One UCF faculty member, however, has developed an online adaptive-learning approach teaching the subject that has drawn the interest of philanthropist Melinda Gates, who recently posted a and story on her social channels.

Gates met associate lecturer Tammy Muhs last year when the co-chair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation visited the UCF campus to learn about the university’s teaching methods.

Through the years, Muhs said she has discovered that students in her algebra classes have varying levels of understanding, so some of them need more time to progress. Muhs also told Gates that observers often are surprised to find out that so many seniors are in her freshman algebra class – because some students put off the class out of fear, which often is the obstacle that keeps them from graduating.

Muhs’ online adaptive-learning technique helps the students move ahead at their own pace. This system allows her to tailor course lessons based on the students’ aptitude, and continually adapts based on individual comprehension.

For example, if students can quickly understand the material in Algebra I, they may also be able to finish Algebra II in the same semester.

Conversely, the adaptive-learning platform is designed to automatically provide remedial instructions for students who may be lagging behind.

In addition to providing what each student needs to succeed, the system can accelerate the path to a degree and save students money.

“With personalized learning tools, Dr. Muhs is able to make even a class of 450 feel a little more like a class of five,” Gates says. “A student who is struggling is offered extra help. It’s like each student has a customized textbook that is constantly being rewritten just for them. And because Dr. Muhs is able to see the data in real time, she’s able to step in right away if a student needs her.”

Gates said she hopes more schools can develop such personalized courses and follow UCF’s example.

“Not every student will be lucky enough to have a teacher like Dr. Muhs,” Gates says. “But as the tools she used to design her course reach more faculty on more campuses, I hope to see more students across the country experience classes like the one she created for hers.”

A crew from the venerable CBS news show was at UCF in October at the same time Bill and Melinda Gates visited campus. The news show and the Gateses both came to learn more about how the university is helping students to succeed and graduate.

60 Minutes anchor Scott Pelley sat down for an emotional interview with Bill and Melinda Gates and a group of UCF Gates Scholars – students whose college expenses have been paid by the Gates Foundation.

In addition to the TV segment, Scott Pelley also interviewed Maribeth Ehasz, vice president for UCF’s , about innovative ways the university is boosting student success.

Over the past decade, UCF has more than doubled the number of bachelor’s degree graduates for students who come from low-income and minority backgrounds. In the past five years alone, nearly 18,000 first-generation students and more than 33,000 students who are eligible for Pell Grants have earned bachelor’s degrees.

In the interview, Ehasz says she’s used 20 years of data to find a correlation between factors like gym use and housing conditions to identify students who are at a high risk of dropping out. UCF has shown remarkable success in retention and graduation rates among first-generation and low-income students by using software to help identify students at risk of dropping out and then getting counselors involved to help them back on track.

“Low-income students make up about 40 percent of our population,” says Ehasz in the interview. “First-generation students make up about 25 percent of our population. Over the past seven or eight years as I’ve been tracking, I’ve seen that our retention rates have increased, particularly for the first-gen[eration] students, by 10 percentage points – that’s pretty big.”

To watch and read more highlights from the 60 Minutes broadcast, visit .

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Ford Foundation and four other organizations have contributed $5.7 million to support the şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą Innovation Alliance’s efforts to expand proven programs to other alliance members’ campuses. The goal is to share and adapt ideas and develop a “national playbook” of programs that will benefit low-income and first-generation students.

Today, high-income students are seven times more likely to attain a college degree than are low-income students. The American economy will face a shortage of at least 16 million college graduates by 2025. The founding members of the alliance are focused on addressing the achievement gap and pending shortage at a time when public funding for higher education has been decreasing.

The foundations’ pledges were announced Tuesday during a kickoff event in Washington, D.C. UCF President John C. Hitt spoke during a panel session about how sharing ideas improves student success. Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs Dale Whittaker spoke about DirectConnect to UCF, one of the university’s successful initiatives that may be replicated on other alliance campuses.

Joining UCF as alliance members are: Arizona State şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą, Georgia State şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą, Iowa State şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą, Michigan State şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą, Oregon State şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą, Purdue şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą, The Ohio State şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą, şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą of California at Riverside, şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą of Kansas and The şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą of Texas at Austin.

The 11 universities serve a combined 378,000 undergraduates. The schools serve large numbers of low-income and first-generation college goers, and each institution has pioneered programs to help students succeed.

“Through this unprecedented collaboration, we will help more students across the country earn high-quality, four-year degrees and experience the life-changing opportunities that accompany those degrees,” Hitt said. “My UCF colleagues and I are eager to learn from our partners and share our best ideas and innovations.”

