Staff Spotlights THE CASCADE EFFECT OF HIGHER EDUCATION
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UDY GENSHAFT HONORS COLLEGE Director of Advising and IT Services, Dr. Reginald Lucien, received his PhD in Curriculum and Instruction: Instructional Technology in May of 2021. In addition to being a personal achievement for him, the work he completed in his studies is now benefiting Honors students and has the potential to help students in other USF Colleges as well. Along with his advising responsibilities, Lucien manages the College’s IT team and seven years ago expanded the scope of the team to include an IT student incubator. The Honors IT incubator employs multiple students and provides real-world experiential learning opportunities. Lucien says that technology is important in today’s society because “it provides an equal playing field to empower everyone to have the opportunity to learn. Technology allows us to be more efficient and enables us to have a more significant impact on our world.” Lucien believes that the Judy Genshaft Honors College is an ideal location for this incubator because “Honors brings the brightest minds together to co-create meaningful solutions for both students and staff.” The current team is comprised of nine undergraduate Honors students who are learning about professional development, communication skills, and project management.
In the Fall of 2021, these students began an exciting new project thanks to a grant secured by Lucien. The USF Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning (CITL) Grant will fund a new project titled “Artificial Intelligence-enabled Chatbot for Motivational Regulation (MRBot) in Online Learning: Design, Development, and Evaluation.” When complete, this new chatbot application will be embedded into a faculty course within the College of Education to increase academic persistence and motivate students in need of encouragement. “This project is possible thanks to the collaborative work of our talented student leaders,” says Lucien. “Team members Emily Fendrick and Ari Herrera did a phenomenal job creating the scripting for the chatbot, and Alvaro Aguilar and Nischal Nagesh were instrumental in designing the user interface.” The application is scheduled to go live during the Spring 2022 semester and the team will present their findings to the CITL team in the fall, with publication potential. “Our College is so proud of the important work that Dr. Lucien has done with the student incubator and with this new grant,” says Honors Dean Dr. Charles Adams. “This work has the potential to help USF students in need of motivation, and I am grateful to Dr. Lucien and his team for recognizing this need and taking steps to address it.” - Amy Harroun
Left: Dr. Reginald Lucien celebrates at his graduation with Honors Dean, Dr. Charles Adams. Top Right: USF alums show their bull pride at Marco and Lauren’s wedding. Left to Right: Kayla Ford, Donae Graham, Amber Myer, Lauren Roberts, Marco Nardiello, Sebastian Sarria, Grace Beck, Alex Reuther, and Chris Chen. Bottom Right: Marco and Lauren celebrate their engagement on USF’s Tampa campus.
32 UNIVERSITY of SOUTH FLORIDA
