USF, Florida High Tech Corridor partner to support advancement of innovations

AI literacy, bilingual educator training, immersive learning experiences and social and emotional learning curriculum will receive $100,000 boost

USF Research & Innovation and the Florida High Tech Corridor are partnering to provide $100,000 to a new round of projects from the Early Stage Innovation Fund program, an effort designed to give a starting boost to cutting-edge ideas. The four awarded projects are led by faculty from the Colleges of Arts & Sciences, Behavioral & Community Sciences, Education and Engineering, and represent USF's Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Sarasota-Manatee campuses. and the Morsani College of Medicine.

This round of seed funding will support four projects focused on USF's Strategic Areas of Focus. The projects will develop a roadmap for community-centered AI literacy education for K-12 students, a unique method for training the next generation of bilingual professionals in education, a virtual reality immersive learning experience for youth participants to test innovative solutions to real-world problems, and an expanded multicultural curriculum to improve social and emotional learning for students.

"Across our campuses every day, USF faculty are developing creative solutions to society's biggest challenges," said Dr. Sylvia Wilson Thomas, USF Vice President for Research & Innovation. "This important work supports the breadth and depth of community engaged, high-impact research at USF. This round of Early-Stage Innovation funding was an opportunity for USFRI and the Corridor to highlight USF researchers' ingenuity around social sciences, design, and education and student engagement."

Corridor CEO Paul Sohl said the projects are unique efforts to put emerging technologies to work in the wider community. "The Florida High Tech Corridor launched this seed funding initiative as a means of supporting promising new ideas from University of South Florida faculty and kickstarting research ideas that go on to become larger initiatives," he said. "These projects will involve and serve the wider community in unique and meaningful ways, and we're excited to see the returns from this effort."

The newly funded projects are:

AI for All: Co-designing a Roadmap to Community-Centered AI Literacy Education

Dr. Fan Yang, College of Arts &; Sciences, Zimmerman School of Advertising and Mass Communications

This project aims to create a roadmap for AI literacy education in Tampa Bay's K-12 schools. Leveraging existing collaborations in the region, the roadmap will outline priority areas for AIliteracy programs such as age-appropriate curriculum guidelines, teacher and parent training programs, resource allocation strategies, and methods for integrating AI education into existing subjects.

Equipping Bilingual Leaders for Special Education Related Careers

Dr. Matthew Foster, College of Behavioral & Community Sciences, Department of Child Family Studies

To address the urgent need for bilingual educators, the team will develop a unique methodology to train the next generation of multilingual leaders in evidence-based bilingual instruction, culturally appropriate assessment practices, special education services, and family engagement. The program will incorporate field-based experiential and service-learning activities for USF undergraduate students as they provide bilingual language intervention to emergent bilinguals in kindergarten and first grade.

eXploRe a Wonderland of Inquiry
Dr. Lindsay Persohn, College of Education, Department of Language, Literacy, Ed.D., Exceptional Education, and Physical Education

This collaborative project with a team of faculty and instructors from the Advanced Visualization Center, College of Education, Muma College of Business and Digital Learning aims to create a prototype virtual reality application where a "World of Wonder" offers opportunities for participants to explore, create, and collaborate to solve real-world problems. The project envisions multi-player, interactive spaces such as a library, workshop or gallery where young people develop and test innovative solutions to the problems they see in their community.

Social Emotional Curriculum Development for Early Childhood

Dr. AnnMarie Alberton Gunn and Dr. Susan V Bennett, College of Education, Department of Language, Literacy, Ed.D., Exceptional Education, and Physical Education

The goal of this project is to build a robust curriculum that schools and afterschool centers can use to increase students' vocabulary and students' social and emotional learning. The team plans to publish this curriculum and work with new and existing community partners to implement it at afterschool centers to support the needs of this underserved community in Pinellas County and beyond.

The Florida High Tech Corridor and USF Research & Innovation Early-Stage Innovation Fund, founded in 2022, supports early-stage innovations and applied research with significant potential for commercial or community impact. These funds are intended to seed USF-developed innovations that could lead to industry investment, community engagement, start-up creation, and/or licensing opportunities. Previous funding rounds have supported innovations in artificial intelligence-enabled tools and devices; sustainable manufacturing, defense technology and Alzheimer's research; and vaccine development and infection fighting strategies. USF researchers may request up to $25,000 to support USF research expenses associated with the further development of the target innovation.

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