The Ford Foundation, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the Lumina Foundation, the Kresge Foundation, USA Funds and the Markle Foundation are pledging a combined $5.7 million, and that amount will be matched by the participating universities.

What UCF Success Stories Can Help Our Partners?

Through DirectConnect to UCF, more than 24,000 students have earned UCF bachelor’s degrees after they first enrolled at one of four partner state colleges – Valencia College, Seminole State College, Lake-Sumter State College and Eastern Florida State College.  Many of those students would not have attended UCF if it weren’t for this innovative program.

UCF guarantees admission to students who graduate from those four schools, and the university places advisers, financial aid counselors and other staff members at the partner campuses to help students before they enroll at UCF.

Arizona State şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą has already created a pathways program for community college students modeled after UCF’s. The alliance could lead to other institutions adopting similar programs.

Alliance partners also may adapt two UCF summer programs that help first-generation, low-income and minority students adjust to college life before they start their fall classes. Students live on campus for six weeks and build their writing, oral and study skills through an intensive instructional program, tutoring, advising and more.

What Can UCF Learn From Our Partners?

UCF plans to learn initially from the successes of The şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą of Texas at Austin, Arizona State şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą and Georgia State şŁ˝ÇÖ±˛Ą in using “big data” to identify indicators of student success or barriers, and then taking actions to help students overcome those barriers.

Georgia State, for example, has increased its semester-to-semester retention rates by 5 percent and reduced the average length of time students need to complete their degree by about half a semester. Graduating earlier has helped Georgia State’s class of 2014 save millions of dollars in tuition and fees.

TLE TeachLivE earned the 2013 NTSA Governor’s Award for Excellence in Modeling and Simulation from the National Training and Simulation Association.

The UCF software first was chosen as the winner in the NTSA’s training category and then was picked for the top prize from among other competing categories because of its noteworthy, significant and innovative contributions.

The award ceremony was held during the Interservice/Industry Training, Simulation and Education Conference– or I/ITSEC– the modeling, simulation and training industry’s largest international trade show held each year in Orlando.

“The focus of I/ITSEC in the past has been the military applications of modeling and simulation. Awarding TLE TeachLivE with the Governor’s Award is an indication that the industry is recognizing that there are other applications, such as education. It’s an honor to be awarded for being on the cutting edge,” said Mike Hynes, a member of the TLE TeachLivE team and professor in UCF’s College of Education and Human Performance.

Hynes created TLE TeachLivE with education professor Lisa Dieker, College of Engineering & Computer Science professor Charles Hughes, and an interdisciplinary team that included members of the Synthetic Reality Lab at UCF’s Institute for Simulation & Training.

TLE TeachLivE improves teacher practice and student learning by giving educators the opportunity to instruct a virtual classroom full of avatar students.

The experience allows teachers-in-training to perfect their skills without impacting any real students. For veteran teachers, practice in a virtual classroom allows them to hone and refine their expertise or try out new techniques.

Since its creation in 2005, TLE TeachLivE has expanded to more than 20 partner sites, including the school districts in Lake and Volusia counties. A $1.5 million grant received in 2012 from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation is helping the program expand its reach to universities across the country.

This summer, the computer-generated classroom added three new avatars that represent middle schoolers learning English as a second language.

The TLE TeachLivE team says that the “sandbox” nature of the program— its ability to be used in different ways and for different purposes— could also have uses in areas outside of education.

Someday she may save your life.

Koury, a second-year master’s student in Industrial Organizational Psychology, is taking a new approach to improve driving safety: researching the distractions caused by passengers in a vehicle – not the driver’s own lapses, such as drinking, texting or talking on the phone.

“I am hoping that this research will help improve driving behavior not only with the driver but also the people in the vehicle, too,” Koury said. “Their life is not only in the hands of the driver but with them as well.”

Koury’s research will be among about 500 projects on display during UCF’s Student Research Week on April 2-5. Student work on everything from “Renewable Energy from the Florida Current” to “Teaching Children with Speech Impairments to Ask Questions Using an iPad” to “UCF’s First Exoplanet Discovery” will be showcased.

About 190 graduate researchers and 380 undergraduate researchers are participating.

“We anticipate an immensely busy week, with more students than we have ever had,” said Elliot Vittes, interim vice provost and dean of undergraduate studies.

The event kicks off with a seminar about combating the world’s most deadly infectious diseases, and the week will include professional-development workshops, student presentations, and an art exhibit based on research projects.

The opening-day seminar will be led by Professor Henry Daniell, who will discuss what UCF’s Burnett School of Biomedical Sciences is doing to combat cholera, malaria, anthrax and other infectious diseases that kill about 15 million people worldwide each year.

