Research Awards

This project will sponsor an online conference regarding Comparative Autism Research Effectiveness (CARE).

The proposed CRIS-HAZARD will extend the capabilities of an existing primary platform, the Community Resilience Information System (CRIS). CRIS was developed by researchers at the University of South Florida (USF) in partnership with AT&T and Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) for Pinellas County, Florida, to use rapid surveys for collating the community’s experience with disaster. This project will combine the capabilities of CRIS developers at USF, local stakeholders, and community engagement networks, including the Pinellas County Office of Emergency Management, with the expertise of spatial planning analytics at Georgia Tech, to develop this early warning and knowledge transfer system.

The diamondback terrapin (Malaclemys terrapin) is imperiled in Florida; major threats are crab pot mortality, habitat loss and degradation, and sea level rise due to climate change. Herein, we propose to survey for terrapins and their nesting areas in the Tampa Bay region, the largest open water estuary in Florida.

The focus of this project is to support, recruit, and prepare 6 scholars (4 at UCF and 2 at USF) to become next generation leaders in the field of special education with foundational skills in learning sciences (LS) and enhanced opportunities to address the critical shortages of teachers prepared to work in special education in Title I settings K-transition. Over the 4-year program scholars will partner with UCF and USF special education faculty and LS faculty members to become scholars who are experts in using a community-embedded approach and outcomes-based conceptual frameworks to impact the field in addressing teacher shortages through high-quality teacher preparation. Their work will be grounded in high-need schools in Florida where scholars will participate in residencies that include supporting paraprofessionals in a para-to-teacher pipeline; supervising preservice teachers in residencies and internships; teaching site-based courses; and conducting research in using principles of learning science to conduct research and improve outcomes for students with disabilities.
Upon completion of the program, scholars will be prepared to respond to the needs of the field including: (a) conducting research in a site-based model to support marginalized students with disabilities in LS and evidence-based practices (b) recruiting and retaining teachers to address shortages in the field of special education; (c) preparing future teachers and collaborating with families; (d) building community partnerships; (e) leading field-based teacher preparation activities and residencies; and (f) conducting program evaluations.
  This project meets competitive Priority 1 as it is a partnership proposal between USF and UCF to produce teacher leaders who are prepared to work in community-embedded teacher preparation programs in Title I schools to prepare teachers for K-transition with a focus on learning sciences. The project also meets Priority 2 with a 100% match of federal funding by UCF, USF and United Cerebral Palsy (UCP) of Central Florida. The narrative demonstrates how this program will create a new cadre of leadership in special education grounded in K-transition services with teacher practices emphasizing evidence-based recruitment and retention of special education teachers to address national, state, and local shortages combined with state-of-the-art competencies in practices in learning sciences. 

UMatter is an innovative inclusive postsecondary education (IPSE) program for students with intellectual disabilities (ID) located at the University of South Florida St. Petersburg (USFSP) campus. UMatter students will increase their skills in five program components (academic access and enrichment, career development and employment, campus and community engagement, self-determination, and independent living) based on their individualized goals and program of study. Students will complete their program of study by earning a certificate of completion and accomplishment from the UMatter program and a Career Readiness Badge from USF based upon their individualized career goals and program of study. The Career Readiness Badge addresses eight essential skills employers look for when hiring new employees. Students who successfully complete the program will obtain competitive employment aligned with their selected program of study. Students in UMatter express a strong desire to continue their education in an inclusive postsecondary setting, explore careers and engage in work-based learning opportunities, and live independently. Students in UMatter will physically attend the university and audit college courses, join and participate in campus and community clubs, organizations and activities, engage in internships, apply for jobs, obtain competitive employment, and become responsible members of their community. Students may have the option to live on campus at USFSP which is a unique opportunity in that less than half of the inclusive postsecondary programs in Florida feature an on-campus residential component, complete with support from residential coaches. 

Dr. Lyman Dukes along with Think College (based at UMass Boston) and with funding from the Florida Developmental Disabilities Council (FDDC) has investigated barriers to and solutions for better developing inclusive postsecondary programs across four previous years of funding from the FDDC.
Next, in Year 5 efforts will add a dimension to our previous work by emphasizing and elevating the important role of current and former students with IDD in expanding program options throughout the state of Florida. Activities for year 5 include the development and preparation of an advocacy and leadership curriculum to train young adults with IDD ages 18-26 to serve as Inclusive Postsecondary Education Ambassadors who will promote the value and importance of college for students like themselves. Dukes will be primarily be responsible for co-developing and co-delivering the pilot curriculum.
The grant opportunity is aligned with the ongoing efforts within the State of Florida to include youth with intellectual and developmental disabilities in inclusive postsecondary settings in order to prepare all graduates to be college, career and life ready. 

