“The culture for producing leading-edge talent has been here for decades,” says Florian Jentsch ’97PhD, chair of UCF’s Psychology Department and director of the Team Performance Lab at the Institute for Simulation and Training (IST). “The aviation industry as a whole is better because of UCF’s roles, and employers are very much aware of that.”

A casual reader might wonder how a university with no airfield could be ranked as the nation’s No. 1 supplier of talent six times by Aviation Week Network. Or why professors in fields like psychology and digital media play such prominent roles in the advancement of that talent.

Start with Jentsch. For 30 years he’s been an integral part of one of the world’s premier programs in human factors at UCF — and what could be more important than “human factors” before and during a flight? In the same area of IST, David Metcalf and Michael Eakins ’09BA ’17MFA are creatively using multimedia to bring K-12 students into the widening aviation funnel (forecasts from Boeing indicate the industry will need more than 600,000 new pilots over the next 20 years).

“As much as I like to use new gadgets,” Eakins says, “I get the biggest charge from watching the next generation use them. When I see the lightbulbs go on for the first time, I know we’re doing something impactful.”

How UCF Fills the Talent Funnel

To trace the dots from digital media to aviation talent, let’s start with Eakins’ and Metcalf’s backgrounds. Both grew up near aerospace and aviation centers. Eakins was raised on Florida’s Space Coast, where his grandfather was part of the team that built NASA’s first lunar module. Metcalf spent his formative years near NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

“As a kid, I’d hear conversations about space and aviation,” Metcalf says. After studying computer graphics at the University of Texas, he used his multiple interests to help NASA establish its first multimedia lab. In 2006 he took another leap and launched UCF’s Mixed Emerging Technology Integration Lab (METIL) at IST. The simulation lab has since spawned innovations in dozens of fields, including mobile healthcare, mobile learning, and … here it is … aviation training.

“Our students are never bored in the lab,” Metcalf says.

Eakins was one of those students early on.

“When I started my education at UCF, I thought I’d pursue a career in gaming,” Eakins says, “but once I met David and had my first exposure to simulation, I got hooked.”

Eakins is now the creative lead of METIL, developing simulation and training tools to hook others who least expect to be hooked. The lab hosts K-12 field trips so kids can see and touch those tools.

In February 2022, Metcalf and Eakins initiated the STEM Aviation Showcase, taking headsets and tablet-based simulators to events in Central Florida. Through partnerships with Orange County Public Schools, the Boys and Girls Club, and Junior Achievement, to name a few, they’ve already made a presence at 16 events and had hands-on interactions with 1,600 curious kids.

“We’re able to bring aviation to people who have never met a pilot or maybe have never seen an airport,” Metcalf says. “The airplanes flying high over their neighborhoods might be the closest they’ve ever come to a plane. We can use the portable tools that we’ve developed in IST to cast a wider net and grow more interest among people who thought it wasn’t a reachable goal. It’s also a great way to bring more women to the front of planes.”

Most recently, Eakins developed a more advanced training aid in collaboration with Boeing. Using an AR headset and a virtual captain — an avatar designed from a real pilot — users can experience flight training without the need for a plane, an airport, or an expensive, non-portable simulator.

“Anyone who has access to this can practice flying anywhere, without any risk,” Eakins says. “It could be a gamechanger.”

The dots that lead from digital media to gaming to portable flight simulation come to a question that parents of high schoolers often ask: “What’s the next step for my son or daughter?”

“We can point out the best classes to prepare them for a career in aviation,” Metcalf says. “If they decide to come to UCF, they’ll be guided through their educational journey to the personal future they desire.”

How UCF Makes Flying Safer

Jentsch arrived at ��AV in the early-mid 1990s to study for his doctoral degree in a crucial research field that, at that time, relatively few people knew anything about: human factors psychology. The application to aviation was always clear to Jentsch and his colleagues.

“The reliability of aviation is directly tied to the behavior of everyone in the system,” Jentsch says. “The gate agent. The security person. The baggage handler. The maintenance engineer. The pilot. Every person must know when to speak up and say, ‘we can’t leave the ground yet.’ Technology helps, but at the end of the day we rely on good behavior for high positive consequences — in this case, safe travel.”

In the ‘90s, UCF was one of five or six universities doing work in this space. Since then, many others have attempted to emulate UCF’s approach to research and training.

“We’re always a few steps ahead because many of our government and corporate partners are right here in Orlando,” Jentsch says. “People are always amazed that when you come into [Central Florida Research Park], you can find anyone and everyone who makes a flight simulator working here. This gives us access to tools at IST that allow us to explore the most realistic factors in aviation training.”

The control stick, however, is only as effective as the person using it. When the human factor fails, we call it “human error.” And human error is responsible for at least half of all aviation accidents.

“Our research and training in human behaviors have significantly reduced accidents since the 1980s,” Jentsch says. The Bureau of Aircraft Accidents Archives (BAAA), an organization established in Geneva in 1990 for tracking aviation safety, reported 337 accidents in 1989. By 1999, the number had dropped to 234, and in 2022 the BAAA charted 97 accidents. “You can corelate the value of those results to the value of our students in the aviation industry.”

Jentsch and his research team were among the first to trace errors back to fixable, trainable factors. Communication is a good example. They concluded that instead of trying to figure out a flurry of issues at once, it would be safer to bring each issue to a resolution before opening the next issue — closed-loop communication. The strategy has since been adopted in other industries, like medicine. The reduction in surgical errors in hospitals is partly from the implementation of checklists and briefings during nurse shift changes.

“It originated from our research for aviation,” Jentsch says. He says he’s still excited after doing this type of research for 25 years.

