◆ UCF sees
its future in three key areas of the region and announced plans this week to create a hub for the health sciences in Lake Nona and to anchor its planned downtown Orlando campus with specific departments.
UCF, seeing its future in three key places, announced plans this week to create a hub for the health sciences in Lake Nona and to anchor its planned downtown Orlando campus with departments, including education and regional planning, that it hopes can help Orlando and other urban communities thrive.
Provost Dale Whittaker said the University of Central Florida — headquartered on its sprawling east Orange County campus — plans to create a new academic health sciences center at Lake Nona, already home to the university’s medical school. The plan would be to move nursing, social work, physical therapy and other health-related departments there, too, though there is no timetable and the moves would depend on funding.
UCF made a pitch Tuesday to the Orange County Commission to take over the Lake Nona facility now that’s currently occupied by soon-to-depart Sanford Burnham research institute. UCF, if it wins that bid, would make the facility a cancer research and treatment center, fitting with its overall plans to make Lake Nona its hub for health sciences.
The university’s downtown campus, set to open next year, would eventually be home to a new college of urban innovation and education, which would include existing college of education programs as well as architecture, criminal justice and public administration, among others. The downtown campus also will hold programs related to communications, digital arts and gaming.
“We’re anchoring our downtown location, that is coming out of the ground, with a college that we believe can thrive and help the city thrive,” he said.
The “bold moves” aim to position UCF to meet the region’s 21st-century higher education needs, Whittaker said. They also will have the practical effect of creating more space on UCF’s main campus where the addition of 200 new faculty members in recent years has left some departments squeezed for space.