New Shakespeare theatre company at UWF offers words of comfort

Pensacola theater-goers greeted the news of Shakespeare coming to town like a tall glass of cool water on a hot August day. “The best comment I’ve heard was from someone who e-mailed and simply said, ‘What took you so long?!’said Kevin Kern, the Pensacola Shakespeare Company’s artistic director and UWF assistant professor of theater. The […]

UWF Shakespeare Summer Camp helps kids learn “to be”

It’s difficult not to steal a line from Shakespeare to describe a theater-themed summer camp – especially when teenage students in an improv class keep shouting the Bard’s words themselves. “To be or not to be,” repeats each student, one after another, emphatically and enthusiastically, and, well, theatrically. Under the direction of Shar Gabriel, actor […]

UWF plays major role in addressing oil spill impact

Since the day of the explosion on April 20 until last week, the Deep Horizon oil well gushed into the Gulf of Mexico. Now, a temporary cap continues to hold, but with limited success, oil seepage has been detected nearby on the ocean floor and a relief well is still under construction. As the crisis […]

New UWF partnership to help fuel UWF students’ medical school aspirations

Dreams of attending medical school will become much more possible through a new University of West Florida partnership with American University Antigua. Students completing a bachelor’s degree in biology, marine biology, most interdisciplinary sciences, chemistry and the post-baccalaureate pre-professional program will have another opportunity to apply for entrance into medical school at Antigua’s College of […]

UWF summer marine science camp teaches children about the gulf and oil Spill

A University of West Florida Explore Summer program is teaching elementary students all about marine biology as well as a lesson or two about the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico which is now impacting the very beaches many of the kids call home. Jennifer Edge, Explore Summer director at the Division of Continuing […]

UWF graduate students are key players in oil spill research

One day each week, Dane Smith, a University of West Florida graduate student pursuing a master’s degree in environmental science, loads up and heads south for the beach. But his truck isn’t carrying a surfboard: It’s filled with bottles, beakers and scientific equipment he’ll use this summer while collecting water samples from the Gulf of […]

UWF begins research on potential “invisible” victims of oil spill

A University of West Florida Environmental Studies assistant professor has started another oil spill research project in the wake of the explosion April 20 off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of Mexico. Matthew Schwartz said he and a graduate student will be sampling for dissolved organic carbon and dissolved organic nitrogen – a […]

UWF oil spill team ready to analyze water and sand samples

Researchers at the University of West Florida, led by Richard Snyder, director of the Center for Environmental Diagnostic and Bioremediation, are ready to start analyzing and releasing data after four weeks of collecting sand and water samples from around the Pensacola area. The difficulty in obtaining a sample of oil from the spill site, essential […]

UWF graduate student monitors Gulf Waters for oil-related changes

Facing a collection of Gulf-water-filled beakers in a University of West Florida lab, biology graduate student Melissa Overton explains her role with the UWF oil spill research mission. “I am looking at the bacterial community, basic microbe ecology, in the coastal waters off the beaches of Pensacola and Navarre,” said Overton. “Bacteria are the key […]

UWF Small Business Development Center assisting businesses in oil spill’s aftermath

Standing in the Casino Beach parking lot next to Pensacola Beach, University of West Florida President Judy Bense noted the lack of people there taking advantage of the area’s strongest tourism draw – its beautiful beaches. “Why aren’t people here? The beach is fine,” said Bense, as she accompanied State University System Chancellor Frank Brogan […]

UWF research associate readies lab for oil spill experiments

These days Fred Hileman, University of West Florida lecturer and analytical chemist, is busy conducting oil and water experiments at the university’s Center for Environmental Diagnostics and Bioremediation while he waits for real-life spill samples to come ashore in Pensacola. The April 20 BP oil spill off the coast of Louisiana in the Gulf of […]

UWF Environmental Studies instructor helps monitor Pensacola shoreline

Chasidy Hobbs, an environmental studies instructor at the University of West Florida since becoming a graduate teaching assistant in 2006, says she “loves having the opportunity to help students see the big picture and interconnectedness of our lives and the world around us.” As executive director of Emerald Coastkeeper of Pensacola, a non-profit member of […]