From internships to student achievements to recognition of The University of Tampa faculty and institution as a whole, the following is a running archive of UT press releases, called News Articles, and feature stories, noted as UT Life.
Posted June 12, 2018 in UT Life
Christa Edwards ’19 spent her 20th birthday underwater in Honduras. That evening, she was diving in a marine sanctuary in Roatan and watching a tiny invertebrate called ostracods display patterns of bioluminescence.
“They lit up the darkness for as far as we could see. It was like being in outer space,” said Edwards, a marine science-biology major with a minor in environmental science.
Edwards was with classmates in biology Professor Kevin Beach and Associate Professor Lori McRae’s travel course on coral reefs (MAR 344). They had spent a full semester in the classroom reviewing basic biology of corals, coral reef ecology and reading the most recent primary literature on what current research is going on about the global decline of coral reefs.
Posted June 04, 2018 in UT Life
The course was about professional communication strategies, but students walked away with a complete cultural immersion. This May, after studying seven weeks in the classroom, one UT Speech for Business class headed to China for 14 days.
“The trip was the most rewarding and culturally enriching experience I have ever had in my entire life,” said Craig Trapani ’20. “Not only did it exceed all my expectations and some, but it also formulated a bond with the other students and staff that I will cherish for a lifetime.”
Posted May 30, 2018 in News
The University of Tampa MFA in Creative Writing speaker series, Lectores, will feature seven nights of readings with a mix of award-winning visiting authors and UT’s world-renowned MFA faculty from June 14–21.
All readings are free and open to the public, and all begin at 7:30 p.m. in the Vaughn Center, ninth floor.
Posted May 23, 2018 in UT Life
In this age of smart phones and social media, the rise of selfies, or self-portraits, seems inevitable. They have become commonplace, especially amongst millennials, leading to the perception of this generation as more narcissistic than their predecessors.
But is there a link between selfie taking and narcissism?
Erin Koterba, associate professor of psychology, and two of her students, Kaitlyn Ligman ’17 and Faith Ponti ’17, set out to investigate motives for emerging adults (ages 18–29) to take and post selfies to social media and to explore how gender and narcissism predict selfie-taking behavior.
Posted May 16, 2018 in UT Life
Economist Daniel Diaz Vidal loves economic theory but understands that things like the aggregate demand and aggregate supply models and the Solow growth model are kind of dry and mathematical. So he helps students think of the concepts through examples in film and video games.
“The ultimate goal is for them to understand that it’s technology, it’s capital, it’s human capital — our talent as individuals and our training and our skills — natural resources and the tools we have; those are the important things for economic growth,” said Vidal. “I also get them to realize that games and movies use reality and economic models to make the virtual or the game environment more interesting.”This two-week May Term, the UT assistant professor of economics is using films like Scarface and The Big Short, and the Netflix series, Ozark, to help students better understand economic theory and several subfields like economics of crime, economic history and game theory.