The answer may be in the seemingly unrelated work of Australian architect and zoo director David Hancocks. In his 2002 book, A Different Nature, Hancocks explored the paradox of the modern zoo.

We traditionally have taken animals that were meant to live and thrive in the wild and placed them on display at zoos for the purpose of study and our own entertainment. We take these animals that are meant to roam free in wide geographical expanses and house them in a controlled environment. Of course, this can go tragically wrong as we were made aware in 2016 when a male gorilla was killed at a Cincinnati zoo to rescue a 3-year-old boy who fell into the gorilla’s enclosure.

While we all acknowledge that universities are not zoos, there is kind of a parallel. Universities are an ecosystem in which our students, faculty and staff must interact, and if we do not provide the right environment for learning then our students can suffer the consequences.

Hancocks recollects the time he and his fellow zoo professionals in the 1970s took an enormous chance and redesigned the Seattle Zoo in an effort to create a more natural and accessible zoo. Unlike the cold and sterile zoo enclosures of the past, Hancocks and his team developed an enclosure for the gorilla exhibit that looked familiar to their native Central African mountains.

This was controversial because there was a general understanding among zoo advocates that giving these animals a more natural setting would bring out their violent nature. As these animals would be exposed to a more natural setting they would desire to be free and turn on their handlers and try to escape.

As the great experiment unfolded, the opposite happened. When exposed to a more ethical setting, the gorillas thrived. They became more active and formed tighter family groups. Incidents of gorilla violence against their human keepers plummeted. The result was Hancock’s more ethical zoo that is emulated all over the world today.

Universities are not zoos, at least not in the traditional sense – even if going to any student union on a given day the term “zoo� may seem like an apt description to some.

Higher education has been working under the assumption that the traditional model of college access and matriculation is the best way to engage and encourage student success. However, we are learning more and more that a traditional model of acceptance, classes and graduation does not work for many students.

While the value of a college education is evident there is still an ongoing debate on college for whom? On average, a college graduate will earn $800,000 more in their lifetime than those holding just a high school diploma. More importantly since the great recession of 2009, virtually every job created in the aftermath has been aimed at those with a college degree.

But college, in and of itself, is not a panacea. The cost of college is still a major issue for many families and that seems to be rising. More and more students around the country are mortgaging their future income through student loans to pay for college. For the class of 2016 the national average college debt was $37,000. (At UCF, 44 percent of students graduate with no debt. Of those who do incur debt – including those who transferred to UCF carrying some student loans – the average is $22,000.)

These factors, combined with a perception to some that college is not creating employable graduates, have led some to question the value of a college education.

But what are the answers and what are we supposed to do about it?

The answer may be in changing the environment.

The general model for higher education has been that students arrive to college and follow one single track in order to achieve their college dreams. But this model seems to be both outdated and inaccurate. It is not unusual for today’s college students to attend two or three colleges before graduating.

For the Florida Consortium of Metropolitan Research Universities (the º£½ÇÖ±²¥, º£½ÇÖ±²¥ of South Florida in Tampa, and Florida International º£½ÇÖ±²¥ in Miami), more than 55 percent of the students transfer in from a two-year college, where most of them have already achieved an associate degree. With that in mind, the consortium is partnering with the Helios Education Foundation to investigate how to create a more accessible campus by working together to share ideas, design solutions and ensure success.

An 18-month investigation is focusing on developing a strategic plan that is supportive of a networked approach to higher education that will challenge higher-education professionals and off-campus stakeholders to remember our ethical principles of “students first.�

Who knows what that will take but the goal is to provide access to higher education for more students who will incur less debt and graduate on time with a number of viable career options.

A byproduct of this planning period could be a model for all universities to work together and become more in sync with each other.

No, universities are not zoos, but maybe educational institutions can learn by example and create the right environment for learning so students can thrive in their updated world.

Michael Preston is executive director of the Florida Consortium of Metropolitan Research Universities based at UCF. He can be reached at michael.preston@ucf.edu.

Allen was one of the most successful football coaches in the National Football League during the 1960s and ‘70s and his tenure included his Washington team making an appearance in the Super Bowl in 1973. He was known for meticulous game planning, understanding the task at hand and finding the right player to insert into the game for any given situation. He was also famous for planning and preparing based on understanding how his teams could lose and addressing weaknesses and needs instead of only concentrating on strengths.

Recently our ability to prepare and anticipate in Central Florida was tested with the arrival of Hurricane Matthew. For several days we purchased supplies, boarded up windows and gassed up cars. Then we waited for the storm’s impact.

