UCF’s strengths in empowering student success, achieving social mobility and fostering impactful industry partnerships have elevated the university to become one of the nation’s top five most innovative public universities.
“UCF’s rise in prominence as one of the nation’s most innovative universities is a reflection of the collective boldness, creativity and excellence of our people.” — Alexander N. Cartwright, UCF president
UCF is also recognized as the most innovative university in Florida for the seventh consecutive year, according to the 2025 Best Colleges rankings released today by U.S. News & World Report.
“Together, our students, faculty, staff, and partners are making an incredible impact as we transform lives, solve societal challenges, elevate our community and state, and invent the future,” says UCF President Alexander N. Cartwright.
UCF stands tall alongside other top public schools in innovation, including the Georgia Institute of Technology, MIT and Purdue University — and ahead of UC Berkley, Harvard and Virginia Tech.
UCF continues to advance toward becoming a top 50 public research university overall and earned recognitions in several other categories:
Last year, UCF students completed over 28,000 internships, co-ops and service-learning experiences, while the university produced nearly 18,000 graduates, fueling Florida’s talent pipeline in key industries such as engineering and computer science, digital media, aerospace and defense, business and healthcare.
In all of those industries, students at America’s Partnership University benefit from the strong connections the university and its talented faculty have developed with leading innovative companies such as Lockheed Martin, Siemens, Northrop Grumman, L3 Harris, Duke Energy and NASA in engineering and computer science; AdventHealth, Orlando Health and Nemours Children’s Health in healthcare; Electronic Arts in digital media; and many others.
Elevating Student Success and Well-being
UCF is deeply committed to helping all students unleash their potential and succeed at UCF and beyond — and Student Success and Well-Being division staff are always seeking new and innovative approaches to accomplish that goal.
One of UCF’s newest initiatives is known as BEAM — Belonging, Engaging, Achieving and Meaning. It provides a framework to transform student aspirations into achievements and empower every student to thrive.
BEAM encourages students to explore opportunities to connect intentionally, actively and meaningfully with others, both inside and outside of the classroom; discover and utilize campus resources to support them on their journey to success; and develop, nurture, deploy and hone passions and interests to catapult their career preparation and success into the future.
UCF is also transforming student success in other ways. Every undergraduate student can connect with an academic success coach to ensure they have the support to succeed throughout their journey. The university’s academic success coaching blends traditional academic advising with coaching and innovative technologies to set goals, create realistic success strategies, and monitor success over the course of a student’s UCF career.
“All of the things that UCF provides for me, through Career Services, academic success coaches, even my peers and professors, have fully prepared me to go into my career.” — Daniel Bogle, UCF student
In addition, academic advocates provide targeted outreach and problem-solving to students to remove barriers adversely affecting their persistence and timely degree completion. Advocates and support students facing academic challenges and those assisted by high-touch support.
“When I met with my academic success coach, she guided me through my freshman, sophomore, junior and senior year,” says Daniel Bogle, a UCF engineering student interning at Lockheed Martin. “We decided when I want to take internships and when I want to take extracurriculars, and how I could do all of those things and still graduate on time.”
The university has developed multiple pathways for students to succeed, including DirectConnect to UCF, a partnership program with six state colleges that graduates more than 4,400 transfer students annually.
For student-athletes, Vice President and Director of Athletics Terry Mohajir has achieved his bold goal of a 100% full-time job or graduate school placement rate for all graduating student-athletes.
40-Year Success: How Lockheed Martin Helps Students
Orlando — a national hub of aerospace and defense innovation — provides UCF students with opportunities to get real-world experience with many top industry partners.
The Lockheed Martin College Work Experience Program (CWEP) provides one of the world’s leading global security and aerospace companies with a vast talent pool of undergraduate and graduate students studying engineering, business, finance, communications, mathematics, computer science and other disciplines.
For more than 40 years, Lockheed Martin has helped thousands of UCF students build their careers. Many get full-time job offers from Lockheed Martin and other companies after participating.
“CWEP cemented my desire to work in engineering as a career, and it also gave me a perspective while I was getting an education of how that was going to be used in the future.” — Frank St. John ’87 ’91MS, Lockheed Martin COO
Among UCF’s CWEP alumni is Lockheed Martin Chief Operating Officer Frank St. John ’87 ’91MS, who holds two electrical engineering degrees from UCF. His CWEP journey illustrates how transformational CWEP can be for students.
“CWEP cemented my desire to work in engineering as a career, and it also gave me a perspective while I was getting an education of how that was going to be used in the future,” St. John says. “It was also beneficial for the company because they got to try me out as a part-time employee.”
Dean of UCF’s College of Engineering and Computer Science Michael Georgiopoulos says over time, CWEP students become stronger in the classroom and exhibit more enthusiasm for their area of study when they begin to see how their academic learnings are applied in an industry setting.
“By spending time with Lockheed Martin, they get to understand a little better what their profession is all about. They become more confident, more mature, more talkative about their discipline,” says Georgiopoulos. “They are able to understand why they are learning these important fundamentals in their coursework.”
For almost all of the program’s 40-year history, UCF was the only university in the nation with such a partnership with Lockheed Martin.
World-class Faculty as Leading Innovators
Many of UCF’s world-class faculty members are leaders and top innovators in their fields, and their expertise and passion for helping students learn give students an edge as they graduate and pursue their careers.
A longtime innovator, Carolina Cruz-Neira is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and recent inductee into the Augmented World Expo XR Hall of Fame. She is a pioneer in the areas of virtual reality, interactive visualization and digital twins. Her work has translated to standard tools in industry, government and academia.
