with themselves and Persohn said the goal was for the USF students to as readers gave them another way to connect with the become “adult others” in the lives of the middle schoolers. middle schoolers.

“The mentorship aspect looks a lot like friendship,” “Quite a few of the mentors that I talked to,” Mendez Persohn said. “It’s getting to know the student. It’s said, “talked about their own reading experience for the understanding what they like, what they don’t like, what student and let them see, ‘Hey, this isn’t a problem that their goals are, what their aspirations are, what their just you are dealing with. I’m also having that experience.

”

Students from the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee campus served as mentors for sixth-graders at Booker Middle School in Sarasota, as part of the Booker Literacy Project, the 2022-23 school year.

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Transforming Lives

Let’s figure this out together and work to improve my life and yours, as well.’”

Persohn said organizers didn’t expect that the connections between the USF students and the Booker sixth graders, as well as among the mentors as a group, would be as strong as they turned out to be so quickly, and that the mentors would enjoy as many benefits as they did.

“One mentor came up to me one day and said, ‘I found myself talking about reading with my friends. I can’t remember the last time I did that,” Persohn recounted.

Cheryl Ellerbrock, left, campus dean of the College of Education on the USF Sarasota-Manatee campus; Karen Holbrook, regional “So, it’s those kinds of positive side chancellor of the Sarasota-Manatee campus; and Mary Kay Henson, who along with her husband Joe provided the funding for the Booker Literacy Project. effects, I think, that we didn’t really have our finger on at the beginning, but certainly as the program went on, those things really came to light.”

They will be expanding the program to follow sixth Thanks to the Hensons, the USF students were paid graders to seventh grade, add a new cohort of sixth $20 an hour while at Booker each Friday. Persohn said graders and work with fifth graders at the feeder the financial support from The Henson Fund injected elementary schools. The mentoring will be the emphasis stability into the project that might not have been possible going forward, Persohn said. Returning members of SSR if they had to rely on volunteers. will also engage in an inquiry and experiential initiative “You have much to give back,” Joe Henson told the to encourage civic engagement, critical thinking and USF students during an orientation session last year. problem solving.

“One of the things you can take from this program is the Additionally, Persohn is developing a separate “read lifetime satisfaction of knowing that you influenced the life aloud” program that will have some of her students at trajectory of someone else.”

USF work with children in two Sarasota elementary schools that feed to Booker Middle.

USF STUDENTS WHO SERVED AS MENTORS EAGERLY “My education students will work with second-grade EMBRACED THEIR ROLE students at Gocio and Tuttle elementary schools to Mary Kay Henson attended the Secret Society of provide enrichment in vocabulary instruction through Reader sessions each week. read alouds and relationships,” Persohn said. “We are “I observed not only the growing relationship between working toward building a vertical relationship with USF student-mentors and their mentees, but also the students who will track through Gocio, Tuttle, Booker relationships and bonds among the USF student-mentors Middle and beyond.” themselves,” she said. “We’re dedicated to working to One thing already is certain: The Booker project has develop programs that support the caring and deserving strengthened the ties, not only between the students USF students. They’re fantastic.” from USF and Booker, but also between the SarasotaPersohn said they are organizing and analyzing the Manatee campus and the community. It has shown the data they have gathered from the project and preparing public that the university is here to help address the manuscripts for research and practitioner publications, community’s challenges. as well as to inform the next iteration of the program.

“I think a program like this affirms USF’s commitment For example, Persohn said they would like to to the communities we work within,” Persohn said. “It strengthen relationships with parents to help support feeds a cycle of productivity, of continuous learning, of student success. connectedness and of giving back in our communities.”

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MINDFULNESS MAY COMBAT STRESS TO IMPROVE DECISION-MAKING AND PERFORMANCE OUTCOMES

BY GEORGIA JACKSON

I

magine you’re a gazelle on the savannah and a hungry lioness saunters into view. Odds are, whatever it was you were doing — and whatever knowledge you might have had about your surroundings — faded from your mind the moment you caught sight of the predator’s confident lope. And now, all you can focus on are her white teeth and hungry eyes.

According to Lisa Penney, a stress researcher and professor of management in the School of Information Systems and Management in the Muma College of Business, stressful situations — like facing down the unblinking gaze of a hungry predator — can significantly impair decision-making abilities by hindering the brain’s ability to process information and weigh the options.

“It’s called ‘premature closure’ in the neuroscience literature, and it’s more likely to happen when we’re stressed,” Penney said. “We make a knee-jerk decision based on our first impression without a more thorough assessment of what’s going on. We don’t see the bigger picture.”

While a healthy fight-or-flight response may be just the thing to save the gazelle from becoming lunch, the same can’t be said of most human interactions, and many of the most mundane of human experiences — like receiving an email or a new assignment at work — can be colored by stress.

“If we’re under stress, we’re likely to read quickly and zero-in on the worst piece of that email — or what we

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think is the worst piece. And then we get upset and react to that,” Penney said. “And sometimes when we knee-jerk react, we have to spend a lot of time backtracking when we realize, ‘Oh, I totally misunderstood that. I jumped to the worst possible conclusion, and I didn’t even see all the other details that tell me this isn’t so bad after all.’

We could spare ourselves a lot of trouble if before we knee-jerk react, we stop, take a breath, and ask ourselves, ‘OK, what’s this really saying? What else is here?’”

THE POWER OF MINDFULNESS Penney received support from the University of South Florida Institute of Applied Engineering to investigate whether mindfulness — a mental state achieved by focusing one’s awareness on the present moment and acknowledging and accepting feelings, thoughts and physical sensations without judgment — might be an effective intervention for improving decisionmaking under stressful conditions. She suspected it would.

“Mindfulness is a metacognitive skill that’s about being aware of where your attention is and thinking about thinking,” Penney said. “We tend to spend most of our time on autopilot, unaware of where our attention is focused and run around by our thoughts and feelings.

With mindfulness practice, we begin to understand that you are not your thoughts; you are the person who is aware of your thoughts. And that little bit of space is

Mindfulness

what gives you the ability to choose where you focus your attention and gain perspective to see things a little bit more clearly.”

Penney had witnessed the power of mindfulness in her own life and in the classroom, where, a few years prior, she’d begun incorporating a short, guided mindfulness meditation into the start of class with the help of Headspace, an app that provides everyday mindfulness tools. For five minutes, Penney’s students would put their electronic devices away and listen to the voice of an experienced teacher encourage them to focus on their breath.

Notice how, as you breathe in, the body expands, the voice might say. Notice how, as you breathe out, the body softens. The voice might then guide the students to close their eyes. Rather than the mind leading the breath, the voice might say, allow the breath to lead the mind. The voice might then guide the students to place their hands on their stomachs and follow the rise and fall of their body.

Allow your thoughts to come and go, the voice might say.

“Mindfulness is about learning to self-regulate our attention,” Penney said. “The breath is used as an object of attention. When your mind wanders, which it inevitably does, simply notice that it’s wandered and bring your attention back to the breath.”

Penney saw an immediate return on her students’ test scores.

“Mindfulness is a tool that can help people improve

wellness, but I think it’s also something that has the potential to improve performance outcomes,” Penney said. “There’s a lot of research showing that mindfulness helps to alleviate stress. And if stress impacts decision making, maybe mindfulness as an intervention can also help people to make better decisions.”

IN THE LAB In the Customer Experience Lab, a multi-disciplinary research and training facility on the Tampa campus, Penney randomly sorted participants into two groups. The first received an eight-minute mindfulness intervention while the second experienced eight minutes of mind wandering. Participants in both groups were then invited to play multiple rounds of Train of Thought, a video game designed by Lumosity to challenge players by dividing their attention across multiple tasks.

“It’s an adaptive game, meaning that it’s designed to be stressful and to push you outside of your comfort zone,” said Penney, who measured the electrical conductivity of participants’ skin — referred to as Galvanic Skin Response (GSR) — while they played the game. “The better you do, the more challenging it gets. But not so challenging that you give up.”

According to Penney, the pilot data1 were “pretty encouraging.”

“The trend is in the right direction,” she said. “The folks in the mindfulness intervention scored higher on average,

Lisa Penney, a professor of management in the School of Information Systems and Management.

Penney cautioned that these results are preliminary and based on pilot data with a small sample (n=30). At the time of publication, she and her research assistant were in the process of analyzing additional data collected 13 in the spring and summer of 2023.

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Figure 1: Participants who received the mindfulness intervention performed better, when playing Train of Thought, than those who did not.

which suggests that they were capable of taking in and processing more information to make better and more effective decisions than those in the control condition (Figure 1)."

Preliminary results also indicated that participants in the treatment group may have performed better because they experienced less physiological stress on average as the game grew more challenging compared to those in the control group (Figure 2).

“Mindfulness doesn’t mean that you don’t feel anything. It just means that the feelings — the anxiety, the fear — there’s room for it to go,” Penney said.

“With mindfulness, instead of stressful feelings dominating our attention and controlling our actions, we can acknowledge them and notice what else is present so we can respond more wisely.”

REAL-WORLD APPLICATIONS Penney is living proof of the adage, “research is mesearch.” Growing up, she experienced intense feelings of stress, frustration and anger.

“I realized I needed some way to cope with those feelings,” Penney said. “Because being really reactive was causing me more problems than it was solving.”

Penney hopes her research will inspire individuals to

practice mindfulness in their personal and professional lives — whether that means dedicating 15 minutes a day to mindfulness meditation, seeking out a dedicated app like Headspace or incorporating what Penney calls “micro practices” into their routines.

“If I’m brushing my teeth and I notice my mind wandering, I bring my attention back to just brushing my teeth. If I’m washing the dishes, I’m just washing the dishes. If I’m washing my hands, can I just wash my hands?” Penney said. “It’s not necessarily a big thing.

It’s lots of little things that, when done frequently, add up.”

Penney has plans to continue collecting data in the Customer Experience Lab, where she will replicate the study under different conditions. She also intends to conduct a field study to test whether mindfulness intervention improves employee performance.

“We are living in stressful, rapidly changing times.

Effectively solving the problems we face requires us to see the bigger picture clearly — something that we struggle to do when under stress. Mindfulness has the potential to help us see clearly so we can respond more effectively,” said Penney.

Whether or not that can be demonstrated empirically is the question her research is attempting to answer. And the work is just beginning.

