Habitat’s trip to Miss. lends helping hand

Many UCF students spent their last week of break preparing to return to school, but a small group of them installed flooring for a Mississippi family in need.

The small group was part of 29 members of Habitat for Humanity at UCF who traveled to Biloxi, Miss. to participate in an alternative break program known as Collegiate Challenge.

In addition to the service they provided for the community, they were also the first group to test a smart phone application being developed by the Mixed Emerging Technology Integration Lab at UCF's Institute for Simulation and Training.

"I really didn't know what to expect because I knew we were going to Biloxi, which had been hit by Katrina," said senior mechanical engineering major Lee Smith. "So I didn't know if we were going to be working on refurbishing houses that'd been destroyed or building new houses."

Smith, who is also the vice president of UCF's chapter, decided to join last year after being approached during the club's "Act! Speak! Build! Week." Though he didn't join in time to go on last spring's Collegiate Challenge, he wanted to go because of all of the positive things he'd heard about it.

"I heard that it was a great bonding experience and a great way to get to know the people involved in Habitat," Smith said. "From Day One of the fall semester, I was raring to go on Collegiate Challenge."

Like the other members on the trip, Smith was able to test out Allogy, an Android application being developed by the METIL Lab that will allow students to work on their online courses and look into other educational interests with a smart phone.

This trip was the first time the application had been tested.

"Word for word, all the safety instructions we would need and everything we'd need to be aware of on the job site was presented," Smith said.

Galal Elsayed, one of the chapter's founders, served as the research coordinator for Allogy during the trip.

"People really enjoyed the fact they were able to use software on the go,"  Elsayed said.

Feedback from the questionnaire filled out by the participants indicated that they'd all recommend it to other students.

Colin Forward, one of the chapter's founders and the technical director for Allogy, was unable to attend this trip, but received plenty of constructive feedback from those who attended.

"Everyone really liked Allogy," said the senior computer science major. "We made sure that they were aware they could at some point eventually be used on tablets and not just mobile phones."

In addition to how the application was able to serve Habitat, Forward said the program would be of use to those in the military.

"Let's say you have a soldier who's in between tours and they need to do reading," Forward said. "We can use Allogy so that they can be introduced to the material beforehand and actually get to spend more time with their family."

One of the features that will work well for students is the ability to take notes on videos.

"You can actually stop a video you're watching, take a note and it'll pin it to the progress bar on the video so you can go back and review your notes when you watch the video again," Forward said.

Forward, who attended two other trips including one to Lafayette, Louis., said his favorite moment was working with one of the future homeowners who had beat breast cancer, became widowed and survived Hurricane Katrina.

"She was just the most happy-go-lucky, enthusiastic woman that took plenty of time to give us hugs and take pictures with us and tell us how much she appreciated the work that we were doing," Forward said.

Though he was unable to attend this trip, he said it's important that newer members have the opportunity to go.

"We do try and make sure that we have a lot of new members and young members that get to go on the trip because it's such a good recruitment opportunity and it really brings people back passionate about doing work for Habitat," he said.

Kaitlyn Jeanis, the president of the chapter, agreed.

"That's the kind of experience you're constantly getting while you're there," said the sophomore environmental engineering major. "People who may have been in and out of a few meetings come out of this trip so inspired and ready to give their time and effort to our chapter and the work that we do," said the sophomore environmental engineering major.

Even though the group was unable to work with the future homeowners on this trip, Jeanis felt everyone had a great experience.

"We were able to walk away feeling like we'd done a lot," Jeanis said. "It was just an incredible group of people, everyone got along and just made fantastic connections."