While not everyone made it through the storm without being affected, overall the damage was minimal. But despite the wobble in the path away from the state there was evidence that Central Florida was well prepared for the storm.

Gov. Rick Scott called for mandatory beach evacuations in plenty of time for residents to get off the beaches, many schools and businesses closed early to allow employees and students to get ready for the storm, and the media kept people informed of weather conditions and where to find supplies such as bottled water and gas.

Around our house we prepared by making sure our yard was free of lawn chairs and other objects that could fly off and damage or hurt someone, our cars were gassed up in case we needed to get out of town, and we had plenty of water, batteries, and food.

We were ready; all that we needed to do was to settle in and listen for updates on the news. By the time the storm would hit we felt that even if there was damage to the house we would be ready to face it. We reviewed worst-case scenarios and how we would address them as a family, and luckily we never had to use any of it. The storm passed over and we were safe.

There is something to be said for the stress relief that being prepared gives you.

As humans we are prone to give into a thing called Catastrophic Thinking or the idea that if things will go bad, they usually do. The problem with this type of thinking is that rarely happens and then over time complacency sets in.

This is something that Martin Seligman of the U.S. Army’s Resiliency Training Program hopes to guard against. If Catastrophic Thinking sets in for our troops then they can freeze up under dire circumstances and that could put them in more danger than they already are. Seligman gets his trainees to focus on positive outcomes and plan on addressing worst-case scenarios before or after an incident to help with preparing the mind for these inevitable challenges.

And obviously there are a lot of advantages of being prepared.

Life coach and certified professional trainer Angela Barnard outlined four ways being prepared can lead to better results.

First off, being prepared enhances your self-discipline. Because being prepared takes forethought, the need to be disciplined enough to think ahead can keep you on task and always looking around the corner.

Secondly, preparation allows for strategic instead of reactionary thinking. By committing to strategic thinking one can anticipate speed bumps and canyons and look for alternate routes and solutions before needing them. This type of planning allows you to react quicker than if your time were spent in reaction mode.

The third advantage is that being prepared increases mental flexibility. By putting aside the brain space to prepare we can then focus on other tasks and increase productivity in other ways. Also, it increases your ability to creatively solve problems so the exercise of preparing can also help when the thing you are unprepared for happens.

Last, being prepared increased your resiliency. If the thing you fear does happen – such as if your roof does come off in a storm – you will be more resilient if you know there is a safe place to hide in your house and you know where your homeowner’s insurance policy is. If you prepare for these moments when they happen it is not as scary.

We can’t prepare for every issue that will arise in our lives. There will be times when something will surprise and challenge us. However, if we are prepared, then as microbiologist Louis Pasteur said, “Good fortune favors the prepared mind.�

The more prepared we are, the more likely we will come out on the winning end of a challenge.

So while Hurricane Matthew just missed us this time, don’t consider that good fortune in a complacent way. Look at how you prepared and what you would do differently next time.

Because chances are we will see another hurricane in Central Florida and next time it might be the direct hit we fear.

But relax. You got this — you’re prepared.

Michael Preston is executive director of the Florida Consortium of Metropolitan Research Universities based at UCF. He can be reached at michael.preston@ucf.edu.

And it smelled.

Each day as much as 29,000 tons of New York’s garbage rolled across the bay on massive barges and it just stacked on top of each other until there were over 150 million tons of solid waste. The garbage was coming so fast and furious that it never had the chance to decompose.

In the late 1980s, college researchers drilled holes into the massive garbage dump and what they found was amazing. They found that nothing had decomposed: Newspapers still as crisp as the day they were purchased 20 years before, a ham sandwich that looked deli ready but was made in 1967, baseball cards, cans of soup, and countless banana peels.

Because the trash came in and was dumped on top of the other garbage it never had a chance to decompose because oxygen and microbes could never break down the organic material. It was left to just sit there and stay in a festering animated state forever.

The issue was real – the city had to do something.

The first thing they did was begin to say “No!� In 2001 the Fresh Kills garbage dump took its last barge of garbage. Then scientists, environmentalists and interested citizens went to work.

In just 15 years the place is transformed. The garbage dump has been allowed to naturally decompose. The gas produced from the rotting garbage is harvested and used in city buses, the landscape has been reshaped. The Audubon Society has worked to make it a bird habitat, local leaders have made it into a park for visitors, and many aquatic reptiles have returned. Fresh Kills has gone from eyesore to treasure by a city ready to reprioritize.

So where did the garbage go? Well, New York has become a model for separating refuse into recyclables, and better distributing the rest into compost and more responsible elimination of solid waste. The result is a city that smells a lot better and everyone’s quality of life is much, much better.