GSR PEAKS BY SCORE AND CONDITION 300

GSR Peaks

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CONDITION Mindfulness 0

Figure 2: Participants who received the mindfulness intervention experienced less stress on average, according to biometric data collected by Penney.

Mindwandering control 15000

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PROJECT PARASOL

A $2 million grant will support the development of a paraprofessional-toteacher pipeline in Manatee County

BY GEORGIA JACKSON

P

rofessors Sara Smith, Terry Osborn and Connie WalkerEgea of the University of South Florida College of Education received a $2 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to build a pathway for 60 ESOL paraprofessionals to earn degrees, teaching certifications and ESOL endorsements from USF and, ultimately, secure teaching positions in the School District of Manatee County.

The initiative, titled “Project Parasol: English Speakers of Other Languages Paraprofessional to Teacher Pipeline,” will increase the number of highly qualified bilingual teachers in the district, which serves more than 52,000 students across 65 schools, by providing paraprofessionals with a viable pathway to a postsecondary education.

“We are seeing an increase in our linguistically diverse population as well as a shortage of teachers who are prepared to work with students whose first language is not English,” said Osborn, a professor of education on the Sarasota-Manatee campus.

“This grant enables us to continue to fulfill the public mission we have in educating all the students of Florida.”

Brett Kemker, regional vice chancellor and vice provost for academic affairs and student success on the Sarasota-Manatee campus, called the project an

“excellent example” of the many ways in which the Sarasota-Manatee campus and the College of Education create successful partnerships with local school districts to meet community needs.

According to Randi Latzke, an associate professor of instruction and coordinator for USF’s award-winning elementary education program, the grant could not have come at a better time.

“Project Parasol provides an innovative approach to systematically recruiting new teachers who will have the skills needed to meet the varied challenges of today’s student population, while decreasing barriers that might limit some potential teachers from preparing for the profession,” Latzke said.

Deans Anthony Rolle and Cheryl Ellerbrock are thrilled by the partnership. “Through this program, these paraprofessionals will receive the coursework and support needed to make the transition to highly qualified bilingual elementary classroom teachers upon successful graduation from the program,” Ellerbrock said.

Securing highly effective ESOL teachers is critical to student achievement across the state of Florida, where English learners make up around 10% of students enrolled in public schools and there is a shortage of ESOL teachers, and beyond. Over 5.1 million English

learners were enrolled in U.S. public schools in the fall of 2019.

Smith, the principal investigator for the project and an assistant professor of ESOL and foreign language education on the Tampa campus, hopes to turn Project Parasol into a scalable program that can be replicated in other districts across the state of Florida and the country.

“I believe Project Parasol can serve as a model for how districts can grow their pool of teachers from the outstanding talent already present in their schools,” said Smith.

Project Parasol’s first cohort started in the summer of 2023 and will begin coursework at USF in January of 2024, with a second cohort expected to follow in the fall of 2024.

“There’s a lot of enthusiasm for this grant, for this program and for the work that we can do to help students,” Osborn said.

Like its title suggests, the project will provide umbrella-like protection to the 60 participants as they embark on their journey to become certified teachers. The title is also a nod to “paras,” the nickname often given to paraprofessionals.

“In a sense, we are protecting them from stresses and challenges to help them in their journey to become a classroom teacher, just as a parasol protects from the sun,” said Smith.

“We also wanted a name that works well in Spanish and English.”

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Regional Chancellor Karen Holbrook addresses faculty and students at the 2023 Student Research Showcase.

STUDENT RESEARCH The 2023 Student Research Showcase attracted students from across the university for a day of scholarship, insight and community

BY GEORGIA JACKSON

T

he annual Student Research Showcase provides students across the university with an opportunity to engage with the academic research process and connect with the SarasotaManatee campus research community.

Hosted in the Selby Auditorium on the Sarasota-Manatee campus on March 31, the 2023 Student Research Showcase featured presentations and posters from more than 50 undergraduate and graduate students, the largest turnout in the event’s history. Research subjects ranged from red tide to the darknet and beyond.

MITIGATING RED TIDE: NELLY EDIN Since moving to Sarasota from Stockholm, Sweden, in 2016, Nelly Edin has grown accustomed to the annual red tide algal blooms, which negatively affect the local economy and the environment

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and can cause people to experience respiratory and gastrointestinal issues, including temporary damage to metacognitive functions.

“Over the past decade, there has been an increased prevalence, severity and geographic spread,” said Edin, who worked with Marlius Castillo, an assistant professor of instruction in the Department of Chemistry, to develop a literature review and evaluate mitigation efforts.

“A couple of years ago was really bad.

You go outside and you’re coughing and sneezing, your eyes are irritated,” said Edin. “The wind can carry the toxins more than two miles, so it’s not just people on the beach who feel the effects.”

Edin’s research included a trip to Mote Marine Laboratory & Aquarium, where she learned about the threat red tide poses to Florida marine life, including manatees, sea turtles and dolphins.

Edin presented her findings at the 2023 Student Research Showcase shortly before graduating with a bachelor’s degree in biology and gaining acceptance to Venture for America’s two-year fellowship program.

“The predominant mitigation method used focuses on removing dead fish from beaches and regulating shellfish harvests, but this does not affect the underlying cause of the blooms,” said Edin, who is optimistic about the results of ongoing studies to use modified clay to mitigate future blooms. “Clay flocculation has been successfully used in China for many years and could be adopted in the Florida coastal region.”

An ongoing project supported by the National Centers for Coastal Ocean Science aims to have an answer to Edin’s question — and a “shovel ready” implementation strategy — by 2025.

According to Edin, the research she conducted with Castillo was the highlight of her USF experience.

“Of all the things I did in my time at USF, this will probably be the most impactful for me,” she said. “It gave me the opportunity to pursue something I was really interested in. If anything, it’ll probably be one of my greatest achievements.”

THE POWER OF NOSTALGIA: ANGELA PEREZ CRUZ In the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, Angela Perez Cruz, who is double majoring in biomedical sciences and psychology, noticed that she and many of her peers were flocking to entertainment — namely, movies and television — from their childhood.

“I just felt so inclined to watch my favorite shows, and I wondered why — because it wasn’t just an individual thing. This phenomenon was pretty widespread among my peers,” said Perez Cruz, who was a junior in high school when the COVID-19 pandemic caused school closures across the country. “I thought there must be some form of psychological basis to this. There has to be a reason. And, indeed, there was.”

Perez Cruz set out to uncover the connection between social isolation and what she calls, “nostalgic indulgence.”

She concluded that indulging in nostalgic activities — like watching old movies and television shows — effectively combats the negative effects of social isolation and contributes to overall brain health, both neurologically and psychologically, by stimulating the reward system and other areas related to happiness, and by increasing a sense of social connectedness and support.

“Nostalgia is one of the healthiest coping mechanisms that someone can adopt, and it is a remedy that comes at no cost,” said Perez Cruz, who presented her research at the 2023 Student Research Showcase and at Harvard University.

RANSOMWARE, CYBERCRIMINALS AND THE DARKNET: TAYLOR FISHER AND STERLING MICHEL Ask Taylor Fisher or Sterling Michel what poses the largest global cybersecurity threat, and they’ll give you a rundown on the darknet and how it enables the distribution of ransomware, making it easier for cybercriminals to launch attacks.

“The average ransomware attack costs $5 million and poses a risk to hospitals, financial institutions, government entities and other critical institutions,” said Michel, a marketing major, who contributed to what the team fondly refers to as “the hacker project,” a three-part initiative to collect interview data from active hackers, develop chatbots and conduct a threat assessment of darknet markets.

“Our goal was to use all of this to be able to get a better idea, not only of the ideologies and the motivations behind hacking, but also the risk,” said Fisher, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Criminology and the associate director of research for Sarasota Cybersecurity Lab, an innovative and interdisciplinary research lab designed to ensure a safer digital future. “We know that there is a spectrum of hackers, from very basic users, who are just trying to see what they can do, to nation-state hackers.

So, we’re trying to get a better understanding of what that community looks like, particularly through the lens of the darknet.”

Fisher and Michel worked with C. Jordan Howell and

“

Of all the things I did in my time at USF, this will probably be the most impactful for me.

”

- Nelly Edin

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Student Research Showcase

Roberta O’Malley, assistant professors in the Department of Criminology; Giti Javidi, director of the Information Assurance and Cybersecurity Management program; and others to deliver a nuanced depiction of the threat landscape and proactive policy suggestions to disrupt the illicit online ecosystem and prevent cyber-attacks.

“Traditional cybersecurity studies have siloed themselves in the fields of computer science, information sciences and criminology,” Fisher said. “Our study bridges these gaps using an interdisciplinary, mixed methods approach to assess competency signaling in darknet market vendors.”

RAISING AWARENESS ABOUT THE NEEDS OF STUDENTS WITH DISABILITIES: HAWA ALLARAKHIA Hawa Allarakhia, a doctoral candidate in the College of Education and graduate assistant in USF Research and Innovation, played a pivotal role in orchestrating the 2023 Student Research Showcase.

“It was a great group of people who shared their hard work with us during the symposium. I was thrilled with the

turnout,” said Allarakhia, who called the event a wonderful learning experience. “We had a lot of students from hospitality and tourism, from the health sciences, from education. Just a variety of different majors and different types of research.”

Allarakhia is in the process of conducting her own research, which aims to raise awareness about the needs of students with disabilities. She began, this fall, by collecting survey data from College of Education faculty regarding their knowledge, ability and willingness to accommodate students with disabilities.

“I chose the topic because it’s part of my life experience navigating the educational setting with a disability,” said Allarakhia, who uses an electronic personal assistance mobility device. “I thought it would be good to find out where the knowledge gaps are.”

In addition to asking survey respondents to rate their willingness to accommodate students with disabilities, Allarakhia is also assessing their knowledge of the Americans with Disabilities Act and Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act.

USF students present their research at the 2023 Student Research Showcase which featured 15 speakers and 35 poster presentations.

LEARN MORE ABOUT THE RESEARCH SHOWCASE

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PICTURE THIS:

USF SARASOTA-MANATEE RESEARCH REACHES AROUND THE WORLD 1

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4 1. “Chemistry through Whiskey, Impressions and Connections.”

Photo submitted by Adam Carmer, director of the Sensory Innovation Lab and assistant professor in the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management.

5 2. A winding street in Hatay, Turkey. Photo submitted

by Faizan Ali, an associate professor in the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management, whose research focuses on the positive contributions of refugees in their host countries.

