I got a new email group and get these from time to time. Does anyone find them interesting and want me to share them? I will admit there a bunch of them and it is overwhelming at times. However, I find some of them interesting?
Daytona Beach News-Journal: How did UCF attract $40 million gift from MacKenzie Scott? Short answer: Social mobility
When philanthropist MacKenzie Scott and her husband Dan Jewett gave $40 million to the University of Central Florida — the largest gift in school history — last month, she offered a reason. Social mobility. UCF rates highly in that measure of higher education: Giving opportunities to lower- income students, underrepresented students and first-generation-in-college students. The nonprofit advocacy organization Education Reform Now ranked universities using data, such as the number of undergraduates enrolled with Pell Grants, graduation rates and student loan default statistics. And UCF was No. 2, just behind California State University-Long Beach. Institutions like that — elevators of social mobility and equity — became Scott's focus as she, one of the world's richest women, went on a philanthropic mission.
Quoted in story: DeLaine Priest, associate vice provost of Student Success and Advising, and Pam Cavanagh, associate vice provost of UCF Connect
The Lily/Washington Post: Domestic violence shelters are in a state of emergencyThe pandemic thrust many domestic violence shelters into a state of emergency, as victims were suddenly trapped at home with their abusers. While the numbers vary city by city, she said, many police departments have been reporting double-digit increases in the number of domestic violence calls they received in the pandemic compared with the previous year. Now shelters are emerging from the pandemic with depleted resources and burned-out staff, expecting demand to spike again once the federal eviction moratorium lifts on July 31. While some domestic violence shelters received money from the Cares Act in March 2020, that funding was limited, said Bethany Backes, a professor who specializes in domestic violence at the University of Central Florida. Much of the state and federal funding for domestic violence shelters is distributed through time-limited grants, she said, often covering a period of three years.
WMFE-90.7: Helping First Responders On The Front Lines Of The Surfside Disaster
Two weeks after the partial collapse of the Champlain Towers South condominium building in Surfside, officials have stopped the search for survivors. UCF Restores, a nonprofit organization that helps people with trauma-related concerns, recently traveled down to Miami to offer their support to first responders at the site. UCF Restores is a partner of the Florida Firefighters Safety and Health Collaborative, where they accompany first responders in disasters and provide peer support and mental health counseling. Beidel says they got the call from the organization and were deployed when they were needed. “There were eight search and rescue teams from throughout Florida who went down to assist in this, and for many of them, they had never dealt with a traumatic event of this magnitude,” says Beidel.
Orlando Sentinel: Central Florida 100
Alex Martins, chair of the UCF Board of Trustees, writes: “While dedicated first responders tirelessly sifted through rubble in the hopes of rescuing victims of the Surfside condominium collapse, a team of UCF RESTORES therapists worked day and night to provide psychological first aid. They checked in on how the first responders were doing, listened to their stories and made sure they knew of the resources UCF RESTORES offers them at no charge. We are thankful for support from the Florida Legislature – particularly sponsors Rep. David Smith and Sen. Tom Wright -- that helps the nonprofit research center and PTSD treatment clinic continue supporting military personnel, first responders and others.
Lee Constantine, Seminole County commissioner, writes: “I love the beautiful beaches of Florida’s west coast… but not to beat a dead fish – have you seen the stinking mess the Red Tide fish-kill created? Add the damage from Piney Point’s toxic phosphate spill churned up by Hurricane Elsa and you have a recipe for economic disaster. Speaking of water woes, PBS/WUCF aired a brilliant documentary Thursday called “Fellowship of the Springs.” This investigatory account of the degradation of Florida springs is an in-depth analysis of why we are in this situation and how we must change. Demand action or our beautiful Florida is doomed.”