Many of us live our lives like the Fresh Kills garbage dump.

We add and add new things to our lives without thinking about the impact. We know we should learn the art of saying no. It is hard but it is essential.

Today’s working professional gets less sleep and feels more stress than our peers reported even 20 years ago. The advent of email, social media, Skype, GoToMeeting, and cell phones was supposed to make us more efficient – and that may be true.

But what we have done is just added more and more to our list of things to do. Add to it the flood of news and information telling us just how much more we need to do and soon enough exhaustion sets in. Seems every day there is a new recommendation on how much exercise to get, whether I should be gluten-free, and if I did not catch the latest Game of Thrones episode then I am missing out!

But just like the Fresh Kills Landfill, there is a liberation in saying “No.” While it is important to know that there are some things you cannot say no to, the important first decision is learning to say no to the things you can. By being more selective you can then prioritize your life in a way that makes sense, you can concentrate on those things you find most beneficial, and the weight of busyness will dissipate and allow oxygen to get back to you again.

But how to get started?

Try starting this Sunday. For many of us, the weekends are a time we can control. While there may be a few things we need to do (think church and dinner with the in-laws), we can begin to say no to a lot of the noise of the week. That way we can fill that day with a project we have always wanted to get to, spend a few hours reading a book we have always been interested in, maybe even take a nap.

The power of no can liberate our time to focus on things we value. Once we feel our Sunday has its proper dose of “No,� then we turn to Saturday, Friday and so on.

What can happen is that we transform our personal ecosystem and create an environment where we are more productive, less stressed, and ready to say “Yes� again.

Michael Preston is executive director of the Florida Consortium of Metropolitan Research Universities based at UCF. He can be reached at michael.preston@ucf.edu.

These teams will struggle to score against fierce defenses, try to maneuver for the perfect shot, and hopefully draw a foul and a chance for an “and one� scoring possibility. “And one� refers to the free throw awarded to a player who is fouled and still manages to get a shot into the basket, thus giving the player a chance for a three- or even a four-point play.

It can be quite a game changer when your effort can net you more points than scoring the basket alone.

March madness can also refer to the time of year that many soon-to-be college graduates are experiencing as they return from spring break.

After four years of classes, tests, lab reports, student-organization meetings, homecoming events and papers, the time has come to enter the working world. Getting that first job can be scary. The fear of the unknown can be daunting for even the most seasoned job seeker. For the first timer it can be downright paralyzing.

But fear not! According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers, 2016 is supposed to be a great year for new graduates. NACE anticipates that the labor market will be up 11 percent from 2015, offering the best labor market for new graduates in years.

However, it is important to note that just because there are new and more jobs, the employment landscape is changing, forcing new graduates to change with it.

According to the employment-trend experts at the Boston firm Burning Glass, more and more jobs will not only require a degree but also additional credentialing focused on a number of skills, including information technology, sales, graphic design, computer coding and programming, and assessment.

These skills can enhance not only your job prospects but also your earning potential. For example, according to Burning Glass, a student coming out of college this year with a liberal arts degree will find nearly 1 million job opportunities tailored to their degree. That sounds like a lot! However, add one certification from the myriad of skills mentioned above and the job prospects nearly double to 1.8 million anticipated openings.

And it does not stop there. Students who achieve specialized badges and certifications in areas such as coding and programming can boost their earnings by up to 27 percent over just having a degree alone.

Fortunately, additional certifications and credentialing can be your “and one� in the job market..

The great thing is that many of these credentials can be acquired through a number of sources. LinkedIn is now offering certificates and training and many companies such as Microsoft, IBM and Cisco are offering their employees access to certification bundles to boost productivity and support their growing need for credentialed staff.

Of course, higher education is also getting into the certification game. For example, the º£½ÇÖ±²¥ has entered the certification game by offering programs such as its Web Development Boot Camp. This boot camp allows for students to learn how to develop and maintain websites utilizing Javascript, HTML, CSS and other coding languages in just 24 weeks. This certification can have a tremendous boost for students looking for that great job.

It used to be that just getting a degree was enough. While achieving a degree is an important part of the process, today’s labor market demands that students commit to being lifelong learners. That commitment will mean that from time to time employees will need to return to the classroom to learn the skills needed to stay competitive and valuable to their companies. Of course, certifications can also lead to new opportunities and expand horizons by allowing graduates to juggle multiple offers as their skill portfolio expands.