3. A long-tailed macaque in Singapore.

Photo courtesy of Jordan DePante, a biology major with a concentration in animal biology.

4. Patients who traveled great distances wait at Champiti Health Epicenter in Malawi to receive health care from the ABC Hearing Clinic staff and students. Photo submitted

by Madison Dowdy, an audiology doctoral student in the College of Behavioral and Communication Sciences.

5. The Church of Saint Sava, a Serbian Orthodox church in Belgrade.

Photo submitted by Faizan Ali, an associate professor in the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management.

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Michelle Arnold leads research audiologists in the USF Auditory Rehabilitation and Clinical Trials laboratory (ARCT).

LARGEST-EVER TEST OF HEARING INTERVENTION TO DELAY DEMENTIA PRODUCES COMPELLING RESULTS USF SarasotaManatee professor part of team that linked hearing aids to slowing cognitive decline

BY KEVIN BURKE

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ssociate Professor of Communication Sciences and Disorders Michelle Arnold is concerned about the deleterious effects experienced by people who have trouble processing language. It is not because those individuals are unable to speak, read or write a different language; it’s because they can’t hear it.

The consequences can be devastating, particularly for older adults, with hearing loss now identified as one of the leading risk factors for dementia. Fortunately, Arnold’s latest project — the largest randomized, controlled clinical test of the efficacy of hearing aids for reducing long-term cognitive decline in older adults — provides compelling evidence that strong hearing intervention efforts can significantly

MOMENTUM: UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA SARASOTA-MANATEE

forestall the loss of thinking and memory abilities in those at increased risk.

Called the Aging and Cognitive Health Evaluation in Elders (ACHIEVE) study and conducted in collaboration with the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, results of the three-year, multisite survey were published on July 18 in The Lancet, the world’s oldest and most respected medical journal. They indicate that in older adults at heightened vulnerability for cognitive decline — in this case, due to advanced atherosclerosis — strong hearing intervention efforts including use of hearing aids, a hearing “toolkit” to assist with self-management and ongoing instruction and counseling with an audiologist, slowed the deterioration of

“ ”

Everybody can agree that being able to talk to people and hear what they say and understand them is a really important issue.

- Michelle Arnold

mental awareness and acuity by 48 percent by “making listening easier for the brain.” In turn, people are able to remain more socially and physically active, which contributes to mental and emotional wellbeing while helping to mitigate other negative aspects of aging such as inactivity, isolation, anxiety and depression.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 40 million Americans over 18 already have some trouble hearing. Alzheimer’s Disease International, meanwhile, projects the number of people worldwide living with dementia (currently 50 million) will reach 82 million in 2030 and 152 million by 2050. The ACHIEVE study findings therefore suggest that hearing loss should be a particularly important global public health focus for dementia prevention efforts, say Arnold and her co-authors on the study. Two of them are fellow USF faculty members Theresa H. Chisolm, professor of communication sciences and disorders and vice provost for strategic planning, performance and accountability; and Victoria Sanchez, research assistant professor in the Department of Otolaryngology in the USF Health Morsani College of Medicine.

In addition to designing the hearing intervention component of the study — a patient-centered, step-bystep process for comprehensive audiological assessment, goal setting and treatment through the use of hearing aids and other hearing assistive technologies, counseling and education — the trio of USF researchers trained the research audiologists engaged with the study’s nearly 1,000 participants at four community-based field sites in North Carolina, Mississippi, Minnesota and Maryland.

“We have an awesome team of research audiologists that work really, really hard on all of our studies,” says Arnold, also an investigator in the Auditory Rehabilitation and Clinical Trials laboratory (ARCT) on the Tampa campus. “And, you know, we hope to be able to continue funding them indefinitely, if possible.”

Arnold has applied for a nearly $4 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for joint research with USF’s Center for Advanced Medical Learning and Simulation (CAMLS) into how to collect data that inform AI models on best training and practices for future hearing care providers. Machine learning or artificial intelligence is increasingly part of assistive hearing technology and treatment, Arnold says, from the selfadjusting microelectronics in hearing devices themselves to analysis of patient reactions to audiologist attitude and behavior during clinical encounters.

“The ability to predict human behavior is only as good as the data that’s provided to the model,” observes Arnold, with a shoutout to her colleague, Shannon Bailey, a human factors scientist and senior scientific director at CAMLS. She goes on to explain that her newest research proposal would “collect data on hundreds of people from all different socio-demographic backgrounds regarding their perceptions of hearing care” and the factors impacting their adoption of/adherence to a course of hearing intervention, including greater use of hearing aids. (On average, reports the NIH, only about a quarter of American adults that could benefit from a hearing aid actually use one.)

“They’ll be watching vignettes (prepared by CAMLS) and providing tons of feedback that we can use to inform potential models to train future providers using AI,” says Arnold, who acknowledges the competitiveness of the grant process, but believes the reality of a rapidly aging population in most industrialized regions of the world is leading to “more and more favorable legislation and funding to support studies like these.

“We’re lucky in that, in such a divided world that we live in these days, hearing loss is pretty universal,” she says.

“Everybody can agree that being able to talk to people and hear what they say and understand them is a really important issue.”

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CYBERSECURITY LAB LOADS UP TO COUNTER ONLINE THREATS Interdisciplinary team uses new approaches to protect clients from cyber criminals

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midst an unprecedented surge in cybercrime, characterized by an alarming frequency and magnitude, the pressing need for skilled and welltrained cybersecurity professionals has reached a critical juncture. In response to growing demand, the visionary minds behind Sarasota Cybersecurity Lab have set the stage for a revolutionary approach to combating cyber threats. Situated on the Sarasota-Manatee campus, this innovative and interdisciplinary research lab aims to propel the field of cybersecurity forward and ensure a safer digital future.

At the helm of Sarasota Cybersecurity Lab is C. Jordan Howell, a prominent advocate for a paradigm shift in current cybersecurity approaches. Howell underscores the significance of understanding the human behavior underpinning cybercrime, emphasizing that technical defenses alone may not suffice. The lab acknowledges that a comprehensive cybersecurity strategy must delve deeper into the psyche of cybercriminals, unveiling their motivations and thought processes to predict and prevent their next moves proactively.

Unlike conventional cybersecurity labs that primarily focus on post-attack remedies, Sarasota Cybersecurity Lab takes a proactive stance. Howell explained that their objective is to extract meaningful insights from relevant

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MOMENTUM: UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA SARASOTA-MANATEE

Big Data, identifying patterns that could indicate illicit activities. By combining this wealth of cyber-intelligence with theories of human behavior, the lab seeks to forecast emergent threats before they materialize, enabling swift intervention to prevent victimization.

The lab uses advances in technology, including cuttingedge chatbots that engage the hacker community directly, as well as neural networks and machine learning (A.I.) tools, “to extract data on a large, systematic scale that allows us to better understand the current threat landscape,” Howell said.

“The lab’s potential and success stems from the executive team,” said Howell, who has assembled an impressive group of experts across various academic disciplines, including criminology, international relations, information systems and computer science.

The executive team at Sarasota Cybersecurity Lab includes Assistant Professor of Criminology Roberta (Birdy) O’Malley, who investigates cyber-violence. She’s joined by Associate Professor of International Relations and Security Zacharias Pieri, an authority on international extremism and how radical groups use social media and new technology to advance their agendas. Professor of Information Systems and Decision Sciences Ehsan Sheybani provides his expertise in communication, signal processing and data analysis, alongside his School of Information Systems and Management colleague, Professor of Cybersecurity Giti Javidi, who provides expertise in design solutions for smart devices, cybersecurity incident management and generative AI for cybersecurity.

This interdisciplinary collaboration empowers Sarasota Cybersecurity Lab to integrate diverse frameworks and methodologies, fostering a comprehensive understanding of cybercrime and enhancing their ability to counter its various manifestations.

Sarasota Cybersecurity Lab has already made an impact within the cybersecurity ecosystem. By assisting banks and other institutions in identifying threats against their customers, the lab has prevented substantial financial losses within remarkably short timeframes.

However, according to Howell, the lab’s true value lies in nurturing the next generation of cybersecurity professionals. Through mentorship and practical skill-building, students are being equipped with the capabilities to tackle the complex challenges posed by cyber adversaries.

Javidi, another proven advocate of dedicated mentorship, is part of a larger USF team that recently secured a $3.7 million National Science Foundation CyberCorps grant to establish the Cybersecurity Research and Education for Service in Government (CREST) program at USF, the goal of which is to teach, support and empower the next generation of national cybersecurity leaders.

Taylor Fisher, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Criminology, serves as a primary example of Sarasota Cybersecurity Lab’s commitment to empowering the next generation of cybersecurity professionals. As

the associate director of research, she spearheads a dynamic group of approximately 15 graduate and undergraduate students, all actively engaged in the lab’s work on malicious hackers, cyber-intelligence, forensic investigation and other captivating areas of interest.

Further testament to the impact of Sarasota Cybersecurity Lab is provided by Roan Ali, an honors student on the Sarasota-Manatee campus. After extensive research exploring various career paths, Ali came to a profound realization that her passion lies in the realm of technology.

“Looking into the future, we can expect cybercrime to keep happening and changing shape,” said Javidi, who also directs the Applied Research Collaborative (ARC) lab on the Sarasota-Manatee campus. “Realistically, hackers will get smarter and more targeted. We’ll see more of ransomware attacks, vulnerabilities in supply chains, and attacks on new technologies such as autonomous vehicles, smart homes, and industrial control systems.

This highlights, Javidi said, the need for continuous advancements in cybersecurity defenses to keep pace with evolving threats, including closing the cybersecurity talent gap that continues to hinder the industry.

With a vision for a safer digital world and a commitment to nurturing future cybersecurity leaders, Sarasota Cybersecurity Lab promises to remain at the forefront of shaping the future of cybersecurity for the betterment of society.

Ehsan Sheybani, Roberta (Birdy) O’Malley, Giti Javidi and C. Jordan Howell are part of the team at Sarasota Cybersecurity Lab at USF Sarasota-Manatee.

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ADDRESSING LANGUAGE BARRIERS TO RAISE AWARENESS ABOUT CYBERCRIME Among the most vulnerable internet users are those with limited English proficiency

BY KEVIN BURKE

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I

t’s impossible to know the true extent of cybercrime in the United States, says USF Associate Professor of Criminology Fawn Ngo, for one critical reason: Many of its victims don’t speak English.