She is known world-wide for being the creator of the CAVE virtual reality (VR) system and for transferring research into practice by spearheading several open-source initiatives, such as VR Juggler, and by leading entrepreneurial initiatives to commercialize research. She has over 100 publications and has been awarded over $250 million in grants, contracts, and donations.
“It is not well known that UCF has one of the, if not the, largest concentration of VR researchers in the U.S. There is a strong ecosystem that generates many demands for VR, as well as use cases.” — Carolina Cruz-Neira, professor
Cruz-Neira joined UCF in 2020, drawn to the university for its strong programs and extensive network of partners and collaborators across a number of sectors, including space, defense, energy, entertainment and healthcare.
“Of course, the strong reputation of UCF as a leader in modeling and simulation ties very well with the ecosystem,” she says. “At this point in my career, the opportunity to have daily interactions, idea exchanges, and stimulating conversations with colleagues and students is the best environment for me to be in.”
Many of her former students are now doing leading work in VR at places such as Unity Labs, Intel, Microsoft Research, Google, DreamWorks, EA, Deere & Company, Boeing, Sony Pictures Imageworks, and Argonne National Laboratory.
A National Leader in Preparing Nurses for Practice
UCF’s College of Nursing and the Dr. Phillips Nursing Pavilion under construction at Lake Nona are ideal examples of both student success and an innovative portfolio of industry partnerships.
Through innovative technology and educational excellence both in and out of the classroom, UCF continues to lead in educating future nurses to build a talent pipeline and address the nursing shortage. UCF is ranked No. 39 among the nation’s Best Undergraduate Nursing Programs — second in Florida and among a top 30 among public universities.
Beyond the classroom, UCF’s undergraduate nursing students receive valuable hands-on and real-world experiences to foster learning and skills development in order to graduate ready for clinical practice. Those student experiences includes innovative simulation-based experiences in UCF’s STIM Center, a global leader in healthcare simulation education, providing vital health education and screenings through service learning in economically disadvantaged Central Florida communities, and training alongside professional nurses in clinical experiences at area healthcare partners.
The amount of simulation space available for UCF nursing faculty and students will triple in the new Dr. Phillips Nursing Pavilion.
“To be ranked, once again, among the nation’s best undergraduate nursing programs demonstrates UCF’s excellence in preparing future nurses for clinical practice and is a testament to our faculty and staff’s commitment to student success.” — Mary Lou Sole, College of Nursing dean
With multiple bachelor’s in nursing degree tracks across three Central Florida campuses, UCF has educated more than 16,000 Knight nursing alumni to date — 85% of whom live and work in Florida. Each year, UCF graduates more than 260 newly licensed nurses and its graduates continually exceed both state and national averages on the national licensing exam.
With the Dr. Phillips Nursing Pavilion on UCF’s Academic Health Sciences Campus in Lake Nona expected to open in Fall 2025, UCF also will be able to graduate an additional 150 new Knight nurses annually.
This effort would not come to fruition if not for UCF’s partnerships with many generous philanthropic donors who continue to invest in the success of UCF’ s nursing students: the Florida Legislature, Dr. Phillips Charities, AdventHealth, Orlando Health, Nemours Children’s Health, Martin Andersen-Gracia Andersen Foundation, the Helene Fuld Health Trust, the Elizabeth Morse Genius Foundation, Addition Financial Credit Union, Roslyn and Jody Burttram, Parrish Medical Center and VNA Foundation.
“UCF will build upon these strengths to unleash potential in the new Dr. Phillips Nursing Pavilion, addressing the nursing shortage and providing increased access to a high-quality nursing education for more future Knight nurses,” says Mary Lou Sole, dean of UCF’s College of Nursing.
Social Mobility and Economic Progress
A college degree from UCF brings innovative solutions to empower social mobility, paving the way to career and financial stability for students, their families and the generations that follow them. Ensuring that every student has an opportunity to earn a high-quality, affordable education is a top priority at UCF. Higher education makes a positive impact by helping break the cycle of intergenerational hardship.
Many students face challenges and hurdles on their path to realizing their dream of a college education. Students of all backgrounds, including those who are first-generation or from disadvantaged families, must have access to the resources and tools needed to succeed. Eliminating achievement gaps and reducing barriers for students of all backgrounds and incomes has been a decade-long focus for UCF. This transforms the future for generations to come and creates a powerful ripple effect.
UCF is frequently praised for its social mobility efforts. Every year, the university graduates more than 3,200 first-generation students and 7,000 Pell Grant students. UCF produces the most Pell Grant graduates among public schools and the second most among all schools nationally. The university is also among the top 8% most affordable universities for families below $75,000 in income.
“UCF really does want you to succeed, and they set you up for success. You just have to have the courage to take the first step to reach out. From there, everything else will fall into place.” — Aliyah Gonzalez ’21 ’23, UCF alum
There’s a positive relationship between a student earning their degree and making social and economic progress. Higher education provides a path to achieving the life-changing benefits of upward mobility.
When Aliyah Gonzalez ’21 ’23, a first-generation student, began her freshman year at UCF, it was a big change. She struggled to learn study skills and where to turn to for guidance.
“I literally remember getting lost every day my first week,” says the two-time alumna. “As a first-generation student, I didn’t have anyone to lean on for questions and to get that guidance. Navigating UCF, learning study skills, and learning how to be an efficient college student was a big learning curve.”
“Once I graduated with my first degree with UCF, I couldn’t imagine myself anywhere else truthfully,” says Gonzalez, who earned her bachelor’s degree in health sciences and immediately returned to UCF in the accelerated second degree nursing program. “I had found my people, my comfort and so many opportunities.”