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Cynthia Young is a Professor in the Department of Mathematics in the UCF College of Sciences and a Co-PI of the NSF-funded S-STEM program at UCF entitled the "Young Entrepreneur and Scholar(YES) Scholarship Program" as well as the NSF-funded STEP program entitled "EXCEL:UCF-STEP Pathways to STEM: From Promise to Prominence." Dr. Young's research interests are in the mathematical modeling of atmospheric effects on laser beams. She currently has projects with the Office of Naval Research and the Naval Research Laboratory investigating atmospheric propagation in the marine environment.

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Michael Georgiopoulos is a Professor in the UCF School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the PI of the NSF-funded S-STEM program at UCF entitled the "Young Entrepreneur and Scholar(YES) Scholarship Program" as well as the NSF-funded STEP program entitled "EXCEL:UCF-STEP Pathways to STEM: From Promise to Prominence." Dr. Georgiopoulos' research interests lie in the areas of machine learning, neural networks, pattern recognition and applications in signal/image processing, communications, medical field, manufacturing, transportation engineering, amongst others. Dr. Georgiopoulos is a Director of the Machine Learning Laboratory at UCF .

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Tace Crouse is the Director of the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning where she organizes faculty development activities for the university's full and part-time faculty and graduate teaching assistants. A major focus for the center is assistance with research design and data analysis for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning projects of our faculty. In the area of assessment, Dr. Crouse currently serves as the Chair of the University Assessment Committee as well as having primary responsibility for the assessment of the General Education Program. She has served as reviewer for proposals for the Association for Institutional Research, evaluator for an NSF CAREER Grant, and Coordinator of Assessment for the "EXCEL-UCF-STEP Pathways to STEM: From Promise to Prominence" grant for two years.

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Dr Islas is a Lecturer in the Department of Mathematics in the UCF College of Science and the editor of the textbook used in the EXCEL class Applications of Calculus I intended to motivate students in
the STEM program. Dr. Islas is involved in the redesign of entry level courses in mathematics
to improve learning and reduced costs in higher education, particularly in the delivery of course to
a large numbers of students. Dr. Islas's research interests lie in the field of water waves and numerical
solutions to nonlinear partial differential equations.

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Scott C. Hagen is an Associate Professor in the UCF Civil, Environmental and Construction Engineering department and co-PI of the NSF-funded STEP programs entitled "EXCEL:UCF-STEP Pathways to STEM: From Promise to Prominence" and "Collaborative Research: SCC Advance: Strengthening the Foundation of STEM Education for Seminole Community College. " Scott's research interests are primarily focused on high-performance computing of tidally driven flows in coastal and estuarine systems, including transport-related issues and hurricane storm tide modeling. In addition to NSF, his funding sources include FEMA, NOAA, NOPP, NASA, as well as numerous state agencies. Dr. Hagen is Director of the Coastal Hydroscience Analysis, Modeling and Predictive Simulations Laboratory at UCF.

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Cherie Geiger is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry in the UCF College of Sciences and a Co-PI of the NSF-funded S-STEM program at UCF entitled the "Young Entrepreneur and Scholar(YES) Scholarship Program" as well as the NSF-funded STEP program entitled "EXCEL:UCF-STEP Pathways to STEM: From Promise to Prominence." Dr. Geiger's research interests are in the areas of developing novel materials and technologies for use in environmental remediation and degradation of hazardous compounds used in industry and the military. She currently has projects funded through the Department of Defense and industrial partnerships.

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Melissa Dagley Falls is the Director of Academic Affairs for the UCF College of Engineering and Computer Science and advisor to both undergraduate and graduate students within the college. Dr. Dagley Falls chairs the Admission, Advising, and Retention Committee (AARC) and serves on the assessment and activities teams of the NSF-funded STEP program entitled†EXCEL:UCF-STEP Pathways to STEM: From Promise to Prominence." Her research interests lie in the areas of student access to education, sense of community, retention, first-year experience, living-learning communities, and persistence to graduation for students in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics programs.

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Patricia Ramsey is the Assistant Director of Institutional Research. Her duties include the development, data collection, editing and reporting of official data to external agencies, state agencies and federal survey agencies, in addition to supporting University units. She is currently involved in the development of dynamic reporting using SAS Business Intelligence tools. Patricia provides data support for various grant projects, including the NSF-funded S-STEM program at UCF entitled the "Young Entrepreneur and Scholar(YES) Scholarship Program" as well as the NSF-funded STEP program entitled "EXCEL:UCF-STEP Pathways to STEM: From Promise to Prominence."

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