Consequently, Ngo says, they cannot access the bulk of consumer information warning about various dangers on the internet and dispensing guidance on how to protect personal information.

Neither, in most cases, are they able to report their victimization to authorities, as most of those structures are English only, too.

“That’s the problem. Even the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) only collects data from people who speak English,” Ngo says, though studies abound showing that among the most vulnerable populations for cybercrime are

MOMENTUM: UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA SARASOTA-MANATEE

the approximately 25 million Americans the U.S. Census Bureau characterizes as having limited English proficiency, or LEP. Members of the Hispanic/Latino and Asia-Pacific communities are indicated as particularly at risk, according to Ngo. Add to this a University of IllinoisFord Foundation study that found up to 70 percent of immigrants already distrust the police, especially if they’re undocumented. “So, they may not report their victimization in the first place,” which only compounds the difficulty of assessing the full cost of cybercrime across the country, Ngo says.

Her frustration has deep roots. A refugee herself, Ngo came to America as a young girl from Vietnam in the late 1970s, shortly after the end of the Vietnam War. Today, her enthusiasm in the classroom

“

Cybersecurity education and awareness at the user level are key in combating crime, so we must ensure that everyone — regardless of their language skills — has the knowledge they need to protect themselves online.

- Fawn Ngo

”

and passion for research continue to draw energy from a lifelong desire to see equity and justice for all crime victims, regardless of race, economic status, nationality or native tongue. She realizes that achieving that ideal means overcoming many challenges — socioeconomic, geopolitical, ethnological — but remains convinced that easing barriers to communication is the optimal place to start.

She largely dismisses existing online translation tools as “impressive technology” of limited practical use to Vietnamese-Americans with limited English proficiency, who have an average reading/comprehension level of fifth grade. Meanwhile, a Pew Research Center analysis reports that while almost 90 percent of U.S.-born Latinos are English proficient, the same is true for only 34 percent of foreign-born, Spanish-speaking arrivals (even after a decade or more in the U.S.) — a potential victim pool of more than 13 million of the estimated 62 million Latinos in the U.S., according to Census Bureau data.

“Our focus groups show the information (being conveyed) cannot be too difficult to understand, too technical, and also, increasingly, that they should be video,” Ngo says. It’s a preview of a scholarly article she’s submitted, and now under review, that reports some of her findings from a series of workshops with primarily Spanish- and Vietnamese-speaking internet users.

“A lot of participants advised us to create videos for people who cannot read or write English — about things like how to set your Facebook to private. Or what is twofactor authentication? Or why you shouldn’t ‘save’ your login information when using a public computer at the local library.

“Time and time again, people (in our groups) told us they don’t practice these and other aspects of good cyber-hygiene because they simply ‘don’t know how’ or they ‘never heard of this.’ They also indicated that they relied primarily on family and friends as sources of guidance regarding online safety, when they really should have access to more credible sources.”

Hence, the Cybercrime Prevention and Reporting for the Limited English Proficiency Population (CPR4LEPP) online resource Ngo is now developing with a team of criminologists and cybersecurity experts to platform an array of relevant content in a range of languages, starting with Spanish and Vietnamese. She’s already created several educational modules addressing key topics such as the different types of cybercrime prevalent today, the importance of reporting if you’ve been victimized and Top 10 steps to protect oneself online. They add to material she continues to curate in support of two Facebook pages, in Spanish and Vietnamese, including a weekly series of online videos covering subjects from the Dark Web to cyber-bullying, cyberviolence and deep fakes.

The platform will also enable LEP internet users to report cybercrime incidents in their native language.

Ngo hopes to launch the new website later in 2023, supported by a multilingual promotional campaign engaging local and regional businesses, public agencies, libraries, churches and other community groups. They’ll be asked to distribute business cards announcing the program in English on one side and in different languages on the other, along with a QR code. Accessing information will be as simple and immediate as scanning the code with a mobile device.

“Cybersecurity education and awareness at the user level are key in combating crime,” Ngo says, “so we must ensure that everyone — regardless of their language skills — has the knowledge they need to protect themselves online.”

Enlisting more professional translators to create content for the project, hiring a video editor and securing a media specialist to oversee social media outlets and promote the resource online are high on the list of objectives that could be achieved with increased funding, says Ngo, who also wants to expand in-person workshops on cybersecurity and internet safety and disseminate information through greater exposure on ethnic radio and news outlets.

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TRACK OUR

PROGRESS

EXPANSION PROJECTS WILL RESHAPE SARASOTA-MANATEE CAMPUS — AND THE ENTIRE COMMUNITY

BY MARC R. MASFERRER

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MOMENTUM: UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA SARASOTA-MANATEE

R

ising high above the campus courtyard, just west of the Selby Auditorium and the Crosley Campus Center, is what will be the first-ever student center and residence hall on the University of South Florida’s Sarasota-Manatee campus. When completed by the fall of 2024, Sarasota-Manatee will shed its moniker as a “commuter campus” and more importantly, create opportunities for first-ever experiences — namely, the

HERE WE GROW

chance to live on campus and build a new type of campus community — that will make it an even more attractive option to prospective students.

The six-story, 100,000-square-foot structure will eventually be matched on the north side of the courtyard by a new academic and research building, complete with technology-enhanced classrooms, research labs and other facilities, that will allow USF to enrich

and expand academic offerings to meet the evolving demands of students, faculty and the marketplace. USF selected architects this past spring to begin designing the 75,000-square-foot Nursing/STEM building, based on input from students, faculty, staff and others; and a general contracting firm that will build it.

The two new facilities represent an investment of more than $100 million that will both physically remake the

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“

With the backing of our friends and supporters, we will build an enriched and more vigorous campus experience brimming with vitality and purpose as we invest in a new generation of thought leaders for SarasotaManatee and beyond.”

- Karen Holbrook, USF Sarasota-Manatee regional chancellor

17-year-old Sarasota-Manatee campus, nestled along U.S. 41 between Sarasota-Bradenton International Airport and Sarasota Bay, and elevate the higher education profile of a vibrant, fast-growing region. USF, one of the newest members of the elite Association of American Universities, is the only four-year preeminent research university with an academic presence in the area.

Together, the student center and residence hall and Nursing/STEM building promise to double the amount of space for living, learning, research and other activities.

Growth and change have marked USF’s presence in the region since the early 1970s when the university began holding night classes at local high schools, to its years sharing space with New College of Florida in Sarasota and to the move to the current campus in 2006.

The new buildings will again forever change what it means to be USF’s Sarasota-Manatee campus.

“We are at a pivotal moment in the history of our campus during which we will enhance what we can be for our students and faculty and the community we are proud to serve,” said Karen Holbrook, regional chancellor for the Sarasota-Manatee campus. “With the backing of our friends and supporters, we will build an enriched and more vigorous campus experience brimming with vitality and purpose as we invest in a new generation of thought leaders for Sarasota-Manatee and beyond.”

ON-CAMPUS LIVING USF broke ground in March, for the $42 million student center and residence hall, the first major building addition to the campus since USF moved into the 130,000-square-foot Crosley Campus Center, with its iconic rotunda, in 2006.

“This project represents a significant milestone in the University of South Florida’s history and signals our commitment to the expansion of the Sarasota-Manatee campus,” President Rhea Law said at the groundbreaking.

“We’ve made it a priority to increase student housing at USF because we know that living on campus can raise academic performance, support student retention and create a stronger sense of community.”

The first two floors of the student center and residence hall will provide new, larger homes for several services now scattered in smaller spaces on the campus. For example, the current bookstore is located several blocks south of the main campus and student government has for several years been squeezed into small offices on the first floor of the Crosley Campus Center.

Renderings show scenes from the new student center and residence hall under construction at the USF Sarasota-Manatee campus.

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Here We Grow

USF President Emeritus Judy Genshaft, USF Sarasota-Manatee Regional Chancellor Karen Holbrook, USF President Rhea Law and Sarasota-Manatee Campus Board Chair Frederick Piccolo at the groundbreaking for the new student center and residence hall.

The student center’s dining hall will be considerably larger than the current café, which will soon be renovated into a teaching kitchen for the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management. Likewise, the first-floor ballroom in the new building will be a much larger, more formal venue for events than either the Selby Auditorium or the FCCI Rotunda can accommodate.

Students who move into the residence hall on the top four floors will have never-before-seen views of the campus, Sarasota Bay and other environs.

“Our students will be shaped by the experiences and environments in this new facility and in turn that will influence their success in careers and life,” said Brett Kemker, vice provost and regional vice chancellor.

USF SARASOTA-MANATEE HAS RUN OUT OF SPACE The move to its own campus was a catalyst for a period of unprecedented growth for USF in Sarasota-

June 2023

July 2023

Manatee. Enrollment boomed, new course offerings and other programs were added and demand increased for a quality, affordable education as USF’s academic reputation rose. The two-county region grew from a census population of about 590,000 in 2000 to more than 890,000 in 2022 and prospered, and so did the Sarasota-Manatee campus, which in 2022-23 served 14,488 students.

Whether on its own or since consolidation in 2020, USF’s Sarasota-Manatee campus has become a desired destination for students. As a result, the Crosley Campus Center is bursting at the seams. There is nowhere else to grow.

Addressing that need to expand, plus enhancing the academic opportunities for students and faculty alike at the USF Sarasota-Manatee campus, are goals for USF and the architects planning and designing the Nursing/ STEM building.

August 2023 29

Here We Grow

Surveys show that STEM buildings, which typically include high-tech labs that allow for ground-breaking research, are what prospective students want to see during campus tours and can drive their decision on which university to attend. Similarly, STEM buildings help attract and retain faculty. They are the types of facilities commonly found on the campuses of AAU institutions, where there is an emphasis on research that boosts the competitiveness of the U.S., promotes health and wellbeing and underpins national security.

The $61.7 million Nursing/STEM building, which is still being designed, will allow USF to grow the campus’s nursing program; increase new majors in the health disciplines and other programs; and fill the need on campus for more classrooms, teaching and clinical labs and research facilities.

The new academic and research building also will allow the Sarasota-Manatee campus to better address heightened demand in the local marketplace, and beyond, for more nurses, business professionals, scientists, engineers and other professions.