Think of that expanding portfolio like that basketball team making a deep run in the tournament. Every great basketball team needs a point guard to control and distribute the ball, a shooting guard to nail the deep shot, a center to rebound and defend, and two forwards to go strong to the hoop – and all of them to get that “and one.�

Only when all of those parts are working together can a team win and advance in basketball.

And likewise, your skill portfolio can be made up of a great combination of a college degree and the various certifications necessary to land any job and make yourself an invaluable asset to your company and yourself.

Michael Preston is executive director of the Florida Consortium of Metropolitan Research Universities based at UCF. He can be reached at michael.preston@ucf.edu.

Many of us have taken the rollover of the calendar as a chance to make changes and reaffirm commitments. Usually these decisions take the form of the New Year’s resolution.

We are great at making promises, but unfortunately are lousy at keeping them. Likely you are one of those who have made and failed to keep your resolution.

But here’s one resolution I’m going to try to keep this year: End meetings on time.

A recent Harris poll points out that 47 percent of all resolutions express some sort of desire to improve productivity, with improving time management being at the top of the list. It is commonly accepted that most of us value being on time. If you are running late you are usually anxious and forced to apologize once you arrive, and if you are waiting on someone who is running late you are usually annoyed and feel the offender is disruptive and rude.

But a closer look at the data reveals what we really hate about poor time management.

A 2010 Ipsos market research poll found that the most common pet peeve of workers was poorly run meetings that either start late or end late because of poor planning or structure. The reasons the polled workers were annoyed included: cutting into personal time, making them late for their next meeting, or meetings were unproductive and provided no direction.

With this information as a backdrop, my resolution is simple: End on time.

In 2016 when I am leading a meeting, then my No. 1 goal, structurally, will be to end on time. In many ways we cannot help if participants arrive on time. Everyone is responsible for their own time management. But what each one of us can do is commit to ending meetings on time so they are not the reason someone is late to another meeting.

Ending on time has value for everyone involved.

In a 2014 Inc. magazine article, workers and managers who committed to ending meetings on time found that their meetings never felt as long as they did before being committed to ending on time. If you know when you will finish, then you are more efficient with your time. Participants arrived on time more frequently. Managers reported that they became better at building agendas and leading more efficient conversations.

Another good outcome was that participants felt more positive about the meeting and the outcomes. Because the meeting is confined to a set time, participants began and ended with a better attitude.

Intuitively having a time limit makes sense.

Think about the last two minutes of a closely contested basketball or football game. Usually both the offense and defense play with more urgency and more efficiency, and the play is more thrilling. Because there is less time to get a positive result, the need to produce under the threat of running out of time creates excitement. Meetings can have that same energy, however it is important to keep a few things in mind.

The quality-improvement office at the º£½ÇÖ±²¥ of Wisconsin (Madison) suggests the synergy created by ending meetings on time only works if participants are well aware that ending on time is a priority that will be followed. Once participants have accepted the meeting will end on time, then they can reduce the number of meeting “killers,â€� including going off topic and planning an agenda with too many items to complete in the allotted time.

At the º£½ÇÖ±²¥ of Wisconsin they also suggest appointing a timekeeper, placing a visible clock in the room, and if the meeting does need to go over, allowing participants to leave if they need to be at another meeting. All of these suggestions can keep you on task and working efficiently. In addition, it can help to curb the lateness domino effect, in which one late meeting results in all your meetings and appointments running late the rest of the day.

I’m going to try to maintain this resolution this year for another big reason. Perhaps it will influence others—whose meetings I’m sometimes invited to—to finish on time so I can get to lunch before the lunch crowd…

Michael Preston is executive director of the Florida Consortium of Metropolitan Research Universities based at UCF. He can be reached at michael.preston@ucf.edu.

I was progressing through my dissertation process when I asked a friend to read it over and tell me what he thought.

While I was in the market for a nice review with a few edits, my friend gave me what felt like pages of corrections and criticisms from grammar issues, to organizational concerns, to a flawed research premise.

I was devastated and I did not take the review well. I even questioned if I was cut out to ever earn my doctorate.

However, after I got some tissue, downed a big bowl of ice cream, and took a night off, I returned to his notes. I quickly found that his recommendations helped me improve my dissertation in leaps and bounds. After incorporating his suggestions, the paper flowed better, I was able to refine my study to be an appropriate measure of my research questions, and I became Dr. Preston, after all.

Quite frankly that moment, no matter how painful, changed my life.

The truth is, we don’t really take criticism well. Usually when someone gives us a critique, even if we know it to be true, we tend to meet that critique with anger or fear. We not only don’t like hearing criticism, it has a profound effect on our psyche.