World Economic Forum: Shareholder rebellion and litigation: the climate future for energy firms, on Radio Davos
On May 26, 2021, there were three events that surprised the oil and gas industry: A Dutch court ordered Royal Dutch Shell to cut its own CO2 emissions and those of its suppliers and customers by 45% by the end of 2030 from 2019 levels. Shareholders in Chevron surprised its board by voting for a resolution that the company should cut its emissions. And, at Exxon-Mobil, a small shareholder group convinced a majority of investors to put at least two of its nominees onto the board - with a view to being more pro-active on climate change strategy, something Forbes likened to a "new David" taking on "one of the biggest Goliaths ever." To consider how significant these events will prove to be, Radio Davos spoke to James Bacchus, adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute and Distinguished University Professor of Global Affairs and Director of the Center for Global Economic and Environmental Opportunity at the University of Central Florida.
The Business Journals: Women athletes are poised to profit from new NCAA name, image, likeness rule
College athletes have already begun to sign big endorsement deals after a new NCAA rule went into effect Thursday allowing competitors to monetize their name, image and likeness. The so-called NIL rule enables athletes for the first time to make money from advertising, endorsements, autographs, instructional camps and other opportunities. College athletes had previously been prohibited from profiting from any marketing opportunity. Also announcing a deal was the entire University of Central Florida women's basketball team, which is partnering with College Hunks Hauling Junk and Moving. Under the one-year contract, each player on the team will receive $500 to promote the company on social media with the opportunity to earn additional commissions, Yahoo! Sports reported. The UCF Knights became the first NCAA team to sign a collective deal, per Yahoo. UCF's Star hurdler Rayniah Jones told The New York Times she is "just trying to test it out and see how it's going to go and to see how my life is going to change."
USA News Hub: Explained: Why vaccine passports are discriminatory towards more than half of the world
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has said testing people before and after international trips for the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) should be a good enough basis for travel, reigniting the debate over how vaccine passports could be discriminatory against a section of the world’s population. As Yara Asi at the University of Central Florida explains, the premise is simple: Proof of being immunized against COVID-19 could be a prerequisite for engaging in leisure activities and travel. “Given the global imbalance of vaccine availability, it is not difficult to imagine a situation where the citizens of rich countries may regain their rights to travel to environments where local populations are still in some form of lockdown.”
News 13: UCF study says it is unclear why, but the average size of nesting sea turtles is shrinking
If you walk the beaches in Brevard County close to dusk or at night this time of year, you might catch a glimpse of a sea turtle coming ashore to lay her eggs. But unless you have a caliper and the time to measure these turtles, you might not know something about them has been changing over the last few decades: they’re getting smaller on average. Researchers with the University of Central Florida’s Marine Turtle Research Group (MTRG) published a study this week showing that shrinkage over time. Katrina Phillips, a doctoral candidate in UCF’s Department of Biology and the study’s lead author, said it’s unclear for sure why they are finding smaller sea turtles among loggerheads and green sea turtles that show up on Florida’s eastern shoreline.
FOX4-WFTX (Cape Coral): Florida Python Challenge is back with a chance at $10,000
Once again, the Florida Python Challenge is back and provoking snake wranglers and python predators to remove as many Burmese pythons as they can from the state’s Everglades. The FWC is working on new ways to help rid south Florida of the pesky pythons. “We have a python detector dog team that is trained on the scent of python to try and find them in the field. We also are looking at developing a new type of camera using infrared with our partners at the University of Central Florida, and that camera can be mounted with that new technology to a truck that would go into the field and improve our visual searches,” said Sarah Funck of the FWC.
Screen Rant: Can You Outrun Landmine Explosions Like In F9?
F9: The Fast Saga features some of the franchise’s most ridiculous action sequences yet, including sending Tej and Roman into space, making cars fly with magnets, and outrunning landmines. That last feat happens in the first half of the film, when Dom Toretto and the crew come across an active minefield while being pursued by bad guys. But is it actually possible to outrun the explosion of a landmine, even in a fast car? According to Professor Costas Efthimiou, who studies action films as part of his physics work at the University of Central Florida, outrunning a landmine explosion as the crew does in F9 would be nearly impossible. Efthimiou said that even going at high speeds, a car wouldn’t be able to move far enough away from a landmine after triggering it to escape the blast. The delay time on modern landmines is just milliseconds – hardly anything at all – so trying to outrun them probably wouldn’t work out so well in real life.