“The Nursing/STEM building tells students, parents, funding agencies, friends and donors that the USF Sarasota-Manatee campus is committed to supporting trailblazing research and building a contemporary,

high-quality educational experience supporting the community’s demand for more nurses and science and technology graduates with the knowledge and skills needed to enter the talent pipeline,” Holbrook said.

In 2022, the state and federal governments provided $5 million for planning and design of the Nursing/STEM building, but Gov. Ron DeSantis in June of this year vetoed a $20 million appropriation that had been approved by the Florida Legislature as of part of the 2023-24 state budget.

President Law said the project remains a priority for USF and that the university would continue to work with the Governor’s Office and the Legislature to attain the needed funding. In the meantime, USF plans to use proceeds from both the annual Brunch on the Bay fundraiser and a planned capital campaign to support the project.

Holbrook said the governor’s veto was a “temporary setback.”

“We remain committed to growing and transforming our campus for its students, faculty members and staff, and for the entire community,” Holbrook said.

Visit sarasotamanatee.usf.edu/future to learn more about USF’s expansion at the Sarasota-Manatee campus.

A rendering of the Nursing/STEM building planned for the USF Sarasota-Manatee campus.

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AAU MEMBERSHIP IS A ‘POINT OF PRIDE’ New status elevates presence of only research university in Sarasota-Manatee

BY MARC R. MASFERRER

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he University of South Florida’s invitation to join the Association of American Universities arrived as the Sarasota-Manatee campus is progressing through a transformative expansion that, like AAU membership, will elevate the profile of the only research university with an academic presence in Sarasota and Manatee counties.

The invitation to join the AAU recognizes USF’s dedication to excellence in student and faculty success, and in research and innovation. Only four AAU members are younger than USF. “This is a historic and momentous achievement for USF,” said USF President Rhea Law. “Especially when considering we were founded in 1956, to now officially be recognized by our peers as one of America’s leading research universities, is a shining example of our university community’s determination, innovative spirit and relentless pursuit of excellence.

Reaching this milestone only strengthens our ambition to improve lives and positively shape the future of our society.”

Sarasota-Manatee campus Regional Chancellor Karen Holbrook said AAU membership recognizes USF’s long-held commitment to and success in growing as a research institution over the past decade and a half, including hiring faculty capable of performing high-impact research and obtaining funding and patents for their work, as well as planning for facilities like the Nursing/STEM building. It also recognizes USF’s ability to attract students that meet the AAU’s high admission standards.

“The AAU’s recognition fits perfectly with our campus’s goal of creating a more vigorous, more prestigious academic experience for our faculty and for our students, and for supporting groundbreaking research,” Holbrook said.

Holbrook said the AAU’s invitation was a credit to USF faculty members

and the research they have accomplished.

“With its invitation, the AAU is recognizing we are among the leading research institutions in the nation, that we are deserving of acclaim for what we have accomplished and how we are planning to grow our research in various fields, like cybersecurity, the life and health sciences and engineering,” Holbrook said.

USF is joining the likes of Purdue, Northwestern, Caltech and the University of Florida, in the AAU. The elite company will enhance attention, recognition and funding USF already receives and give it a “place at the table” in developing policy for higher education at the federal level. AAU membership also will help USF when recruiting new faculty.

“AAU membership affirms our hard work and USF’s commitment to research that made us a preeminent global research institution,” Holbrook said. “It is a point of pride.”

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RECORD GIFT KEY TO MAKING USF’S RISK MANAGEMENT AND INSURANCE PROGRAM ONE OF THE NATION’S BEST

BY MARC R. MASFERRER

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$5.2 million gift from Baldwin Risk Partners and the Baldwin family to the risk management and insurance program at the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee campus announced in the summer of 2022, has propelled rapid growth and change within the program that university leaders hope will transform it into one of the best in the country.

“At Baldwin Risk Partners, we understand the vital role insurance plays in society and in helping people protect themselves against life’s uncertainties. By developing with USF a world-class RMI school and investing in the next generation of young professionals, we will broaden awareness of the diversity of career options available within this field of study and attract talented individuals who will innovate and redefine the future of our industry,” said Lowry Baldwin, chairman and co-founder of BRP Group Inc. “By working with USF to provide students with the necessary skills and knowledge, we are confident that they will make a positive impact in the field of risk

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management and insurance as they serve communities and create opportunities.”

The Baldwin gift highlights the progress USF has made toward building an even more successful program.

“I have been very impressed with the structure that has been built here, and it sets the stage for future growth and success” said Randy Dumm, who in July was named director of the Baldwin Risk Partners School of Risk Management and Insurance.

WHAT HAS HAPPENED? • When Kristi Hoskinson joined USF Sarasota-Manatee as the assistant vice president of strategic initiatives, she increased industry outreach efforts and helped fashion a brand that builds on the excitement and momentum created by the Baldwin gift — the largest in the campus’s history. The message for prospective students, as well as recruiters and academic advisors?

“There are very exciting career paths a student can grow into with an RMI degree. The industry provides quick upward mobility, well-paying positions and diversification in roles,” Hoskinson said.

• Starting fall 2023, all undergraduates enrolled in the Muma College of Business are required to take a course on the principles of risk management, exposing them to the career opportunities available in a field that touches on so much of the economy, from health care and disaster recovery to supply chains and cybersecurity. New faculty members have been recruited and classes are being offered in Tampa and

St. Petersburg, as well as on the SarasotaManatee campus. USF is also recruiting industry professionals to serve as adjunct professors and guest speakers.

• Hoskinson helped students grow a new chapter of Gamma Iota Sigma, the collegiate professional fraternity dedicated to strengthening the student talent pipeline, which has enabled USF students to network with industry professionals, both locally and nationally. One former student, criminology major Clare Coffman, was hired last spring as a claims analyst after she met Paul Palumbo, head of a Tampa insurance company and a member of USF’s RMI advisory board, while she and other Gamma Iota Sigma members were volunteering at a Habitat for Humanity construction site in Sarasota.

• Baldwin Risk Partners has matched its financial generosity with expert advice and other resources as USF crafts its program to meet industry needs. “They are partnering with us to help build this program,” said Steven Miller, associate professor of risk management and insurance and former director of the RMI program. “They’ve added their resources, they’ve added their leadership, they’ve added their engagement, and they’re helping us attract and leverage support from everyone in the industry.”

• Others in the industry are also taking an active role, including offering financial support and for students like Madison Siefert, internship and job opportunities in a growing and evolving industry that is seeing more professionals retire than college graduates enter the field.

Siefert, a founding member of Gamma Iota Sigma, spent this past summer interning with Shepherd Insurance, which is represented on the USF program’s advisory board. “There’s this talent gap in the insurance industry, and there are so many job positions to fill,” she said.

“A lot of students who do an internship with an insurance agency … they’re really going to want to hold on to them and offer them a fulltime job as soon as they graduate.”

The Baldwin Risk Partners School of Risk Management and Insurance is expanding with the support industry partners — including Baldwin Risk Partners, which in 2022 donated more than $5 million to the program — and under the leadership of new director Randy Dumm. Students and faculty are elevating awareness of the program by volunteering with Habitat for Humanity and other community service projects.

These and other steps are key to the future growth of the RMI program.

Dumm believes the Baldwin Risk Partners School of Risk Management and Insurance is well positioned to join the leading group of RMI programs nationwide. USF, with the support of Baldwin Risk Partners and others in the industry, is working towards the initial objective of becoming a top 10 program in 10 years.

“We have the opportunity here to build something that will have significant positive impact on our students, the industry, and the communities that we serve,” Dumm said.

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PROFESSOR JODY MCBRIEN’S ‘GLOBAL CITIZEN’ EXPERIENCE SPARKS UNPRECEDENTED RESEARCH Sarasota-Manatee campus professor examines the impacts of foreign women on their overseas homes

BY MARC R. MASFERRER

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J

ody McBrien is an American in Paris, and loving every minute of it.

And the more the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee campus interdisciplinary global studies professor spends working and living in the City of Lights — including teaching online courses for students back in Florida — the more she feels at home among the city’s many cultural spots and, more importantly, the friends she has made.

Plus, where better to start her newest research effort, an unprecedented study of the experiences and attitudes of women just like her living in and contributing to the betterment of their “second homes,” whether temporary or permanent, in Europe?

Some might consider them “expatriates,” but McBrien said many, wary of possibly negative connotations, prefer to be called “immigrants.” As for herself, McBrien, who has done research in Europe, Africa and Asia throughout her academic career, said she thinks of herself as a “global citizen,” aware of and concerned about the world that extends beyond political and geographic boundaries.

Like McBrien, many of the women she is studying have formed friendships based on their common experiences in Europe through women’s groups, cultural events and philanthropic opportunities. McBrien said she has found no comparable experience for men who settle overseas.

“Work that the women do through their organizations includes making and distributing food for the homeless and refugees, teaching the local language to newcomers, making and collecting clothing for those in need, raising awareness about global issues, and fundraising for charitable organizations in the locale and internationally,” McBrien said. “This kind of work provides a deepened sense of life purpose and meaning, and it provides essential services for those in need. Additionally, the activities increase one’s sense of belonging and making a difference in the world.”

McBrien, whose scholarly interests include refugees and global migration, is in the early stages of her latest research. About 300 women, mostly Americans, have responded to a survey McBrien created to ask them about their experiences — for example, “What do you like about living in Europe that is distinct from your home country?”

She also has conducted a handful of follow-up interviews, with many more to go.

“After 20 years of research and writing about refugees, I’ve found myself wanting to capstone my career with

something quite different,” McBrien said.

McBrien said her research should lead to a better understanding of and appreciation for the contributions of these women in the communities where they have chosen to settle, and their sense of place.

“Many researchers have found that determining meaning and purpose in life can help people live happier, more engaged and satisfying lives and deal better with adversities,” McBrien said. “I have also found this in my many years of working with refugees.”

McBrien said she hopes to publish her findings in a feminist or international migration journal and develop a lesson as part of her global migration course, which she taught online from Paris this year. She also wants to publish a book that features photographs depicting how the women she is studying live and work overseas.

“Teaching, research and building awareness. Those are the three pillars I tend to build my career around,” McBrien said. “Given that this is a completely unexplored topic, it could bring some newsworthy opportunities to the university, especially if I can get the book published in the next few years.”