In the presentation, Daniell will talk about the “green vaccine” concept of low-cost medications and distribution developed at UCF. The concept created by using funding from the National Institutes of Health and USDA is being advanced further by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and others. The seminar will be at 2 p.m. April 2 in the Cape Florida Ballroom AB of the Student Union.

Students in the Graduate Research Forum will present and discuss their projects from noon to 4 p.m. April 3, and students in the Showcase of Undergraduate Research Excellence will present their projects from 1:30 to 5 p.m. April 5. Both sessions will be held in the Pegasus Ballroom of the Student Union.

Various workshops on topics such as finding student funding and organizing research literature will be offered each day of the event at various venues on campus.

To conclude the week’s activities, a reception and art exhibition created by the university’s STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics) initiative will be held 6-8 p.m. April 5 in the UCF Art Gallery.

The program, part of a five-year grant funded by the National Science Foundation, brings together faculty and students from the different disciplines to create new synergies. Researchers met with visual arts and design students to explain genetic coding, astrophysics, scientific breakthroughs and other complex topics. The student artists then created paintings, sculptures, drawings and posters to illustrate the concepts.

The STEAM Exhibition will remain in the gallery through April 7.

For a complete schedule of activities for Student Research Week, which are free and open to everyone, click  .

There’s much research under way trying to cure diabetes, especially in Central Florida. From Sanford-Burnham Medical Research Institute and its focus on Type 2 diabetes and its connection to fat, to UCF’s groundbreaking work to create insulin from plants that could reactivate production of the protein in the pancreas, the possibility exists that diabetes may someday be a thing of the past.

But much of the research is specific to Type 2 diabetes – the kind that usually develops in adulthood when the body no longer produces enough insulin or the body’s cells ignore the insulin. It’s the most common form of diabetes affecting millions of Americans each year.

Very little research in Central Florida is focused on Type 1 diabetes, which is diagnosed in children and young adults. In Type 1, insulin is not produced at all and children must learn how to inject themselves to survive.

Daniell has developed capsules of insulin produced in genetically modified lettuce that could hold the key to restoring the body’s ability to produce insulin.

In 2006, Daniell’s research team successfully genetically engineered lettuce plants with the insulin gene and then administered freeze-dried plant cells to five-week-old diabetic mice as a powder for eight weeks. By the end of the study in 2007, the diabetic mice had normal blood and urine sugar levels, and their cells were producing normal levels of insulin. The research has continued since 2007.

“Although more research is needed, I am hopeful that we will see a cure in my lifetime,” Daniell said.

Martin Bernstine, the executive director of JDRF’s Central Florida Chapter, said the national organization has provided more than $1.6 billion in research grants since it was founded in 1970. It gave Florida’s researchers more than $22 million in 2010.

“Dr. Daniell’s research is quite promising, and we’re thrilled to be able to fund a local scientist working on such important work to our community,” Bernstine said.

Bernstine says that while the organization’s focus is on Type 1 diabetes, his office provides a variety of services to people with Type 1 or 2 diabetes in nine counties including Orange, Seminole, Osceola, Volusia, Lake, Sumter, Flagler, Brevard and Polk. In addition to funding research, the organization offers services including support groups and offering newly diagnosed children educational and support materials, including Rufus, a stuffed teddy bear.

Children use Rufus to practice injecting insulin by giving the bear “shots” of insulin.

“Diabetes is prevalent, and we are dedicated to finding a cure,” Bernstine said. “We will continue to fund researchers who are moving us in that direction.

Daniell joined UCF’s Burnett School for Biomedical Sciences, a part of the College of Medicine, in 1998. His research led to the formation of the university’s first biotechnology company. He has published more than 200 academic research papers, speaks at conferences around the world and he has been honored by several organizations for his pioneering work. Daniell is only the 14th American in the last 222 years to be elected to the Italian National Academy of Sciences.

He also is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences. The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, Bayer HealthCare of Germany, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and several federal agencies, including the National Institutes of Health and U.S. Department of Agriculture, currently fund his research.

Since 2000, UCF Professor Henry Daniell has been developing a new method of creating vaccines using genetically engineered tobacco and lettuce plants to fight diseases such as malaria, cholera and dengue or biothreat agents such as anthrax or plague.

The awarded Daniell a two-year, $761,302 grant to develop a polio vaccine. Konstantin Chumakov, associate director, Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research at the Food and Drug Administration, is a collaborator in the grant and will facilitate advancement of this novel technology.

Should Daniell’s vaccine receive FDA approval, it would open the door for the production of a variety of cheaper, more effective vaccines around the world.