The proposed research will significantly advance our understanding of tropospheric reactive nitrogen chemistry in the MBL and global atmospheric oxidation capacity.  The proposed pNO3 photolysis mechanism, if proven to be valid in different air masses and under different conditions, can be incorporated into regional and global models by atmospheric science community to more accurately predict the removal and degradation of anthropogenic pollutants in the atmosphere and the global climate change, providing positive benefits to society.  Our results will be widely disseminated through peerreviewed publications and presentations at scientific meetings and in the classroom.   The proposed study provides research opportunities for training the next generation of scientists in atmospheric chemistry.  Two Ph.D. graduate student and one postdoctoral researcher will participate in all phases of this project, and will present their results at national meetings. They will have a unique opportunity to experience science hands-on in the laboratory and in field, meet other students and scientists, and learn about the broad ranging and exciting careers that are available to them.         XZ teaches graduate courses in Atmospheric and Environmental Sciences at SUNY Albany. He will incorporate the experience and results into the courses that he is teaching (EHS 525, Environmental Chemical Analysis, and EHS 690, Laboratory Rotations) in Department of Environmental Health Sciences.  Incorporation of research results and experiences into these classes will enrich the students’ learning experience. The continued educational development of the PIs has a broad reaching potential for enhancing the infrastructure of science. Through classroom instruction, interaction with students, collaboration with other colleagues, and publications, knowledge gained in these efforts will be disseminated to current and future scientists, thereby ensuring continued progress in the field.    There will be an international collaboration component in this proposed research:  We will share and exchange our measurement results with Professors Bill Bloss of University of Birmingham and Lucy Carpenter of University of York in the UK, who are leading and planning a major field study at the Cape Verde observatory to investigate renoxification in the MBL.  Combination of two complementary data sets will enable the atmospheric chemistry community to critically assess the importance of nitrate photolysis as a global renoxification pathway and its impact on global atmospheric chemistry.  

The Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater Metropolitan Area (Tampa Bay) is the 2nd largest in Florida for new HIV cases. HIV-related stigma in conjuction with other forms of stigmatized identities intersect to undermine HIV prevention and treatment efforts. Therefore, the goals of this study are to (a) assess the individual- and communitylevel stressors, stigma manifestation, and resilience enhancing resources among and available to YGBMSM; (b) apply the Assessment-Decision-Administration-Production-Topical experts-Integration-Training-Testing (ADAPTITT) Model to adapt the SEERs intervention for YGBMSM; and (c) determine the acceptability of SEERs for Black and/or Hispanic YGBMSM living in Tampa Bay. Study findings may influence the stigma-related knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and skills among community members including Black/African American and/or Hispanic same gender loving men living with and without HIV. Most importantly, results will have implications for practice and local policy to reduce stigma within the health care setting and improve HIV screening and care for Black/African American and/or Hispanic YGBMSM. Using findings from the formative research, investigators will provide training to organizations in the Tampa Bay region to assist them in building capacity to address the stigma related needs of their clients.

The SEDNET Administration Project provides support to the Multiagnecy Network for Students with Emotional and Behavioral Disabilities regional projects. SEDNET facilitates a network of key stakeholders committed to the provision of a quality system of care for students with emotional disabilities and their families. The focus in on enhancing the system of care for families and children in their natural environments whenever possible. The SEDNET Administration Project provides overall management, technical support, and professional development for the 19 local SEDNET projects. Through support and leadership provided by SEDNET Administration, local SEDNET projects, school districts and other stakeholders are better postured to provide intensive, integrated educational programs to include a continuum of mental health treatment services to enable students with or at risk of E/BD to develop appropriate behaviors and demonstrate academic and career education skills.

Funding will provide partial support for the Poetry Out Loud program in Florida to include personnel programmatic expenses and outside fees and services for the day of the state finals competition including participation stipends for students, chaperones, and judges. Through this funding, the University of South Florida, St. Petersburg will coordinate the Poetry Out Loud (POL) competition in the State of Florida. This includes coordinating with the participating teachers to help implement their school-level competitions and organizingthestate-levelcompetitionfinalstobeheldinSt.Petersburg,Florida,inMarch of 2023. USF staff will coordinate all details of the statewide competition and follow-up with the National POL Championship Competition in 2023. The project scope includes: 1.)Conduct Poetry Out Loud outreach and administer the Poetry Out Loud Florida State Finals according to the National Endowment Arts Partnership Agreements (Attachment A). 2.)Identify thestate championto compete in the National Poetry Out Loud Competition in Washington, D.C. and provide the name of the runner-up along with the contact information for the schools represented by the state champion and runner-up. 