SABBATICAL LEADS TO NEW RESEARCH INTEREST McBrien arrived in Paris in the fall of 2021 to work for the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development as a Council of Foreign Relations fellow while on a sabbatical from USF. The war in Ukraine, which started in February 2022, the refugee crisis it unleashed and other topics kept her busy, but she still had time to make new friends and become part of a group called the American Women’s Group, among other organizations.

Her experience was a catalyst for further exploration of what McBrien, who returned to Paris after her sabbatical ended, was seeing and learning.

“As I got to know some of the members and a little bit more about their activities, I was really intrigued because they were so mindful of social justice, international issues, and so engaged in philanthropy. Since that is something that I really care about, I was encouraged to look into it,” McBrien said.

A review of databases found that the experiences of American women overseas has gone unexplored by researchers.

“It’s a brand-new topic. How incredibly exciting,” McBrien said. “For over 20 years, I have done research

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Global Citizen

on international refugees. Then I’ve expanded into international migration. I teach a course in global migration. I thought, well, this is international migration, almost the opposite end of the spectrum from what I’d been doing. But I just thought, it needs to be looked at.”

While in Paris, McBrien has been much more than an observer or academic researcher. She has shared with the women she is studying numerous experiences, from delivering coffee and sandwiches to the homeless in Paris on Saturday mornings to studying French to boost their fluency to exploring the city’s many art museums and jazz clubs.

She has made many new friendships.

“We always talk about how much we absolutely love Paris,” McBrien said. “I have more friends in Paris than I do in Florida, by far, because we have really similar interests.”

“

After 20 years of research and writing about refugees, I’ve found myself wanting to capstone my career with something quite different.

”

- Jody McBrien

The women McBrien has met, most of them American, are of varying ages and marital statuses. Some have children, and some are wealthy. Their reasons for moving to Paris vary. Some came for love; others came to work.

“I’ve met two who came over to become opera singers.

I’ve met others who just wanted to live an international life,” McBrien said. “Certainly, a lot of them have family at home, and so they travel back and forth. There are a number of women like me who do three months here, three months there, three months here, three months there, which is interesting. There’s a huge array.”

Many of the American women McBrien has met keep in touch with what is happening in the United States. Some left for Paris and chose to stay, according to McBrien, to escape the gun violence and political rancor they say has made living in America untenable.

McBrien said she is learning about the women’s “sense of belonging.”

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“They found a greater sense of belonging once they became fluent in the language and said they were helped by friends, in-laws, and taking classes,” McBrien said. “Almost half have held positions of leadership with women’s organizations to which they belong, and they participate because they enjoy the friendships.”

MCBRIEN’S RESEARCH ON MIGRATION ISSUES HAS HAD IMPACT McBrien’s prior research on issues related to global migration have brought her and USF considerable acclaim. Her writings about refugees she studied while a doctoral student at Emory University in Atlanta have been cited more than 3,000 times. Awards she has received include Emory’s Humanitarian Award (2005); and an Ian Axford Fellowship in New Zealand (2014), as well as the Council of Foreign Relations fellowship that took her to Paris in 2021-22.

While in Europe in 2022-23, McBrien has participated in panel discussions and webinars on the Ukraine-Russia war, migration and refugee rights.

“My work has taken me around the world to conduct research and provide support to refugees and to inform others through peer-reviewed and invited and keynote presentations,” McBrien said.

McBrien is studying women making a positive impact on their overseas homes, but she also is making a difference.

Beside teaching and conducting her new research, McBrien has become involved in various social justice and philanthropic organizations while in Europe, including the Federation of Women’s Clubs Overseas, or FAWCO. In March, she presented her research on LGBTQI+ refugees to a FAWCO conference in Bratislava, Slovakia, and she was recently named co-chair of the group’s human rights committee, which is raising money to support a nonprofit group serving girls in Kenya.

McBrien also hopes to do more research on the experiences of Ukrainian and other refugees in Europe — a subject close to the hearts of many of the women who are the subjects of her new research.

“The majority of my research has been with asylum seekers and refugees and trying to help with supporting them to be successful in school,” McBrien said “That’s always been what I have really cared about. And through this sabbatical, I met these women who care deeply about refugees, as well.

“I just became intrigued at the amount of social justice work they do because I care about social justice work,” McBrien said. “I think that was the connection for me.”

TRANSATLANTIC PARTNERSHIP WITH SERBIAN UNIVERSITY LEADS TO SECOND U.S. EMBASSY GRANT The new project will include a neuromarketing analysis of Florida tourism entities

BY GEORGIA JACKSON

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new collaboration between three University of South Florida faculty and two professors from the University of Novi Sad will expand on the success of last year’s $98,000 U.S. Embassy University Partnership grant, which launched an informative and cultural exchange between faculty and students at USF and the Serbian university.

The new project, titled “Strengthening digital sustainability communication in tourism and culture between the U.S. and Serbia,” seeks a better understanding of the gap between American and Serbian perceptions of sustainability by studying consumers' responses to marketing stimuli.

Brooke Hansen, an associate professor of instruction in the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management, will lead the charge with Adam Carmer, director of the Sensory Innovation Lab and assistant professor in the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management; Laura Harrison, director of USF’s Access 3D Lab; and Miroslav Vujičić and Uglješa Stankov, professors in the Department of Geography, Tourism and Hotel Management, at the University of Novi Sad. “We are excited to again be partnering with our Serbian

colleagues at the University of Novi Sad,” said Hansen. “This project builds on successful collaborations between the faculty on immersive technologies for sustainable crosscultural tourism development between the U.S. and Serbia.”

Following an online workshop hosted in October, by USF, the Serbian cohort will travel over 5,000 miles from Novi Sad to the Tampa Bay area to analyze sustainable practices at proposed local sites, such as the Clearwater Marine Aquarium, Tampa Bay Watch and Chiles Hospitality, which supplies its restaurants on Anna Maria Island and Longboat Key with fresh produce from its 26-acre organic farm in Parrish. The Serbian team will gather data, create 3D models with support from USF’s Access 3D Lab, located on the Tampa campus, and prepare a neuromarketing analysis of the organizations’ digital communications.

“The Serbian team is going to take the websites and the marketing and show it to a Serbian focus group to see if they’re paying attention to the sustainability aspect of the marketing,” Hansen said.

“Sustainability issues are complex and interconnected, and it can be difficult to communicate them in a way that is easy to understand and engage with. Using innovative

USF faculty meet digital approaches such as 3D with faculty from the imaging and virtual reality may University of Novi Sad. enhance communication of sustainability messaging.”

In the final phase of the project, Hansen, Carmer and Harrison will head to Serbia for a conference and academic roundtable featuring representatives from American institutions of higher-education, sustainability leaders and other stakeholders. The team will also create a web portal with sustainable communication practices.

“Learning from one another is the essence and joy of education,” Carmer said of the continued partnership.

Last year’s exchange included a trip to Prince Alexander’s Royal Palace, Lepenski Vir, Golubac Fortress and other Serbian tourism sites as well as a tour of several locations that highlight the importance of the hospitality and tourism industry to the state of Florida, including Busch Gardens, St. Armand’s Circle and downtown Sarasota. The group also visited USF’s Access 3D Lab, where they were presented with the latest virtualization and 3D modeling technologies, the augmented reality development in hospitality and tourism and the immersive sensory pedagogies used in food and beverage tourism.

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USF students in Joe Askren’s beer science class visit Calusa Brewing.

RESEARCH ON TAP

BY GEORGIA JACKSON

CHEERS TO 10 YEARS OF BEER SCIENCE

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hen Joe Askren, a professor of instruction in the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management on the Sarasota-Manatee campus, sat down to develop a “hands-on” beer science course with then-colleague Kenneth Caswell, he worried they might be in over their heads.

The year was 2013 and the goal was simple: introduce students to the science of beer, the brewing process, food pairing and brew pub operations. But, to make the course an experiential learning success, Askren knew they would need to partner with a local brewery.

“We were kind of nervous about getting connected and having one of the local breweries adopt us,” said Askren, who also wondered whether student demand would be sufficient to justify the course.

While recent legislation reducing restrictions on non-standard container sizes and allowing breweries to operate taprooms and sell beer directly to consumers for off-site consumption had created substantial growth in the number of brewpubs and

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craft breweries across the state, the local craft industry was still relatively young, and the number of breweries in the state remained in the double digits.

A decade later, any initial concerns Askren had about the success of the course have long since vanished, and 2013 may very well have been, as the Tampa Bay Times put it, “the year craft beer took over Tampa Bay.” The number of craft breweries and brewpubs in the state has more than tripled since 2013, to 396.

Together, they produce over one million barrels and create over $4 billion in economic impact each year. And, while beer sales across the country have declined slightly in recent years, sales of craft brews now account for 24.6% of the $115 billion U.S. beer market.

“We were worried about getting one local brewery, and we actually ended up having five or six that we toured with,” said Askren, who routinely takes his students behind the scenes at breweries, including Big Top Brewing Company, Calusa Brewing, Coppertail Brewing Co., Motorworks Brewing, Green Bench Brewing Company and others in Sarasota, Manatee, Pinellas and Hillsborough counties.

“To this day, the industry support is unbelievable.”

CLASS IN A GLASS In addition to touring breweries, students who enroll in Askren’s course — titled Introduction to Beer Science (HFT 3864) — attend lectures and brew two all-grain beers from scratch in the brewing lab on the SarasotaManatee campus. Once the beer is brewed, Askren teaches his students about conditioning, carbonating, packaging and marketing. Their final projects take various forms, from studies of beer trends to research on the third-party distribution system.

Former student Kyle Troupe called it “the best class” he had ever taken. “The amount of chemistry that goes into brewing beer is astounding,” he said. “If you even use a different water source it can drastically change the flavor of the final beer.”

Askren revamped the course last year by partnering with Priscila Veiga dos Santos, a professor of food science at the Universidade Estadual Paulista in São Paulo, Brazil, for an ongoing virtual global exchange. Students in Askren’s course now collaborate with students in Veiga dos Santos’ Industrial Fermentation Processes class. The Brazilian students serve as consultants, providing recommendations for how to modify and enhance the USF students’ recipes and produce a more robust final product.

“They have way more knowledge on these processes than I do,” said Pedro Abdo Breviglieri Nader, a former USF student. “It was very interesting to see how deep

you can go in the subject.”

For Askren, watching students’ enthusiasm and confidence grow over the course of the semester is the best part.