Click to watch a UCF TV video news story about the grant.

“If this proceeds as we expect, it will revolutionize how vaccines are made,” Daniell said. “We’re currently using decades-old technology that is expensive and inefficient. Our new process is a game changer that could make a global difference.”

Thanks to the global immunization effort, polio has been reduced 99 percent and is on the threshold of becoming the second disease ever to be eradicated.  However, 1,292 cases of polio were confirmed in 2010. Having less expensive and more accessible vaccines could help combat polio and other diseases that are of concern such as malaria and cholera.

Faster, Safer Vaccines

Currently, vaccines are made through a fermentation process that requires expensive equipment. Vaccines are made using killed, inactivated or avirulent forms of bacteria or viruses.  These vaccines also require refrigeration and don’t have a very long shelf life, forcing continual production. Injections require sterile needles and health professionals for their delivery.

Vaccines produced by Daniell’s technique are delivered in capsule form and are less expensive because fermentation and refrigeration are not required. This also increases the vaccine’s shelf life.

“This means they would be accessible to all people and all countries, even the poorest and most remote,” Daniell said. “That’s why I am so grateful for the opportunity to pursue this work.”

Using plants to produce vaccine capsules has an additional benefit.

Once ingested, the pills activate the immune system housed in the gut, which is more powerful than the blood’s immune system – the traditional target of injectable vaccines for the past century.

Most importantly, Daniell’s technique does not use killed, inactivated or avirulent forms of bacteria or viruses but instead uses only proteins that could not cause any disease but are effective in stimulating protective immunity.

“This makes these vaccines much more potent, effective and safer,” Daniell said.

A Career of Research

“I can’t tell you how excited I feel,” Daniell said. “I’ve dedicated most of my academic life to this because I want to make people’s lives better. My dream is to eradicate the world’s top 10 diseases, and this opportunity is a huge leap in reaching that dream.”

Daniell joined UCF’s Burnett School for Biomedical Sciences, a part of the College of Medicine, in 1998. His research led to the formation of the university’s first biotechnology company.

He has published more than 200 academic research papers, he speaks at conferences around the world and he has been honored by several organizations for his pioneering work. Daniell is only the 14th American in the last 222 years to be elected to the Italian National Academy of Sciences.

He also is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences. The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, Bayer HealthCare of Germany and several federal agencies, including the National Institutes of Health and USDA, currently fund his research.

The Next Generation Learning Challenges (NGLC) awarded UCF a $250,000 grant, funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and others. NGLC is coordinated by EDUCAUSE, a nonprofit group that promotes the use of information technology to advance higher education.

For the grant, UCF will develop a “Blended Learning Toolkit” that will include: strategies for blended course design and delivery; models for blended Composition and Algebra courses; assessment and data collection protocols; and “train-the-trainer” materials.

The toolkit and course models will be provided to the American Association of State Colleges (AASCU), the partner in the grant. The association will then engage 20 member institutions, which will use the kit’s course templates and models, or build their own courses using the strategies and resources provided.

“This project will bring national and international recognition to our leadership in the field of blended learning, and will bring exposure to our faculty and the groundbreaking work they are doing reinventing instructional approaches for math and composition curricula,” said Tom Cavanagh, assistant vice president for UCF’s Center for Distributed Learning.

The benefits of blended learning are many. For universities, blended courses encourage collaboration and compensate for limited classroom space. For faculty, they can be a method to infuse new opportunities for engagement into established courses. For students, the courses offer convenience combined with instructional interaction.

UCF’s blended courses consistently rank higher than other modes in student course evaluations and have the highest levels of student success and the lowest withdrawals of any modality — including purely face-to-face.

“This project will allow other institutions to benefit from UCF’s highly successful online learning and assessment models,” said Joel Hartman, vice provost for Information Technologies and Resources. “There is great potential for future adoption beyond the project itself, and what we create and learn will ultimately benefit UCF and our students.”

In the long-term, the program could be distributed to the more than 420 AASCU member colleges and universities.

In addition to developing a blended learning infrastructure at AASCU institutions, the project aims to increase access to education and improve student success and retention. The NGLC program specifically targets improving college readiness and completion among low-income students.

At UCF, blended learning is managed by the Center for Distributed Learning, which provides leadership in distance learning policies, strategies and practices. The department collaborates with colleges to develop UCF’s online programs and works with faculty and students to ensure successful course experiences.

In the fall 2010 semester, 26,000 UCF students enrolled in at least one online, blended or video course. UCF currently offers more than 2,500 online, video and blended classes.

To learn more about Next Generation Learning Challenges, visit .

For more information on UCF’s Center for Distributed Learning, go to .