USF St. Petersburg campus seeks to expand the statewide reach of the Poetry Out Loud (POL) program. In addition to growing the existing program, USF St. Petersburg campus would create a complementary program where students who participated with local POL competitions could create and submit their own original poetry, participate in a virtual open-microphone event, and have the opportunity for their original poetry to be compiled into an anthology that will be published and disseminated. All tasks associated with the project will be completed by June 30, 2023.

The director will serve as liaison among the USF St. Petersburg campus, City of St Petersburg, St Petersburg Downtown Partnership, St Petersburg Innovation District, and other business and community entities. This person will facilitate the development of an aspirational vision for “St Pete – USF” community relations. They will also serve as key point of contact for businesses, institutions, residents, and others. Initiate and support opportunities for them to be engaged in the university degree programs and campus life, engage them in issues or changes affecting them, and address their concerns.

We will develop and deploy an adaptable floating platform for Karenia brevis mitigation. The mitigation component of the platform will consist of an on-deck solar powered chest housing a pumping, treatment and monitoring system that is adaptable to multiple mitigation technologies. This will be deployed on an aluminum work barge that uses extendable poles to anchor. This configuration can be rapidly deployed for use in a K. brevis bloom anywhere in southwest Florida. The platform will have pumped water system with a pickup autonomously lowered to areas of highest cell concentration based on chlorophyll a fluorescence. The water flow will pass through a multiparameter sonde and then into a treatment chamber which will be adaptable for multiple mitigation technologies. After treatment, the flow of the platform will reverse pumping the water from the test chamber back through the sonde to observe changes in parameter to indicate the effectiveness of the treatment.

Work with community leaders to develop the surveys for NWF’s project to ensure that the survey is reliable and valid, uses language that the community understands, and accurately reflects the local geographic context. The list of community leaders will be developed in collaboration with NWF staff but may include Sharon Wright (City of St. Petersburg), Amber Boulding (City of St. Petersburg), Brother John Mohammad (Child’s Park Neighborhood Association), Erica Hall (Suncoast Sierra Club), Maya Burke (TBEP), CJ Reynolds (TBRPC). Additionally, meetings with the developers of the films and boat tours will be necessary to craft appropriate knowledge-based questions for the survey.  Questions from well-tested attitude surveys such as the New Ecological Paradigm will form the basis of the Likert scale questions with modifications as needed to fit the specific project and its goals. Other formats of ordinal or nominal questions will be used to identify behaviors and knowledge. The survey will collect basic demographic information that can help stratify the results to shed light on differences in knowledge, perception and behavior between socioeconomic groups.  I will create the draft survey in collaboration with NWF staff and community leaders,  and will run a pilot for a small sample of the survey to ensure its accuracy and reliability before general deployment.   Surveys will be developed and disseminated using USF’s Qualtrics software and conducted digitally onsite before and after the film showings and boat tours. Participants will complete the survey on smartphones or tablets provided by team staff (cost of tablets not included in this budget). Surveys will be administered by the NWF team. Data will be securely stored on USF’s password protected servers and shared digitally with NWF team leaders. If appropriate, the principal investigator will seek USF Internal Review Board approval of the survey instrument. Percent analysis will be used to describe the data and highlight key findings. A graduate student will assist with data analysis. The two data sets will be comprehensively compared to identify strengths and weaknesses of each approach and recommendations will be made for future use of similar experiential programming for increasing local climate literacy. 

The deep-pelagic domain (waters deeper than 200 m) is the largest component of the Gulf of Mexico ecosystem, representing 90.4% of the Gulf’s volume. The deep-pelagic domain also represents the largest existing data gap with respect to holistic Gulf ecosystem management. We propose to develop a baseline of oceanic diversity and abundance to complement the 8-year time-series already established by our group. The primary sampling device will be a 10-m2 mouth area MOCNESS midwater trawl system, with five discrete sampling depths.

Hiring and overseeing the HR of two FWC employees for 7 years.