“You have these students who come in, they know nothing about brewing, and some of them are excited, some of them are a little intimidated but want to learn about it. A couple of them don’t even really like beer,” said Askren, who credits his background in hospitality to the course’s success. “And it’s funny — by the end of the semester, some of those students are ordering equipment on Amazon. They stay hungry after the class is over.

That’s why I love teaching it.”

One former student, Susie Bennett, went on to work for Motorworks Brewing as a microbiologist and quality assurance analyst. Both Nader and Troupe indicated they planned to invest in home brewing kits when the semester ended.

“Joe does a great job of keeping everything seem doable in a way that I feel like I could do it at home,” Nader said.

In an effort to meet increasing student demand, course capacity was doubled, last year, from 20 to 40 available seats, and there are plans to develop a hands-on lab to accommodate a certificate-based brewing program on the Tampa campus. The university has also launched a 23-week online brewing arts program, unaffiliated with the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management, on the St. Petersburg campus.

USF students go behind the scenes at local breweries.

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USF GRANT FUNDS EXPLORATION OF INNOVATIVE SOLUTIONS TO A 33,480-TON PROBLEM

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he Florida craft brewing industry generates a ton of waste each year. For every barrel of beer brewed, about 50 pounds of spent grain and residual yeast remain. Multiply that by Florida’s annual production of 1.2 million barrels of craft beer and you end up with an annual sum of 33,480 tons of waste.

Much of the spent grain is given to local farmers, who use it to feed livestock. The rest — the yeast and hops — is discharged to the nearest treatment plant, which comes at a cost to everyone involved. Not only do wastewater and sewage treatment plants emit greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, methane and nitrous oxide — all of which contribute to global climate change — but because high-strength wastes, like spent grain and residual yeast, require more energy to treat, some municipalities levy a surcharge.

An internal grant — and the prospect of developing new and sustainable solutions that account for the tons of waste produced by the craft brewing industry — brought Sarina Ergas and Qiong Zhang, both professors in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering; Paul Kirchman, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences on the Sarasota-Manatee campus; and three USF students, Dhanashree Rawalgaonkar, Yan Zhang and Selina Walker,

together to consider how byproducts of the brewing process might be reused to minimize waste and improve efficiency.

“It takes a lot of energy to run a brewery,” said Kirchman, who also teaches biology courses on the Sarasota-Manatee campus. “They have to boil these large volumes of liquid. And if you can get some methane out of the waste and use that to boil beer ... you could save money in a couple different ways.”

CAN RESIDUAL YEAST BE TRANSFORMED INTO METHANE GAS? Ergas, Zhang, Kirchman and their students set out to discover whether the residual yeast produced by craft breweries could be turned into methane gas through anaerobic digestion and used as an energy source — and whether the practice would be economically feasible for local craft breweries, like Motorworks Brewing and Calusa Brewing, both of which donated brewer’s waste for the study.

“Anaerobic digestion is a common practice for large breweries, but craft breweries produce a lot of hoppy beers like IPAs, and the compounds in hops that give beer its bitter taste can inhibit anaerobic microbes,” Ergas said. “We wanted to find out whether these compounds would significantly inhibit methane production in anaerobic digesters.”

The team also looked at the possibility of recovering carbon dioxide from the brewing process to use in carbonating the beer.

“The irony is the yeast make all this carbon dioxide

FLORIDA CRAFT BREWING INDUSTRY

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Research on Tap

Yan Zhang, left, and Dhanashree Rawalgaonkar studied whether residual yeast could be transformed into methane gas.

during fermentation, and the breweries buy these tanks of carbon dioxide to put back in the beer to carbonate it,” said Kirchman. “But they’re blowing all this carbon dioxide off as they’re doing this.”

To put their theory to the test, the group created a mixture of yeast and anaerobic microbes — also known as sewage sludge. Then they waited patiently for the chemicals to react.

“Normally, if bacteria eat dead stuff, they produce carbon dioxide, but if you take away all the oxygen, they have to make methane. And you can burn methane, it’s a fuel source,” Kirchman said.

The whole thing was, admittedly, “kind of gross,” but the team was able to conclude that the hops did not significantly affect the process, and that the practice might be economically feasible for intermediate sized breweries.

WHAT ABOUT SPENT GRAIN? The team hoped to prove the spent grain, like the residual yeast, could be transformed into methane gas and used as an energy source. However, while the team did manage to achieve a decent production of methane from the grain, Kirchman said the effort wasn’t, ultimately, worth it.

“We mixed this sewage sludge with this grain, but the bulk was not reduced much and, in the end, what you ended up with was a whole lot of grain waste covered in

sewage sludge and a bigger mess than what you started with,” said Kirchman, whose primary research focuses on yeast and aging. “There’s a lot of stuff in the grain that’s just not digestible in any reasonable period of time, so the volume wasn’t really decreased. So, you had 20 pounds of spent grain and you end up with 20 pounds of stuff covered in sewage sludge.”

In the end, the team concluded brewers should continue to make their waste available for pick up by local farmers.

Despite the final result, Walker, who is majoring in microbiology, called the experience “enriching,” and said it inspired her to pursue research as a career and to, one day, become a professor, herself.

“Working with Dr. Kirchman and Dr. Ergas exposed me to wet lab research and provided me the opportunity to present at various conferences,” she said.

Rawalgaonkar, a graduate student in the College of Engineering who presented the team’s findings at the 2023 Student Research Showcase, shared similar sentiments and said the project helped her better understand the local waste management systems and the role engineers play in safeguarding them.

“It’s not the worst thing to have an idea and find out it’s a bad idea, because then you know it was a bad idea,” said Kirchman, who expressed interest in continued collaborations with breweries and suggested he might be interested in developing new strains of yeast for use in the brewing process.

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FROM GRAIN TO GLASS: BRINGING SUSTAINABLE TOURISM TO FLORIDA’S CRAFT DISTILLED SPIRITS INDUSTRY

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iconic sponge docks of Tarpon Springs, Fla. Visitors enjoy live music, free tastings and a tour, where they learn more about the gin, whiskey, moonshine and ouzo crafted from scratch on-site — and receive a local history lesson.

“When you visit them, you learn about the history of sponge diving in Tarpon Springs and that before the Greeks were here, there were Black Bahamians who were sponge divers,” said Hansen. “From a tourism standpoint, it just hits so many different notes.”

rooke Hansen’s dedication to identifying and implementing sustainable tourism practices has taken her around the world and behind-the-scenes CONNECTING THE DOTS of various industries, including, most recently, Florida’s The Florida Craft Spirits Association is home to 50 craft distilled spirits industry, where she hopes to help registered members across the state, and Hansen is local distilleries adopt practices that support the local determined to encourage sustainable practices among economy and encourage sustainable tourism. all of them. Her determination is due, in part, to the fact “I’ve been doing research on sustainable distilleries for that, effective July 1, 2026, a minimum of 60 percent of years,” said Hansen, an assistant professor of instruction a craft distillery’s total finished branded products must in the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management in be distilled in the state of Florida and contain at least one the Muma College of Business. “It’s really a great area of agricultural product of Florida. research because, by definition, they’re already halfway “Everybody now wants to know where their food comes to sustainability because they’re local, they tend to use from, right? How is it grown? Who’s picking it?” said local products and they feature local culture.”

Hansen. “Well, where does my booze come from? I want The industry in Florida has grown in recent years due, to know. I want to follow it from grain to glass. This is a in part, to the passage of Florida Senate Bill 46, which huge opportunity in our state to develop agritourism.” permits certain craft distilleries to qualify for a vendor’s Hansen is working with the Florida Agritourism Association license for the sale of to connect distillers beer, wine and liquor. with farmers and do “Now they can just that.

PENSACOLA make and sell “I’m working with PANAMA CITY cocktails. They some of the farmers JACKSONVILLE can have events, who supply a lot ST. AUGUSTINE weddings and of the grain to our concerts. They now Florida distillers, function almost more and saying, ‘Hey, OCALA like a bar, giving them how would you like ORLANDO greater capability of to start a tour on TAMPA selling their product your farm so that to the public,” said people can see VERO BEACH ST. PETE Hansen. “It’s a major where you’re getting SARASOTA game changer.” that Johnnie Red A good example, corn to make that according to whiskey?”

FORT MYERS Hansen, is Tarpon The project is Springs Distillery, just getting off the MIAMI which produces ground, but Hansen small batches of expects it will create artisanal spirits from opportunities for KEY WEST a renovated sponge Florida farmers, warehouse, just a as well as local The number of distilleries has exploded across the state of Florida. short walk from the distillers.

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ON THE BOOKSHELF COLLEGE OF EDUCATION FACULTY CO-AUTHOR ‘FIRST OF ITS KIND’ ESOL TEXTBOOK

“The Big Book of ESOL Activities: Preparation for Educators, Administrators and School Counselors,” co-authored by Cindy Lovell, an adjunct faculty member in the College of Education, and Jane Govoni, the ESOL/ Foreign Language Program coordinator and an assistant professor of instruction on the Sarasota-Manatee campus, will help teachers and school personnel better serve the English language learners in their classrooms.

A “first of its kind,” the book introduces and reviews over 60 critical concepts through a series of over 200 “ready-to-go” activities that allow readers to test their knowledge.

“The Big Book of ESOL Activities: Preparation for Educators, Administrators and School Counselors” is the third book from Lovell and Govoni. It is available from Kendall Hunt Publishing Co.

NEW PALGRAVE HANDBOOK WILL ADVANCE THE GROWING FIELD OF AGE STUDIES IN LITERATURE

Valerie Lipscomb, a professor of English on the Sarasota-Manatee campus, is lead editor for the forthcoming Palgrave Handbook of Literature and Aging. Aagje Swinnen of Maastricht University in the Netherlands is the co-editor. With 28 chapters by 33 authors from around the world, the handbook is the largest and most comprehensive volume to examine how works of literature reflect what it means to grow older.

Lipscomb anticipates strong library sales and for professors in the fields of literary studies, gerontology, aging studies and cultural studies to assign chapters from the handbook in their courses.

“Palgrave is a leading academic publisher with particular strengths in international and interdisciplinary research,” Lipscomb said. “We expect the handbook to make a lasting contribution to the field, helping scholars and students alike understand age, the aging process, ageism and how these elements of everyone’s life course are reflected in and shaped by literature.”

Sarasota-Manatee campus alumna Madison Touchton served as the editorial assistant for the project, which was supported by a research award from USF Women in Leadership and Philanthropy.