Researcher John Cacioppo of the º£½ÇÖ±²¥ of Chicago found, unsurprisingly, that the brain reacts much stronger to negative stimuli, be it a negative picture or a criticism. And as much as we would like to take Taylor Swift’s advice, it is hard to just “Shake It Off.â€� We tend to hold onto those negative images and they affect our confidence and personality.

To make matters worse, according to researcher Tiffany Ito of the º£½ÇÖ±²¥ of Colorado, we then tend to fixate on these negative thoughts to the point they often dictate our work product for some time after the negative critique.

But it doesn’t have to be that way. Learning to take and use a solid critique is an important skill all professionals need to learn and utilize.

Chances are if you are human, you are flawed. And while many of us are aware of some of our more overt flaws there are many times we may be operating in a flawed environment and never know. Criticism brings to life these shortcomings in a much more efficient way. When we try to be overly positive, even when giving criticism, we can give misleading or inaccurate criticism.

No one likes to hurt another person’s feelings, but in many ways when criticism is done well it can be more effective than praise. Because in the end, praise is the confirmation to continue down the same path; criticism is usually paired with an invitation to modify your path in a positive way.

But like all other workplace competencies there is a skill to be mastered.

Taking criticism is likely always going to be a challenge, but a Forbes management series outlines some steps you can take to combat your natural rejection of criticism.

First, check your initial reaction because it is likely to meet negative information with either poor body language or defending yourself. The best route is to remain calm and give yourself time to process.

Second, ask for feedback in the form of how to perform better or improve. Likely the critic has an idea of how he or she would advise fixing it.

Third, make sure you understand the “why� of the criticism. That requires a good set of ears to listen for key words and advice you can use.

Fourth, ask questions and follow up. If you truly want to address the criticism it will be important that you get positive acknowledgement that you have addressed the issue in question.

To be honest, taking criticism is never easy, but if you master the art of taking criticism you can improve your performance and be seen as a positive influence in the office or any other organization.

Michael Preston is executive director of the Florida Consortium of Metropolitan Research Universities based at UCF. He can be reached at michael.preston@ucf.edu.

To put the project into high gear, the Florida Consortium of Metropolitan Research Universities’ three members – Florida International º£½ÇÖ±²¥ (Miami), the º£½ÇÖ±²¥ (Orlando) and the º£½ÇÖ±²¥ of South Florida (Tampa) – have hired an executive director to coordinate their efforts to work together to achieve accomplishments greater than they can alone.

“My hope is that through the consortium we can enhance the collective influence of the three universities to drive economic development in Florida and to amplify that impact for generations to come,� said Michael Preston, director of UCF’s Office of Student Involvement, who will begin his new job as the consortium executive director in early July.

The consortium, which was formed last year, aims to produce more career-ready graduates with lower debt, better training and adaptable skill sets. It plans to do this by creating synergies between the universities and the public, private and non-profit sector businesses that require a growing supply of qualified graduates.

“In today’s economy it is not enough to simply provide access to higher education. We must be able to guide students on how they can leverage their education into a career-focused destination,� Preston added. “We hope that when employers in Florida are ready to hire new employees, they will think of FIU, UCF and USF first.�

These universities currently enroll about 162,000 students, which is 47 percent of the enrollment of the 12 institutions of the State º£½ÇÖ±²¥ System of Florida. Together, the three universities serve 63 percent of the state’s population, including 70 percent of the minority population and 25 percent of the state’s first-generation students.

Early steps taken by the consortium are creating a system of sharing information about available technology internships in the three metropolitan areas and pushing to increase the number of accounting graduates, which are both high-demand fields in Florida.

The universities have committed more than $1 million to the consortium, and the Helios Education Foundation has pledged $500,000 over five years.

Preston has been at UCF since 2011. In his role as director of the Office of Student Involvement, he provides leadership and support to the Student Government Association and other student organizations, and he helps design programs that provide learning opportunities that empower students to succeed through campus involvement.

He also teaches in the UCF higher education program on the subject of organization and administration in higher education.

Preston, who was hired after a national search, was selected in part because of a program he helped create that assists students in connecting their campus involvement with their academic major to identify their best career pathway, said Maribeth Ehasz, UCF vice president for Student Development and Enrollment Services.

He previously was the director of student life at Stephen F. Austin State º£½ÇÖ±²¥ in Texas. He graduated from high school in Homestead, Fla., and earned his undergraduate degree in English from East Carolina º£½ÇÖ±²¥ – where he was a first-generation college student – his master’s in higher education from Southern Illinois º£½ÇÖ±²¥ at Carbondale and his doctorate in higher education from Texas A&M at Commerce.