The recipients are:

The two projects were chosen to help address significant community challenges that have national or global implications. They were chosen from five finalists of community-based projects.

provides educational classes to the 30,000 people incarcerated in Central Florida.

“By 2020, an estimated 65 percent of all jobs will require post-secondary education,” Watson said. “But most prisoners in Florida have limited access to higher education despite the fact that statistical evidence overwhelmingly confirms that a college education reduces recidivism, increases employment opportunities, and strengthens communities.”

Each year, 33,000 people are released from Florida prisons, and many settle in Central Florida.

“As the largest university in the state, Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ is well-positioned to bring transformative education to those behind bars,” Watson said.

Collectively Confronting and Resolving the Injustice of Human Trafficking is the product of 15 years of progress by campus and community partners to raise awareness of the problem. The situation has received some recent national and international attention, but the organizers of this project say the effort to combat trafficking is more important than ever.

“Many people think that this happened years ago and don’t know or won’t accept that it’s going on today in our backyard,” said Bersia, also co-director of the Center for the Study of Human Trafficking and Modern Slavery. “Unfortunately, Florida has the awful distinction of being a hotbed of slavery and trafficking.”

The two project were selected because the initiative was “looking for comprehensive, multifaceted, interdisciplinary strategies that will create solutions for acute, complex community issues,” said Lisa Guion Jones, associate provost for strategy and special assistant to the president. Nearly 800 faculty and staff members helped in the selection process.

As part of the Burnett Honors College’s newest study-abroad program, senior design engineering students at Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ are developing sustainable energy platforms that will power Pomolong’s community center. Accompanied by Dean Alvin Wang and Associate Dean Martin Dupuis, 15 students will travel to South Africa for three weeks this summer to implement their designs and participate in other service-learning projects.

Last March, Wang and Dupuis visited South Africa, where the college already had strong partners, and were asked to create an educational program. In Pomolong, a new partnership was born, which included the Swinburne Sustainability Center and Conservancy, as well as Sunfire Solutions.

“The township of Pomolong asked that their community center have energy, so that they would have lights, be able to show movies, and be able to provide some education in that facility, which right now would be a great challenge, because that township is off the grid,” said Wang. “There is no power, so that is where our senior design students come into play.”

The Burnett Honors College selected five teams of senior design students that are each working on separate projects for Pomolong. The projects focus on solar and wind power and power management and storage.

“We’ve been pulling knowledge from our previous three years of training to build the turbine, but we’re building a pictorial manual that will be provided to the township members so that they can understand how it works and be able to maintain it even when we’re not there,” said senior mechanical engineering student Kelly Cox, whose team is building a wind turbine.

The service-learning program will include senior design students and non-engineering honors students who applied for the program.

At the Swinburne Sustainability Center and Conservancy, students will rotate between projects, including an oral history project in which students will interview local healers about the plants they use as well as a facilities upgrade at Swinburne Elementary School. Students also will have the opportunity to work with captive cheetahs at the Nambiti Game Preserve.

The sustainable-energy projects are limited to senior design students but may require the efforts of the non-engineering students, as well.

“There probably will be a bit of manual labor involved in setting everything up that won’t require a lot of engineering knowledge or education, so I think when everyone pitches in, including the non-engineering students, we’ll be able to get our product delivered in a timely manner and have it work well,” said Michael Jones, another senior mechanical engineering student who is working on the wind turbine.

The group will leave for Johannesburg on May 8 and will stay at the SSCC for the duration of the trip. The area offers historic tours, water sports, mountain climbing and other activities. Students also will have the chance to take excursions to Johannesburg, Lesotho and the city of Durban, which is on the Indian Ocean.

“After many months of work and then putting all of that together on the ground in South Africa, I think it’s going to be a magical moment when they flip the switch and that light bulb comes on,” said Wang. “That really is the best way of experiencing another culture and other people– when you have a shared goal that everyone is working toward. This is not at all like an international experience in which you are watching the country through the windows of a bus.”

For more information about the study-abroad program, visit http://honors.ucf.edu/students/about-the-south-africa-program/.

But the trip, part of the President’s Scholars Program offered through the Burnett Honors College, proved to be more than a talking point on her résumé. She said it was an immersive experience that allowed her to broaden her global awareness and cultural sensitivity through a variety of academic and community service projects.

“I think the Honors College has a great emphasis on interdisciplinary learning and this program really embodied that in terms of combining the different disciplines in the projects we did,” said Crawford. “It was interdisciplinary studies in action.”

Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ President John C. Hitt initiated the The President’s Scholars Program in 2004 to provide a study abroad experience to Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝â€™s highest-achieving students. Initially, the program was focused on European culture and history. It took students on study abroad trips to areas such as Cambridge, England and Bergamo, Italy.

The program evolved into a two-week trip to St. Kitts and Nevis in which up to 12 honors students participate in an interdisciplinary approach to service-learning.

The trip followed five weeks of lectures at Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝ that focused on the environmental challenges small island nations face. The study abroad element challenged students to tackle issues head-on, considering policy solutions and recognizing the impact tourism and agriculture have on the environments of Caribbean nations.

This year’s scholars participated in a variety of activities, including snorkeling among sea urchins and attending the St. Kitts Music Festival.  The majority of the trip, however, was spent working on service-learning projects in conjunction with Clarence Fitzroy Bryant College in St. Kitts.

Kevin Meehan, an associate professor of English at Â鶹ӳ»­´«Ă˝, became involved with the program in 2008, the first time the President’s Scholars traveled to St. Kitts. In 2009, Meehan became a trip leader and combined his community contacts on the island with the professional contacts of the other trip leader Martin Dupuis, assistant dean of the Honors College.

“Between the two of us, I think we created a powerful combination of networks so that the students would have access to everything, from top to bottom,” Meehan said. “One of the strengths of this program is that we have built up really strong partnerships over there in the past four years. This opens up a lot of doors to collaboration and service projects.”

This summer’s trip divided students by major, challenging them to work on projects related to agribusiness, construction and public health.

During the second week, the students regrouped in Nevis to work together on an oral history documentary on local agriculture practices. Students interviewed farmers and fishermen, then compiled and presented their findings at a roundtable discussion with representatives of the Nevis Department of Agriculture.

“The trip benefited my leadership and academic skills, and it also gave me the opportunity to look into the government policies, public opinion, history, entertainment, and journalistic outlets of the islands,” said junior Jessica Gottsleben, whose team developed and hosted a four-day workshop for the new agribusiness department at Clarence Fitzroy Bryant College.

Meehan said he and Dupuis tailor the projects to meet the needs of their partners on the islands, creating work that is just as relevant for participating students as it is for the communities. This year, the program also offered full participation to four students from St. Kitts and Nevis.