Featured Post from University of Florida

How a UF reading program is reaching classrooms worldwide

Mar 18, 2026

3 min

For more than 25 years, Holly Lane, Ph.D., has been laser-focused on a global educational goal: to ensure that students worldwide have access to information about reading. Her passion project, known as the University of Florida Literacy Institute, or UFLI, has already improved the literacy skills of more than 10 million children.

What began as a modest classroom tool now has a Facebook community of over 273,000 members; 18 million online toolbox views; and more than 500,000 instructional manuals in classrooms. And as the UFLI brand gains traction, Lane continues to champion what the acronym means and why the program has been so life-changing.

“When you learn to read, you fly,” said Lane, who serves as the UFLI director and a professor of special education at UF.

UFLI is an ongoing effort by UF faculty and students to improve literacy outcomes for struggling students by addressing two key areas: reader development and teacher development. The program began in 1998 as a tutoring model for beginning readers working with Lane’s pre-service teachers. The idea was that, if teachers understood how to employ effective, evidence-based practices in a one-on-one tutoring session, they could transfer those skills to their small-group or classroom instruction. However, some teachers struggled to make that transition, so a dedicated small-group lesson model was created.

That foundation eventually expanded into a dyslexia support program and caught the attention of a surprising partner, best-selling author and philanthropist James Patterson. Known worldwide for his literacy advocacy and generous support of reading initiatives, Patterson has become a key benefactor for the program.

When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, a challenge turned into a breakthrough. UFLI started its Virtual Teaching Resource Hub and, in the first week, about 70,000 teachers visited the site and downloaded materials. The turning point came when a school in St. Augustine reached out to UFLI, asking for professional development.

“I said, ‘Well, what if we planned the lessons for you instead of teaching you how to plan these lessons?’” Lane said.

What followed was what Lane called her “accidental phonics program.”

“They ended the year with the best scores they'd ever seen, better than their pre-COVID scores, and that was unheard of,” Lane said.

That success led to an effective district-wide pilot in Alachua County with 21 elementary schools. UFLI leaders decided to publish the contents of the program and create a manual that individual teachers could purchase. This concept boomed, and the program even made waves overseas.

“Starting with the virtual teaching hub… we had a huge following in Perth and in Melbourne, and now we have an Australian edition of the manual,” Lane said. “We’ve been in every state and every Canadian province and territory, but we're also now in something like 60-some other countries.”

Patterson has continued his support by directing efforts toward expanding UFLI’s reach in Florida, aiming to bring the program to every district in the state. Looking ahead, Lane is especially excited about UFLI’s new technology.

“We're calling it our assessment and planning portal,” Lane said. “Teachers assess two skills a week, and they enter their data into this program and it spits out small-group lesson plans for the following week that target specific needs of their students.”

The data input system is highly advanced, requiring the teacher to simply hold up work in front of a webcam, and the system then reads the student handwriting and imports the data. The program’s structure also ensures that students apply new concepts daily and revisit them regularly.

But behind it all is a deeply connected community. For Lane, the success of UFLI boils down to people.

“We have an amazing team here,” Lane said. “If anything, that's my superpower, finding really good people who are really good humans but also really good at what they do.”

For more information about UFLI, visit ufli.education.ufl.edu.

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Holly Lane

Associate Professor | Director

Holly Lane leads the UF Literacy Institute, which works to improve literacy outcomes for students who struggle to learn to read and write.

Teacher PreparationReading and LiteracyPhonics

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Mar 17, 2026

2 min

Workplace jargon hurts employee morale, collaboration, study finds

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Mar 15, 2026

4 min

With lasers, smoke and a wind tunnel, UF helps federal agency investigate deadly Hurricane Maria