This project explores trafficking in the sex industry from multiple perspectives to examine the rhetoric and underlying ideologies about trafficking in the sex industry and the criminalization of prostitution in order to better understand how these perspectives impact legislation and policies about prostitution and trafficking. The goal is to reveal the complexity involved through the lived experience of individuals. This project will focus primarily on individual stories, which will be contextualized through critical analyses of current political and legislative climates as well as how the media represents these complex issues.

Our program will evaluate the “Choosing Myself” Adolescent Sexual Health Education and Research (ASHER) curriculum for 200 justice involved youth. This grant application addresses the area of investigation that scales and conducts testing of an emerging adolescent sexual health innovation in order to generate early data and prepare for future rigorous impact evaluation.

Identify clinicians/consultants needed to support endorsement statewide and supports needed to sustain a statewide system for infant/early childhood mental health. These efforts include: 1) Build capacity for mental health endorsement. 2) Build capacity for the integration of reflective supervision and mental health consultation for the early learning community, specifically in areas with high saturation of vulnerable children.

The program creates the county’s first dedicated resource for supporting coparenting and resolving coparenting conflicts in diverse families raising children 0-3. Coparenting is a poorly understood concept in systems of care. Effective coparenting solutions go beyond services/resources for fathers, grandparents, or other caregivers to engage multiple adults simultaneously; build teamwork; identify and work through disputes - and honor infants’ formation of multiple attachments.

Program services are geared to stimulate parental attentiveness to infant mental health at home, support parental engagement in child development and increase social emotional skills needed to function in a school setting, while acknowledging the enduring stressors impacting their lives.

The University of South Florida St. Petersburg (USFSP) and All Children’s Hospital Johns Hopkins Medicine (ACH JHM) have partnered to support the creation and development of a first-of-its-kind Infant-Family Mental Health Center (IFMH Center) to serve Pinellas County. The IFMH Center’s work is framed by the now consensual awareness of the importance of the early years for young children’s brain and social-emotional development. The Center aims to repair and strengthen relationships for young children with a specialized focus on vulnerable children living with trauma and toxic stress. Repair is achieved through restoration of secure child-adult attachment relationships and the strengthening of the child’s family-specific coparenting system essential to assuring that therapeutic gains are achieved and sustained.

The Pinellas OAYI project will provide comprehensive and effective trauma-based services for children in the Pinellas Dependency Drug Court and Early Childhood Courts who have been adversely affected by the opioid epidemic. All specialty treatment court services designed and implemented are informed by and follow best practices standards and evidence-based approaches. This project constitutes a significant expansion of available community based services for children in DDC and ECC dependency cases. The Infant-Family Center will provide children with Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP) (ages 0-3 specific target) or a form of parent-child trauma therapy (adult-involved trauma therapy for kids not yet reunified). Therapeutic visitation will also be utilized where appropriate.

The University of South Florida (USF) St. Petersburg, Lutheran Services Florida Florida (LSF), Family Enrichment Services, People Empowering and Restoring Communities (PERC), Community Action Stops Abuse (CASA, Inc.), Eckerd Community Alternatives, Inc. and the Pinellas County Juvenile Welfare Board have developed an innovative initiative designed for adults 18 and older in response to the call for new Family, Relationship, and Marriage Education Works demonstration grants through the DHHS Administration for Children and Families (ACF), Office of Family Assistance (OFA).

In sum, it proposes to leverage cutting-edge interdisciplinary methods of analyzing discourse--the words and arguments used to influence people--to inform a more effective and persuasive communication plan for coral reef ecosystem research, education, and restoration.

The proposed research will use the richest publicly available economic dataset (Florida Department of Revenue Gross Sales Data) in conjunction with indicators of K. brevis occurrence and intensity derived from multiple sources (e.g., water sampling data, news reports, social media posts) to examine the relationship between changes in economic activity for specific sectors and the occurrence and intensity of K. brevis blooms using a panel data econometric approach.

The purpose of Project 10 is to assist school districts, including Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) and alternative education entities, in assessing and identifying needs and strengths to assist in building capacity to provide secondary transition services to students with disabilities in order to improve the federal uniform graduation rate, improve the standard high school diploma graduation rate, reduce dropout rates, increase transition individual educational plan compliance per statutory requirements and increase positive post-school outcomes.

The goal of the proposed project is to develop, demonstrate, and evaluate an innovative statistical approach to incorporating student mobility while examining distinct growth trajectories of math achievements across elementary school years. There are two specific aims of the study. First, the study will develop and implement the proposed cross-classified random effects growth mixture model with an empirical data set to demonstrate its utility in accounting for student mobility and examining equity in math achievements over time. Second, the study will conduct Monte Carlo simulations to evaluate the performance of the proposed model under data conditions that are common in educational settings.