Clean Technica: Fort Lauderdale Considers A Bid From The Boring Company
The Boring Company, Elon Musk’s brainchild that specializes in digging underground tunnels to ease surface congestion, approached the city of Fort Lauderdale with a proposal. Let it bore a tunnel (two tunnels, actually) from the city center to the beach with a stop at Las Olas, where the city’s trendiest shops and restaurants are located. Inside the tunnels would be a fleet of self-driving Teslas that would whisk people in an out of the city. The projected capacity of the project is 4,000 riders a day. Luis Arboleda Monsalve, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Central Florida, isn’t worried. He tells Recode, “We have done all kinds of tunnels in very, very difficult ground.”
State and National Higher Education
Inside Higher Ed: AAUP at University of Oklahoma challenges FIRE statements on free speech
The American Association of University Professors and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education are both organizations with stated commitments to academic freedom and free speech. But the AAUP chapter at the University of Oklahoma says FIRE erred in its description of a program at Oklahoma where faculty members trained other faculty members on how to make minority students feel comfortable and excel in class. FIRE says the program's speakers showed insensitivity to academic freedom and free speech. The University of Oklahoma's Belinda Higgs Hyppolite, vice president for diversity, equity and inclusion, responded to the piece with a note that said, "the University of Oklahoma unequivocally values free expression and the diversity of all viewpoints … In no way does OU endorse or condone censorship of its students."
Chronicle of Higher Education: After a Year of Losses, Higher Ed’s Work Force Is Growing Again
After shedding a net of 660,000 workers over the course of the pandemic, the labor force that powers America’s colleges and universities finds itself growing again at a steady, if uneven, pace. Since 2021 began, higher education has recovered a third of the labor force it shed in 2020, with the sector adding an estimated 90,000 jobs in May, according to preliminary seasonally adjusted estimates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s on top of a net of 153,000 jobs added since December of last year, when the number of jobs hit its lowest point during the pandemic. Higher education’s gains parallel those of the wider economy, where the overall unemployment rate for June 2021 came in at 5.9 percent, down from a high of 14.8 percent in April 2020.
Washington Post: Nikole Hannah-Jones’s tenure saga highlights lack of Black journalism instructors, students say
Rising college senior Charity Cohen awoke Tuesday in her Whitsett, N.C., home to a call from her father, who had disappointing news. Acclaimed reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones announced she was heading to Howard University instead of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, ending a months-long battle with UNC’s board of trustees, which stalled in offering her tenure. Cohen and other Black students at the journalism school and at programs across the country told The Post that they were disappointed that Hannah-Jones wouldn’t be counted among faculty at UNC and that the spectacle of her tenure process made them examine the lack of Black professors who are teaching them how to report the truth. Hannah-Jones’s presence would not have overwhelmingly changed the racial demographics of the school, but it would’ve added to the number of Black instructors on campus whose presence alone is a motivator to pursue the field, they said.
FOX 5 (Atlanta): Parents less worried about paying for college, some still leaning on student loans, survey finds
The pandemic cast a shadow over the finances of many American families, and the rising cost of college remains a roadblock for young adults who want to attain higher education. But despite the challenges, parents are more confident about funding a college education for their children in 2021, according to a recent survey. Fewer families feel overwhelmed by the cost of college this year compared to last year — 55% in 2021 versus 71% in 2020, the survey of 1,045 parents conducted by College Ave Student Loans and Barnes & Noble College Insights found.
Inside Higher Ed: What Academic Labor Wants
Organized labor in higher education -- representing faculty members on the tenure track and adjuncts, graduate students and other employees -- came together last week for the first Higher Ed Labor Summit: Building a Movement to Transform U.S. Higher Education. And on Friday evening, those in attendance issued a platform for consideration by the individual unions represented at the conference. More than 75 union locals were present at the meeting, and they represent more than 300,000 people in academe. Those in attendance back the document, union leaders said. "We envision institutions of higher education that prioritize people and the common good over profit and prestige," says the introduction to the platform. "We envision institutions that redress systemic oppression and pursue equity along lines of race, gender, class, sexuality, nationality, indigeneity, age, (dis)ability and immigration status for students and higher ed workers across all job categories. We envision institutions that honor the right of all workers to organize a union and collectively bargain."
