“This important collaboration between UCF, JPMorganChase and the Parramore community is a significant step toward expanding economic opportunity and building Central Florida’s next-generation workforce.” — Betsheell “Billie” Udofia, vice president and program officer for global philanthropy at JPMorganChase

An initiative driven by the UCF College of Community Innovation and Education (CCIE), the newly funded Parramore Launch Pad initiative aims to reach K–12 students in Orlando’s Parramore community earlier, helping prepare them for STEM-related higher education tracks and careers, while creating clearer pathways into these in-demand fields and improving long-term opportunity for students and their families.

Over the next three years, this funding will allow CCIE and UCF Downtown, which borders the Parramore community, to implement a holistic educational approach that integrates academic enrichment with community-based support. This approach is intended to support student success in STEM in and out of the classroom while also addressing broader community needs that contribute to sustained achievement.

“This important collaboration between UCF, JPMorganChase and the Parramore community is a significant step toward expanding economic opportunity and building Central Florida’s next-generation workforce,” says Betsheell “Billie” Udofia, vice president and program officer for global philanthropy at JPMorganChase. “Efforts like this help ensure students at every level have the skills, tools and support they need to succeed and build futures they’re proud of. We’re committed to supporting strong STEM pathways and the resources students need to reach them.”

Bolstering STEM Education

Expanding on an established relationship between UCF and Orange County Public Schools (OCPS), CCIE professors and teacher education students will work with leaders and educators at the OCPS Academic Center for Excellence (ACE), a pre-K through eighth-grade community school located in the heart of Parramore, to engage students in innovate STEM instruction during the school year, as well as throughout the summer.

A free week-long STEM summer camp for third to fifth graders launched in Summer 2026. Delivered through a partnership between UCF, OCPS ACE, and the Boys and Girls Club Levy-Hughes branch, the program is open to all students in the Parramore community and includes a complimentary Boys and Girls Club membership to Levy-Hughes branch for the academic year.

Going Beyond ����ֱ��, Prioritizing Well-Being

While academic rigor is important, well-being also influences success. Stressors outside of school can interfere with a student’s capacity for learning. Creating a safe space for them to work through life’s hurdles is key to improving student outcomes.

By integrating both the Healing Oasis for Peace and Empowerment (H.O.P.E.) Circle, a positive youth development afterschool program with the Central Florida Boys & Girls Clubs, and the complementary in-school H.O.P.E. Huddles program for Parramore youth at OCPS ACE, Jones High School, and Evans High School, UCF hopes to help students build positive, emotionally safe bonds with their peers, as well as reliable relationships with caring adults and mentors outside of their families. Programming focuses on helping students build critical skills around research, leadership, conflict resolution, teamwork and more.

“Central to the youth development programs is a reciprocal approach that redistributes traditional power dynamics between adults, researchers and youth in the community. While this model is less conventional, it is this shared ownership and co-creation that will ultimately drive meaningful, sustainable impact in the lives of youth, their families, and the broader Parramore community” says L. Trenton S. Marsh, associate professor of urban education and founder of the H.O.P.E. Lab at UCF.

Growing Social and Civic Prosperity

Launch Pad will also provide support to the Parramore Community Engagement Council (PCEC). ����ֱ�� researchers and community leaders will work together on research-informed solutions for PCEC’s pillars of education, affordable housing, employment and holistic health. Further, there is a collaborative partnership with UCF and PCEC through a new university-community fellowship program. This summer an asynchronous open-source training with nine sequential modules was developed to support the fellowship.

Over the next two years, the program will award two fellowships per year to university-based researchers and two per year to community leaders active within the council. The program is intended to serve as a model that can be replicated in communities across the country.

“We’ve already seen such positive impacts from UCF Downtown and its proximity to our community. I’m thrilled for this evolution in our work with UCF,” says the Rev. Robert M. Spooney, outgoing chair of the Parramore Community Engagement Council and pastor of Mt. Zion Baptist Church. “What makes this next phase so meaningful is the university’s commitment to not only being present, but to ensuring our community is resourced, supported and positioned to benefit from this work.”

A Shared Vision for a Thriving Parramore

In 2019, JPMorganChase, the Helios Education Foundation and the Kresge Foundation funded the Parramore Education and Innovation District, through which UCF aimed to ensure residents of the Parramore community benefited from incoming economic growth and development and had access to the UCF Downtown and Valencia College Downtown campuses. This latest support from JPMorganChase represents an evolution in this work, and a shared alignment in growing opportunity within the Parramore community.

“At UCF, we are building a future the world has only begun to imagine. A robust talent pipeline of STEM professionals is critical to that vision,” says Rod Grabowski, senior vice president for UCF Advancement and Partnerships, and CEO of the UCF Foundation Inc. “These skillsets are already sought-after, but they’ll be increasingly important with the evolution of AI, space, themed experience and more. By investing in students early and surrounding them with the support they need to succeed, we’re helping create pathways to higher education, meaningful careers and lifelong impact for our region. That commitment is at the heart of Go For Launch.”