This project will develop 6 simulations. The first simulation we will develop is in mechanics and will focus on rotational motion / moments of Inertia. We chose this one specifically because of the difficulty students have understanding concepts like angular momentum as seen in our first semester physics courses. The next simulation is optics. We believe that the affordances that augmented reality can bring to situations involving light and lenses will be particular useful to help students understand this concept. Finally, we chose electrical circuits because this is a concept that being able to manipulate objects such as a flash light and view the circuitry inside while being able to hold on to it as if they were holding a flashlight will give students an understanding of the concept they never had before. Once these simulations are done, we will investigate the effects of using this inexpensive and easy to use tool to enhance large lectures.

The State Personnel Development Grant, hereinafter referred to as the SPDG discretionary projects, will focus on increasing and sustaining implementation of two evidenced-based practices, Check & Connect (C&C) and the Strategic Instruction Model (SIM). Targeted student outcomes include increased school completion rates of secondary-aged students with disabilities (grades 6-12) including reduced dropout rates and increased graduation rates and increased academic performance. Additionally, as part of the other activities included in this proposal, the project will provide financial support to Exceptional Student Education (ESE) teachers seeking to add certification of academic content to their teaching certificate.

We propose investigating the long-term sustainability of the Clam Bay mangrove ecosystem (Naples, Florida), and the ecosystem’s role in ecosystem services. Sea-level rise is accelerating and will threaten the capacity of mangrove ecosystems to keep up in terms of elevation via soil accretion. Therefore we will examine how the ecosystem responds to sea-level rise to enable long-term solutions to be developed. This project is designed to determine the rate of soil accretion and accumulation within a fragile urbanized aquatic system at the centennial time scale.

Grant funds will be used to facilitate preservation work on the historic John C. Williams House on the University of South Florida campus in St. Petersburg, Florida. Work items will include the replacement of the roof system, including repair/replacement of damaged wood deck boards; the replacement of the roofmounted lightning system; the replacement of damaged wood board lap siding and trim; limited replacement of damaged and missing wood shingle siding; replacement of damaged wood porch flooring; rehabilitation of wood soffits and ceilings on south facing first floor porch; reconstruction of damaged and missing decorative balustrade panels and railings, including fasteners; exterior painting, joint sealants, and exterior coatings on all wood structures; perform analysis of structural foundation settlement, lifting, and shoring; perform structural stabilization; refit two (2) interior windows; repair and repaint interior plaster wall finish; installation of hurricane clips to the rafter connections on top of exterior walls; the installation of forty-two (42) removable high-tensile hurricane fabric panels over existing historic windows; printing architectural documents; and general conditions. Grant funds will also be used for contractor fees, architectural/engineering services, and grant and project management and administration.

The BRIGHT network will serve confirmed or potential victims/survivors of sex and/or labor trafficking in the Tampa Bay area. Clients can be of any age or gender. Identifying information and case notes are confidential between clients and their case managers in compliance with HIPAA regulations. All policies, procedures, and interfaces have been evaluated by survivor consultants to ensure the network is appropriate for its users.

Science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) departments at four large state universities in Florida will establish an alliance to support the professional development and career advancement of underrepresented women in STEM at three levels: 1) doctoral dissertation phase, 2) post-doctoral, and 3) early-career faculty. As the Florida AGEP Pathway , theAn alliance will be comprised of the University of South Florida (USF) (lead institution), Florida State University (FSU), Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU), and Florida International University (FIU) will implement an innovative model designed to enhance professional development opportunities among underrepresented women in STEM at the doctoral, post-doctoral, and early-career faculty levels. The proposed project also includes a longitudinal, mixed-methods, educational research component in addition to a plan for formative and summative assessment of the project.

We propose a community collaborative project in southern Ethiopia that combines oral traditions, life histories, ethnography, geomorphology, and ecology to study the Boreda Gamo sacred forests as monuments associated with ritual, conflict and conservation. By working closely with the Boreda Gamo people we will ensure that we accurately record their histories in a respectful manner. The project will provide the first detailed written histories of a southern Ethiopian people to balance national Ethiopian histories that tend to ignore their historical significance. Importantly, our project will result in new knowledge regarding historic and present day conservation and ritual practices, as well as build an appreciation for how people engage the landscape to survive atrocities—through either tradition or transformation.