Daytona Beach News-Journal: How did UCF attract $40 million gift from MacKenzie Scott? Short answer: Social mobility
When philanthropist MacKenzie Scott and her husband Dan Jewett gave $40 million to the University of Central Florida — the largest gift in school history — last month, she offered a reason. Social mobility. UCF rates highly in that measure of higher education: Giving opportunities to lower- income students, underrepresented students and first-generation-in-college students. The nonprofit advocacy organization Education Reform Now ranked universities using data, such as the number of undergraduates enrolled with Pell Grants, graduation rates and student loan default statistics. And UCF was No. 2, just behind California State University-Long Beach. Institutions like that — elevators of social mobility and equity — became Scott's focus as she, one of the world's richest women, went on a philanthropic mission.
Quoted in story: DeLaine Priest, associate vice provost of Student Success and Advising, and Pam Cavanagh, associate vice provost of UCF Connect
The Lily/Washington Post: Domestic violence shelters are in a state of emergencyThe pandemic thrust many domestic violence shelters into a state of emergency, as victims were suddenly trapped at home with their abusers. While the numbers vary city by city, she said, many police departments have been reporting double-digit increases in the number of domestic violence calls they received in the pandemic compared with the previous year. Now shelters are emerging from the pandemic with depleted resources and burned-out staff, expecting demand to spike again once the federal eviction moratorium lifts on July 31. While some domestic violence shelters received money from the Cares Act in March 2020, that funding was limited, said Bethany Backes, a professor who specializes in domestic violence at the University of Central Florida. Much of the state and federal funding for domestic violence shelters is distributed through time-limited grants, she said, often covering a period of three years.
WMFE-90.7: Helping First Responders On The Front Lines Of The Surfside Disaster
Two weeks after the partial collapse of the Champlain Towers South condominium building in Surfside, officials have stopped the search for survivors. UCF Restores, a nonprofit organization that helps people with trauma-related concerns, recently traveled down to Miami to offer their support to first responders at the site. UCF Restores is a partner of the Florida Firefighters Safety and Health Collaborative, where they accompany first responders in disasters and provide peer support and mental health counseling. Beidel says they got the call from the organization and were deployed when they were needed. “There were eight search and rescue teams from throughout Florida who went down to assist in this, and for many of them, they had never dealt with a traumatic event of this magnitude,” says Beidel.
Orlando Sentinel: Central Florida 100
Alex Martins, chair of the UCF Board of Trustees, writes: “While dedicated first responders tirelessly sifted through rubble in the hopes of rescuing victims of the Surfside condominium collapse, a team of UCF RESTORES therapists worked day and night to provide psychological first aid. They checked in on how the first responders were doing, listened to their stories and made sure they knew of the resources UCF RESTORES offers them at no charge. We are thankful for support from the Florida Legislature – particularly sponsors Rep. David Smith and Sen. Tom Wright -- that helps the nonprofit research center and PTSD treatment clinic continue supporting military personnel, first responders and others.
Lee Constantine, Seminole County commissioner, writes: “I love the beautiful beaches of Florida’s west coast… but not to beat a dead fish – have you seen the stinking mess the Red Tide fish-kill created? Add the damage from Piney Point’s toxic phosphate spill churned up by Hurricane Elsa and you have a recipe for economic disaster. Speaking of water woes, PBS/WUCF aired a brilliant documentary Thursday called “Fellowship of the Springs.” This investigatory account of the degradation of Florida springs is an in-depth analysis of why we are in this situation and how we must change. Demand action or our beautiful Florida is doomed.”
World Economic Forum: Shareholder rebellion and litigation: the climate future for energy firms, on Radio Davos
On May 26, 2021, there were three events that surprised the oil and gas industry: A Dutch court ordered Royal Dutch Shell to cut its own CO2 emissions and those of its suppliers and customers by 45% by the end of 2030 from 2019 levels. Shareholders in Chevron surprised its board by voting for a resolution that the company should cut its emissions. And, at Exxon-Mobil, a small shareholder group convinced a majority of investors to put at least two of its nominees onto the board - with a view to being more pro-active on climate change strategy, something Forbes likened to a "new David" taking on "one of the biggest Goliaths ever." To consider how significant these events will prove to be, Radio Davos spoke to James Bacchus, adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute and Distinguished University Professor of Global Affairs and Director of the Center for Global Economic and Environmental Opportunity at the University of Central Florida.