As Floridians brace for hurricanes amid the wild weather of 2025, some University of Florida researchers have their eyes on 2017’s Hurricane Maria, the deadly Category 4 storm that pummeled Puerto Rico. Engineering professor and natural hazards researcher Brian Phillips, Ph.D., is leading UF’s efforts in a Hurricane Maria investigation conducted by the National Institute of Standards and Technology, known as NIST. The goal is increased safety and resilience amid deadly conditions. Maria killed nearly 3,000 people and caused more than $90 billion in damage. Most of the island’s wind sensors and weather stations failed as the storm raged, leaving responders and investigators with few reliable weather measurements. What went wrong? Phillips and UF storm researchers are helping answer that question — and provide safety and structural recommendations — as part of NIST’s Hurricane Maria investigation. The full report will be released in 2026, but NIST recently published preliminary findings; some of the hazard and structural load data was derived from wind tunnel tests at UF's NHERI Experimental Facility in the Powell Family Structure and Materials Laboratory on UF’s East Campus in Gainesville. “Our wind tunnel has a strong reputation in the wind-engineering community for its unique flow control and measurement capabilities We worked with NIST to develop a test campaign to study the wind conditions Puerto Rico’s mountainous terrain and the resulting loads of critical infrastructure,” said Phillips, a civil and coastal engineering professor with UF’s Engineering School of Sustainable Infrastructure & Environment. “UF,” he added, “has one of the premier research wind tunnels in the country and it enables us to pursue impactful research like this.” As part of the NIST investigation, Phillips and his team created 1-to-3100 scale topographic models of regions in Puerto Rico — about 12 kilometers shrunk down to four meters, Phillips said. They set up those models in the wind tunnel and replicated wind flow over the topography. “These initial tests were designed to understand the influence of the complex topography had on the wind,” Phillips said. Flow was measured using velocity probes and particle image velocimetry (PIV). These topographic model tests were followed by 1-to-100 scale tests on models of two hospitals in Puerto Rico. In addition to surface pressure measurements, the team conducted qualitative flow visualization tests using smoke, lasers, and high-speed cameras. “The capabilities of the UF wind tunnel enabled us to investigate the hurricane winds at two different scales,” said NIST’s lead Hurricane Maria investigator, Joseph Main, “so we could measure how the winds were accelerated by Puerto Rico’s mountainous topography and then how those winds translated into loads on critical buildings.” Maria’s flooding blocked roads to hospitals and shelters. The hospitals themselves were heavily damaged by the storm, NIST reported. Reduced access to healthcare was a major factor in the death toll. “It's good to take a step back,” Phillips said about the overall investigation. “Researchers are approaching the disaster from multiple angles, including the better understanding of the hazard, the performance of critical infrastructure, public response and recovery. “This holistic approach is needed to capture the complete picture and maximize what we can learn from the event. UF's primary contribution was understanding the hurricane wind field and the resulting structural loads, which is a critical piece of that puzzle.” In finding infrastructure vulnerabilities, researchers contend the goal is integrating their findings into design standards for Puerto Rico’s unique topography and building codes. The findings also could be valuable to other storm-prone regions with complex topography. NIST launched the investigation in 2018, noting Hurricane Maria “set off a cascade of building and infrastructure failures across Puerto Rico that had lasting impacts on society, including health care, business and education.” “Our goal is to learn from that event to recommend improvements to building codes, standards and practices that will make communities more resilient to hurricanes and other hazards, not just in Puerto Rico but across the United States,” Main said. The complete report is scheduled to be released in 2026, and NIST noted some findings may change before its release. But in July, NIST released some preliminary findings. They include: Peak wind speeds over flat terrain reached 140 mph. They accelerated to over 200 mph in some areas due to the steep hills and mountains. The mountains also intensified the rainfall, which reached 30 inches in some areas. 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Mar 12, 2026

3 min

Reading for pleasure in free fall: New study finds 40% drop over two decades

A sweeping new study from the University of Florida and University College London has found that daily reading for pleasure in the United States has declined by more than 40% over the last 20 years — raising urgent questions about the cultural, educational and health consequences of a nation reading less. Published today in the journal iScience, the study analyzed data from over 236,000 Americans who participated in the American Time Use Survey between 2003 and 2023. The findings suggest a fundamental cultural shift: fewer people are carving out time in their day to read for enjoyment. “This is not just a small dip — it’s a sustained, steady decline of about 3% per year,” said Jill Sonke, Ph.D., director of research initiatives at the UF Center for Arts in Medicine and co-director of the EpiArts Lab, a National Endowment for the Arts research lab at UF in partnership with University College London. “It’s significant, and it’s deeply concerning.” Who’s reading and who isn’t The decline wasn’t evenly spread across the population. Researchers found steeper drops among Black Americans than white Americans, people with lower income or educational attainment, and those in rural (versus metropolitan) areas — highlighting deepening disparities in reading access and habits. “While people with higher education levels and women are still more likely to read, even among these groups, we’re seeing shifts,” said Jessica Bone, Ph.D., senior research fellow in statistics and epidemiology at University College London. “And among those who do read, the time spent reading has increased slightly, which may suggest a polarization, where some people are reading more while many have stopped reading altogether.” The researchers also noted some more promising findings, including that reading with children did not change over the last 20 years. However, reading with children was a lot less common than reading for pleasure, which is concerning given that this activity is tied to early literacy development, academic success and family bonding, Bone said. Why it matters Reading for pleasure has long been recognized not just as a tool for education, but as a means of supporting mental health, empathy, creativity and lifelong learning. The EpiArts Lab, which uses large data sets to examine links between the arts and health, has previously identified clear associations between creative engagement and well-being. “Reading has historically been a low-barrier, high-impact way to engage creatively and improve quality of life,” Sonke said. “When we lose one of the simplest tools in our public health toolkit, it’s a serious loss.” The American Time Use Survey offers a unique window into these trends. “We’re working with incredibly detailed data about how people spend their days,” Bone said. “And because it’s a representative sample of U.S. residents in private households, we can look not just at the national trend, but at how it plays out across different communities.” Why are Americans reading less? While causes were not part of the study, the researchers point to multiple potential factors, including the rise of digital media, growing economic pressures, shrinking leisure time and uneven access to books and libraries. “Our digital culture is certainly part of the story,” Sonke said. “But there are also structural issues — limited access to reading materials, economic insecurity and a national decline in leisure time. If you’re working multiple jobs or dealing with transportation barriers in a rural area, a trip to the library may just not be feasible.” What can be done? The study’s authors say that interventions could help slow or reverse the trend, but they need to be strategic. “Reading with children is one of the most promising avenues,” said Daisy Fancourt, Ph.D., a professor of psychology and epidemiology at University College London and co-director of the EpiArts Lab. “It supports not only language and literacy, but empathy, social bonding, emotional development and school readiness.” Bone added that creating more community-centered reading opportunities could also help: “Ideally, we’d make local libraries more accessible and attractive, encourage book groups, and make reading a more social and supported activity — not just something done in isolation.” The study underscores the importance of valuing and protecting access to the arts — not only as a matter of culture, but as a matter of public health. “Reading has always been one of the more accessible ways to support well-being,” Fancourt said. “To see this kind of decline is concerning because the research is clear: reading is a vital health-enhancing behavior for every group within society, with benefits across the life-course.”