Enter the Resilience, Education, and Advocacy Center for Hazard Preparedness (REACH) hub — the product of a partnership between researchers from UCF’s College of Community Innovation and Education, College of Engineering and Computer Science, and the City of Orlando. Officially unveiled Jan. 28 at the Orlando Emergency Operations Center, the hub is a self-sustaining mobile unit designed to be deployed to neighborhoods in need of critical services following emergencies. These include air-conditioning, mobile charging stations, broadband internet connection, and an onboard refrigerator and freezer that can assist with food storage and distribution.

“The program is focused on community-centered projects in close partnership with civic agencies, which was perfect for this idea.” — Kelly Stevens, assistant professor

Kelly Stevens, principal investigator and assistant professor in the , says the city approached the team with an idea for a mobile resilience hub over five years ago. She found the U.S. National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Civic Innovation program shortly after.

“The program is focused on community-centered projects in close partnership with civic agencies, which was perfect for this idea,” Stevens says.

Funded by a total of $1 million in grants from both the NSF and U.S. Department of Energy, the project kicked off in 2022 with a planning phase before receiving approval to begin the design and development phase in 2023. Stevens has led the REACH hub project alongside co-principal investigators Yue “Gurt” Ge, public administration associate professor; L. Trenton S. Marsh, urban education assistant professor; Liqiang Wang, computer science professor; and Zhihua Qu, electrical and computer engineering professor. Other faculty on the project include Maritza Concha, nonprofit management lecturer; Christopher Emrich, emergency management professor; and Kristopher Davis, associate professor of materials science and engineering.

The solar-powered REACH hub will be deployed to neighborhoods in need of critical services to improve disaster response and recovery efforts. Although designed primarily with “gray skies” or emergency situations in mind, the pilot hub will not go unused during “blue skies” conditions. The REACH team has taken a collaborative approach that engages community partners in helping drive not only the hub’s design process but also ideas for its use outside of emergency deployment. That includes an educational component, which uses 360-degree video technology and virtual-reality headsets.

“Partnerships have been the cornerstone of this project,” Stevens says. “One of the strengths in our proposal was the demonstrated partnership UCF has with the city of Orlando. Further, we have two core partners on this project —the Boys & Girls Clubs of Central Florida’s Levy-Hughes Clubhouse and Hebni Nutrition, both located in Parramore — and they have provided feedback on how the hub could be useful to the work they do in the community with residents and Orlando youth.”

Michael Hess, director of sustainability and resilience for the City of Orlando, also served as director of its Future Ready program, which focused on guiding the city toward a smarter and more sustainable future. It was during the plan’s development phase that he and his staff met Stevens and began collaborating on bringing the resilience hubs to life.

“The hub is the result of the city, UCF and our other partners taking the concept of resilience and creating something with it,” Hess says. “It’s going to get used in ‘blue skies’ 99% of the time — hopefully, we don’t have too many disasters — which means our sustainability and resilience team can use it for both education and fun. That could be anything from a movie night to teaching kids how to harvest from our community gardens. We’re looking at different types of educational content to help people be more sustainable and resilient.”

The city will ultimately be responsible for deploying and maintaining the hub, but Stevens and her team will remain closely involved throughout the rest of the grant period, which runs through the end of September. Currently, they are continuing to collect insight from community members and partners that will further inform and hone the hub’s possible uses.

“We will be conducting demonstrations over the next few months where we will be collecting feedback from residents about the hub, evaluating the educational programs, and making adjustments to the resilience educational programming,” Stevens says.

Orlando Mayor Buddy Dyer says the hub is a welcome addition to the city’s six existing community centers — which double as resource distribution centers for residents following disasters — as it provides a means to bring resources straight to those who need them most.

“We’re always excited when we can provide additional support to our residents — especially after heat events, hurricanes or whatever other storms we may have,” Dyer says. “UCF has partnered with the city on so many different things, including designing and providing this deployable mobile hub, which I would say is pretty incredible. We are ecstatic to now have the ability to locate a resiliency hub anywhere in the city.”

Researcher Credentials
Stevens joined UCF in 2017 and holds a doctorate in public administration from Syracuse ����ֱ��. She is also a member of UCF’s Resilient, Intelligent, and Sustainable Energy Systems (RISES) Cluster�����Ի���.

Ge joined the College of Community Innovation and Education in 2018 and serves as co-lead of the Urban Resilience Initiative. He is also part of the Center for Resilient, Intelligent and Sustainable Energy System (RISES) faculty research cluster. He holds a doctorate in urban and regional science from Texas A&M ����ֱ��.

Marsh earned his doctorate in teaching and learning with a concentration in urban education from New York ����ֱ��. He joined UCF’s College of Community Innovation and Education in 2019.

Qu arrived at UCF in 1990 after earning a doctorate in electrical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is both a Pegasus Professor and the Thomas J. Riordan and Herbert C. Towle Chair of UCF’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Additionally, Qu is the founding director of both RISES and the multi-institutional Foundations for Engineering Education for Distributed Energy Resources Center (FEEDER).

Wang earned his doctorate in computer science from Stony Brook ����ֱ�� in 2006 and joined the UCF Department of Computer Science in 2015.