USF’S JAN MELNIK OFFERS TIPS ON HOW TO USE LINKEDIN IN NEW BOOK

A recently published book co-authored by Jan Melnik, assistant program director in the Office of Academic Affairs on the University of South Florida’s SarasotaManatee campus, offers tips and insights on what Melnik says is essential to college students successfully launching a career in the digital age: Crafting a resumé and LinkedIn profile that will stand out and help sell them to potential employers.

“Resumé and LinkedIn Strategies for New College Graduates — What Works to Launch a Gen-Z Career,” co-written with Louise Kursmark, was released in March.

The book offers tips — and dozens of examples — on how to write an effective resumé and LinkedIn profile, as well as cover letters, introductory emails and other communications that are part of every job search.

The authors also offer advice on how to prepare for an interview and, after you receive an offer, negotiate your salary and other parts of the position.

The book, which describes LinkedIn as “today’s must-have social/professional medium for networking and job search,” includes testimonials from college career center professionals, including Toni Ripo, coordinator of career services on the Sarasota-Manatee campus, about the advice they provide students and graduates.

POETRY AND MATH COLLIDE IN NEW COLLECTION

BY SARASOTA-MANATEE CAMPUS FACULTY MEMBER

A new collection of poems by Joy D’Andrea, an associate professor of instruction in the School of Natural Sciences and Math, explores the author’s past, including her experience with imposter syndrome and becoming a mathematician. The collection, titled Collection of Transformations, is a meditation on D’Andrea’s relationship to her work as well as the confidence and peace of mind it brings her.

“I write poetry based on my feelings and what I am experiencing,” D’Andrea said. “When I am creating a new math theory, I am in turn evolving as a poet.”

The book will appeal to readers searching for the inspiration to overcome obstacles in their personal and professional lives.

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BOUNDLESS BULLS BOUNDLESS BULLS BOUNDLESS BULLS CHERYL ELLERBROCK For Cheryl Ellerbrock, teaching is a rewarding, creative and fun way to make a difference in the community, and in children’s lives. As dean of the College of Education at the University of South Florida Sarasota-Manatee campus, she strives to impart her sense of joy and her spirit of servanthood to USF students preparing to enter their own classrooms, to encourage new teachers to embrace their role as a teacher-leader and advocate for their students and to transform the College of Education into a vitalizing force in the Sarasota-Manatee community.

“My goal as campus dean is to increase community relationships between and among the College of Education and our local school districts — trying to build capacity for them, while simultaneously supporting our initiatives here at USF,” Ellerbrock said. “We work hand-in-hand with our community to bring forth the next generation of educators and those committed to the field of education to service our community.”

CAYLA LANIER For Cayla Lanier, the assistant dean and campus director for the Judy Genshaft Honors College on the Sarasota-Manatee campus, it’s the depth and breadth of the conversations she sparks with students that make her work meaningful. A graduate of the college, herself, Lanier’s passion for mentorship and fostering curiosity both in and out of the classroom is what brought her back to USF in 2008 and continues to motivate her to create engaging programs for students at USF and beyond.

“I was the first in my family to go to college and, while

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MOMENTUM: UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA SARASOTA-MANATEE

I was surrounded with love and support, I relied heavily on my college mentors to guide me through college and into my career,” said Lanier, who has committed herself to paying forward the gift of mentorship in her role in the Judy Genshaft Honors College and in the community, where she supports student success through a variety of programs, including the Mock Trial Intensive, which supports high school students as they learn the step by step process of court proceedings; Camp at College, an arts-integrated literary experience for rising fifth, sixth and seventh graders; and Dive into Reading, an award-winning literacy program.

“I love working with students of all ages,” Lanier said. “I take every chance I can to encourage young people to go to college and pursue their dreams.”

CARLOS MOREIRA Some 10% of USF SarasotaManatee campus students are “military connected,” meaning they or a family member are on active duty, in the reserves or National Guard or are a veteran.

At the Office of Veteran Success on the Sarasota-Manatee campus, Carlos Moreira, director of campus engagement for veteran success and alumni affairs, helps military-connected students address their unique challenges and find the support and resources they might need to succeed, both in and out of the classroom.

As a Sarasota-Manatee campus alum and a U.S. Marine Corps veteran, Moreira is uniquely qualified to help students who may be a lot like he was when he came to the campus after leaving the Marines in 2015. Moreira shared it can be hard for veterans to transition into civilian life and does his best to support and encourage them to recognize just how much they have accomplished.

“What makes it rewarding is that knowing that I can help someone accomplish a goal and be successful,” he said.

“We are taking care of students before they come, while they are here and after they leave.

MEET ALL OF OUR

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CAROL RICKS Born and raised in rural South Georgia, Carol Ricks feels right at home in Myakka City, where she lives with her husband and two children on a five-acre plot of land and serves as principal of Myakka Elementary School.

After three years at the school — during which the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the education system, a rezoning initiative brought a significant increase in enrollment and Hurricane Ian wreaked havoc on the tight-knit community — Ricks was named Principal of the Year by the School District of Manatee County.

According to Ricks, it was USF that provided her with the groundwork to overcome each obstacle and become a successful leader.

“There are so many principals doing great things in the district — many of them from USF,” Ricks said, “It’s a lot to live up to.”

MADISON SIEFERT Since enrolling in the Baldwin Risk Partners School of Risk Management and Insurance, Madison Siefert has built a community, homes and a bright future for herself and her classmates in the Delta Beta chapter of Gamma Iota Sigma, the professional fraternity she founded last year.

Unlike many in the field, Siefert has known since high school she wanted to study risk management and insurance. Her commitment and dedication to the program at USF and her desire to build a community post-pandemic allowed her to hit the ground running when she enrolled in the fall of 2020 and soon after say, “Yes,” when the school’s director suggested she found the fraternity, which is dedicated to strengthening the

insurance industry’s student talent pipeline.

“The opportunities are endless,” said Siefert, who also serves as the fraternity president and has made it her mission to connect members with opportunities in the industry. “There’s this talent gap in the insurance industry, and there are so many job positions to fill. A lot of students who do an internship with an insurance agency … they’re really going to want to hold on to them and offer them a full-time job as soon as they graduate.”

FREEMAN TALLA Freeman Talla enrolled at USF with big goals, determined to expand the solar power sector in his native Cameroon, Africa.

“There is no reliability. On average, people lose 35 hours of power per week,” said Talla, a dual-major graduate student in the Muma College of Business and the College of Engineering.

“At the same time, there is a disparity between the rich and the poor — most people can’t even pay for electricity.”

Inspired by the tragic death of his aunt, who sought emergency medical care during a power outage, Talla plans to start a business that will offer a sustainable solution.

He has dedicated much of his time at USF to refining his plan, building his resource network, improving his language and leadership skills and participating in internships, competitions, experiential learning opportunities and student organizations.

“USF has helped tremendously getting close to that goal,” Talla said.

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Building Momentum

USF ALUM SAYS NURSING/STEM BUILDING WILL CREATE NEW OPPORTUNITIES FOR STUDENTS AND COMMUNITY

BY MARC R. MASFERRER

K

athryn Williams says the accelerated second-degree nursing program at USF SarasotaManatee prepared her well for her career as a registered nurse on the Cardiac Medical/Surgical Floor at Lakeland Regional Health Medical Center.

But she says she and her classmates on the SarasotaManatee campus sometimes felt shortchanged because the simulation labs and other resources were not as extensive as those enjoyed by nursing students on other USF campuses.

“We did have to travel to the Tampa campus for a few simulation labs, and journeying from Sarasota to Tampa and back was an inconvenience to most of the students,” said Williams, who graduated from the USF nursing program in May 2023.

Williams said the Nursing/STEM building being planned for USF Sarasota-Manatee would be “invaluable” for the campus’s nursing students by providing them with more advanced technology for their training — eliminating the need to commute between campuses — and by attracting additional faculty to the campus.

“More staffing means more opportunities for students to have access to the labs outside of class time to practice skills they were unable to master in the short class period,” Williams said. “I know that a lot of students, myself included, really wanted extra time to use the lab to refresh ourselves and practice skills before going back into clinicals after school breaks but due to scheduling conflicts, we weren’t able to do that.”

Williams’ experience is exactly part of what USF plans to address with construction of the $61.7 million, 75,000-square-foot Nursing/STEM building planned for

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MOMENTUM: UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH FLORIDA SARASOTA-MANATEE

the north side of the courtyard on the Sarasota-Manatee campus. Officials say the new building will allow USF to gradually increase the size of an accelerated seconddegree nursing program started in 2020 to address a critical nursing shortage in the region.

Graduates of USF’s nursing program traditionally exceed state and national first-time pass rates on the NCLEX-RN nurse licensure examination.

Williams, who did her pediatric clinical rotation at the Lakeland hospital while a student and currently is training to become a Neonatal ICU nurse, said the new building should create more training opportunities for students and strengthen ties between USF Sarasota-Manatee and the surrounding community.

“I believe that as the campus develops the Nursing/ STEM building, there is an opportunity to offer health screenings to the community that will count towards the nursing students' public health clinicals,” said Williams, who previously graduated from USF with a bachelor’s degree in biology. “This will help bridge any gaps between the university and the Sarasota-Manatee area. It can also expose members of the community to the university and encourage enrollment to USF.” For more information about the Nursing/STEM building, including ways to support the project, visit sarasotamanatee.usf.edu/future/stem-nursing.

Kathryn Williams and classmates outside the Marshall Student Center on the USF Tampa campus.

HELP US GROW Your philanthropic support can bring this vision to life, making growth possible for the new Nursing/STEM building without increasing student tuition or fees.

Contact University Advancement at 941-359-4603 or visit sarasotamanatee.usf.edu/future to learn more.

1 of 2 Florida AAU public institutions, top 3% of all U.S. universities

Awarded $547 million in research contracts and grants in FY 2022

Home to 10 top-50 ranked graduate programs

Top 10 producer of U.S. Fulbright Scholars

“ Our new academic and research building will allow us

to expand our nursing, engineering and other academic programs, transform our campus and elevate the higher education profile of our region, addressing a heightened demand for more nurses, business leaders, scientists, engineers and other professionals.”

Regional Chancellor Karen Holbrook

No. 11 patent producer among U.S. public research universities

USF Sarasota-Manatee 8350 N. Tamiami Trail Sarasota, FL 34243

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