The Business Journals: Women athletes are poised to profit from new NCAA name, image, likeness rule
College athletes have already begun to sign big endorsement deals after a new NCAA rule went into effect Thursday allowing competitors to monetize their name, image and likeness. The so-called NIL rule enables athletes for the first time to make money from advertising, endorsements, autographs, instructional camps and other opportunities. College athletes had previously been prohibited from profiting from any marketing opportunity. Also announcing a deal was the entire University of Central Florida women's basketball team, which is partnering with College Hunks Hauling Junk and Moving. Under the one-year contract, each player on the team will receive $500 to promote the company on social media with the opportunity to earn additional commissions, Yahoo! Sports reported. The UCF Knights became the first NCAA team to sign a collective deal, per Yahoo. UCF's Star hurdler Rayniah Jones told The New York Times she is "just trying to test it out and see how it's going to go and to see how my life is going to change."
USA News Hub: Explained: Why vaccine passports are discriminatory towards more than half of the world
External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has said testing people before and after international trips for the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) should be a good enough basis for travel, reigniting the debate over how vaccine passports could be discriminatory against a section of the world’s population. As Yara Asi at the University of Central Florida explains, the premise is simple: Proof of being immunized against COVID-19 could be a prerequisite for engaging in leisure activities and travel. “Given the global imbalance of vaccine availability, it is not difficult to imagine a situation where the citizens of rich countries may regain their rights to travel to environments where local populations are still in some form of lockdown.”
News 13: UCF study says it is unclear why, but the average size of nesting sea turtles is shrinking
If you walk the beaches in Brevard County close to dusk or at night this time of year, you might catch a glimpse of a sea turtle coming ashore to lay her eggs. But unless you have a caliper and the time to measure these turtles, you might not know something about them has been changing over the last few decades: they’re getting smaller on average. Researchers with the University of Central Florida’s Marine Turtle Research Group (MTRG) published a study this week showing that shrinkage over time. Katrina Phillips, a doctoral candidate in UCF’s Department of Biology and the study’s lead author, said it’s unclear for sure why they are finding smaller sea turtles among loggerheads and green sea turtles that show up on Florida’s eastern shoreline.
FOX4-WFTX (Cape Coral): Florida Python Challenge is back with a chance at $10,000
Once again, the Florida Python Challenge is back and provoking snake wranglers and python predators to remove as many Burmese pythons as they can from the state’s Everglades. The FWC is working on new ways to help rid south Florida of the pesky pythons. “We have a python detector dog team that is trained on the scent of python to try and find them in the field. We also are looking at developing a new type of camera using infrared with our partners at the University of Central Florida, and that camera can be mounted with that new technology to a truck that would go into the field and improve our visual searches,” said Sarah Funck of the FWC.
Screen Rant: Can You Outrun Landmine Explosions Like In F9?
F9: The Fast Saga features some of the franchise’s most ridiculous action sequences yet, including sending Tej and Roman into space, making cars fly with magnets, and outrunning landmines. That last feat happens in the first half of the film, when Dom Toretto and the crew come across an active minefield while being pursued by bad guys. But is it actually possible to outrun the explosion of a landmine, even in a fast car? According to Professor Costas Efthimiou, who studies action films as part of his physics work at the University of Central Florida, outrunning a landmine explosion as the crew does in F9 would be nearly impossible. Efthimiou said that even going at high speeds, a car wouldn’t be able to move far enough away from a landmine after triggering it to escape the blast. The delay time on modern landmines is just milliseconds – hardly anything at all – so trying to outrun them probably wouldn’t work out so well in real life.