“What we do is meaningful, and it goes hand-in-hand with meaningful simulation training and meaningful real-world jobs, Jentsch says. “At the end of the day, when employers know that people influenced by our research can tackle any situation and make flying safer, then we’ve done our jobs well. And we don’t even need an airfield to do it.”

��AV researcher David Metcalf put that question to the test this weekend, and he successfully drove a Tesla Model S production electric car from Merritt Island to Lake Okeechobee, through the Florida Panther Preserve, across Alligator Alley and back north.

With his 12-year-old son Adam as co-pilot, Metcalf welcomed the grand challenge made by Tesla Motors’ CEO Elon Musk to be the first to drive one of the vehicles 400 miles on a single charge. Tesla, founded in 2003 by a group of engineers, is based in Palo Alto, Calif. The Model S starts at about $50,000 and has been named the 2013 Motor Trend Car of the Year for its safety, efficiency and performance.

Until Metcalf’s efforts, the record driven by a Model S on one charge was 311 miles.

“Others have tried the challenge in different parts of the country, but hills and other factors have made it difficult. Florida is flat, which worked to our advantage,” said Metcalf, senior researcher and director of the at UCF’s Institute for Simulation & Training.

Metcalf made the 423.5 mile drive in just under 17 hours.

Musk announced the challenge on Twitter in May. Metcalf used to promote the trip and raise awareness for UCF’s Haiti relief efforts, which work to bring technology to schools and clinics there.

The trip was strategically planned to allow for minimum energy use. For example, Metcalf chose a route ideal for low speeds and a time of year when it’s comfortable to not use air conditioning.

For Metcalf and Adam, who turned 13 yesterday, the trip was as much about father-son bonding as it was about record-breaking.

“We saw lots of wildlife and got to experience Florida’s natural beauty together and at a relaxed pace. It was an adventure for us,” said Metcalf. “Even if we hadn’t made it, it would still have been a once-in-a-lifetime experience.”

The 30 students are members of Habitat for Humanity at UCF and they will be in Biloxi till Jan. 9 building houses for those in need as a part of Habitat for Humanity International’s Collegiate Challenge, an alternative break program offered across the country.

They will also be the first group to test a smart phone application being developed by the Mixed Emerging Technology Integration Lab at UCF’s Institute for Simulation and Training.

“This will be our fifth trip out of state as the UCF Habitat for Humanity chapter,” said sophomore environmental engineering major and the chapter’s incoming president Kaitlyn Jeanis. “[In 2009] I learned everything from how to shingle a roof to how to put drywall up. It’s an incredible experience.”

Making this experience that much more incredible is the Android application being developed by METIL.

The application, dubbed Allogy, will allow students to work on their online courses and pursue other educational interests via smart phone.

The goal in testing the application on this trip is to see what feedback its first users provide and to use their time on the bus trip to Biloxi to take care of things that would usually have to wait until their arrival.

“We’re going to have people listen to a lecture, watch a video on Habitat — a safety speech — and then they have a quiz afterward to take that’s only a few questions long,” said senior molecular biology and microbiology major Galal Elsayed. “Instead of having to deal with the safety speech being said on site or taking up time that we could be using to build houses, this new Android application is going to give people the opportunity to learn everything they need to learn on the bus ride there.”

There will be four smart phones, obtained specially for conducting research on the application during this trip, for the 30 students to use.

“This new application we hope will revolutionize the way not only people learn in the United States, but the way people learn in developing countries, as well,” said Elsayed, who will be serving as the research coordinator for the application during the trip.

Elsayed, who was one of the co-founders of the chapter in the fall of 2008, has been on three Collegiate Challenges before this one.

“Collegiate Challenge has constantly been dominated by people that really want to do good things for other communities,” said Elsayed, who lives with four other students who have all been on Collegiate Challenge trips.

Since its founding in the fall of 2008, the chapter has been named UCF’s New Organization of the Year, built houses all across Orlando and participated in Collegiate Challenges in Alabama, Tennessee, Louisiana, North Carolina and this year, Mississippi.

Jeanis, whose first Collegiate Challenge was in Lafayette, La., said the experiences students have on these trips usually turn them into very committed club members.

“What was great about the Lafayette trip is we were working next to the people we were actually building the house for,” Jeanis said. “We got to hear their stories and what they went through and how much Habitat has helped them and they were just so appreciative.”

Elsayed also attended the Lafayette trip.

“We had one homeowner who had survived cancer and had lost her husband and lost her house in Katrina and we were building a house for her in Lafayette, La., and she was helping us sand walls,” Elsayed said.

He said that in addition to learning about the people whom he was helping build homes for, he learned new skills he might not have picked up otherwise.

“I got to go down into a crawlspace of the house and I had to winterize it and place installation board into concrete blocks … it was quite the experience because I would never have even considered learning how to winterize a house,” Elsayed said.

Graduate student and treasurer of the chapter Lauren Cantrell, who has been on three other Collegiate Challenges, said she was looking forward to another trip that would allow her to spend time with friends who share her same passions in helping the community.

“Even though each experience is so different, you all leave the trip as best friends,” Cantrell said. “We all have this overwhelming feeling you can’t describe unless you’re there.”

Though waking up early and putting in hours of physical labor is exhausting, Cantrell said there was something that made it worth everything.

“At the end, if you get to meet a homeowner, then you can see what you’re working for and you feel like you’ve really accomplished something.”

Source: Central Florida Future, ,  by Katie Kustura, News Editor. Published: Sunday, January 2, 2011, updated: Sunday, January 2, 2011 18:01