Clean Technica: Fort Lauderdale Considers A Bid From The Boring Company
The Boring Company, Elon Musk’s brainchild that specializes in digging underground tunnels to ease surface congestion, approached the city of Fort Lauderdale with a proposal. Let it bore a tunnel (two tunnels, actually) from the city center to the beach with a stop at Las Olas, where the city’s trendiest shops and restaurants are located. Inside the tunnels would be a fleet of self-driving Teslas that would whisk people in an out of the city. The projected capacity of the project is 4,000 riders a day. Luis Arboleda Monsalve, a professor of civil engineering at the University of Central Florida, isn’t worried. He tells Recode, “We have done all kinds of tunnels in very, very difficult ground.”
State and National Higher Education
Inside Higher Ed: AAUP at University of Oklahoma challenges FIRE statements on free speech
The American Association of University Professors and the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education are both organizations with stated commitments to academic freedom and free speech. But the AAUP chapter at the University of Oklahoma says FIRE erred in its description of a program at Oklahoma where faculty members trained other faculty members on how to make minority students feel comfortable and excel in class. FIRE says the program's speakers showed insensitivity to academic freedom and free speech. The University of Oklahoma's Belinda Higgs Hyppolite, vice president for diversity, equity and inclusion, responded to the piece with a note that said, "the University of Oklahoma unequivocally values free expression and the diversity of all viewpoints … In no way does OU endorse or condone censorship of its students."
Chronicle of Higher Education: After a Year of Losses, Higher Ed’s Work Force Is Growing Again
After shedding a net of 660,000 workers over the course of the pandemic, the labor force that powers America’s colleges and universities finds itself growing again at a steady, if uneven, pace. Since 2021 began, higher education has recovered a third of the labor force it shed in 2020, with the sector adding an estimated 90,000 jobs in May, according to preliminary seasonally adjusted estimates from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That’s on top of a net of 153,000 jobs added since December of last year, when the number of jobs hit its lowest point during the pandemic. Higher education’s gains parallel those of the wider economy, where the overall unemployment rate for June 2021 came in at 5.9 percent, down from a high of 14.8 percent in April 2020.
Washington Post: Nikole Hannah-Jones’s tenure saga highlights lack of Black journalism instructors, students say
Rising college senior Charity Cohen awoke Tuesday in her Whitsett, N.C., home to a call from her father, who had disappointing news. Acclaimed reporter Nikole Hannah-Jones announced she was heading to Howard University instead of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, ending a months-long battle with UNC’s board of trustees, which stalled in offering her tenure. Cohen and other Black students at the journalism school and at programs across the country told The Post that they were disappointed that Hannah-Jones wouldn’t be counted among faculty at UNC and that the spectacle of her tenure process made them examine the lack of Black professors who are teaching them how to report the truth. Hannah-Jones’s presence would not have overwhelmingly changed the racial demographics of the school, but it would’ve added to the number of Black instructors on campus whose presence alone is a motivator to pursue the field, they said.
FOX 5 (Atlanta): Parents less worried about paying for college, some still leaning on student loans, survey finds
The pandemic cast a shadow over the finances of many American families, and the rising cost of college remains a roadblock for young adults who want to attain higher education. But despite the challenges, parents are more confident about funding a college education for their children in 2021, according to a recent survey. Fewer families feel overwhelmed by the cost of college this year compared to last year — 55% in 2021 versus 71% in 2020, the survey of 1,045 parents conducted by College Ave Student Loans and Barnes & Noble College Insights found.
Inside Higher Ed: What Academic Labor Wants
Organized labor in higher education -- representing faculty members on the tenure track and adjuncts, graduate students and other employees -- came together last week for the first Higher Ed Labor Summit: Building a Movement to Transform U.S. Higher Education. And on Friday evening, those in attendance issued a platform for consideration by the individual unions represented at the conference. More than 75 union locals were present at the meeting, and they represent more than 300,000 people in academe. Those in attendance back the document, union leaders said. "We envision institutions of higher education that prioritize people and the common good over profit and prestige," says the introduction to the platform. "We envision institutions that redress systemic oppression and pursue equity along lines of race, gender, class, sexuality, nationality, indigeneity, age, (dis)ability and immigration status for students and higher ed workers across all job categories. We envision institutions that honor the right of all workers to organize a union and collectively bargain."
