Awards

1. Nov. 7, 2025: Academic Success Partner of the Game
   • During a UCF football home game, the university honors a faculty member who exemplifies excellence and dedication in their teaching and has a significant impact on student-athletes. This is a student-nominated award.
2. Apr 10, 2025: Faculty that send more graduate or undergraduate students to conferences
   • This award is presented to a faculty member who sends more graduate or undergraduate students to conferences.
3. 2024: Honorable Mention for Dziuban Award for Excellence in Online Teaching
4. 2024: Inclusive Design Professional Development Award by the College of Sciences. This award recognizes your commitment to implementing inclusive best practices in your classroom and your achievement in earning the COS Inclusive Design Badge.
5. 2024: Awarded Excellence in Instructional and Teaching Practice by the Online Learning Consortium.
   • This award is presented to an individual who has shown effective practices in online and/or blended teaching effectiveness with documented impact on equity, learning effectiveness, and student outcome achievement
6. Apr 22, 2024: College of Science Research Dissemination and Travel (DT) Awards
   • The College of Sciences presents two award opportunities for faculty, the Research Dissemination and Travel (DT) Awards. The overall goal of this award program is to support activities that allow faculty to achieve prominence in graduate study and research while increasing UCF’s national and international recognition.
7. Feb 2024, 2023, 2022, and 2021: Recognized for using Open Educational Resources (OER)
   • This event also recognizes faculty who used open educational resources (OER) and offered students a zero-cost course materials experience during the previous calendar year. OER is a great way to reduce the cost of instructional materials by using publicly available resources, such as OpenStax, or allowing faculty members to create their own open resources for students and colleagues to access.
8. Feb 2024, 2023, 2022, and 2021: UCF Faculty recognition for First Day®
   • The First Day® program allows faculty members to work with commercial publishers and other for-profit entities to set an agreement with Barnes & Noble to offer discounted pricing on their course materials. Students may choose to “opt-in” to receive their course materials at the discounted price in their Webcourses@UCF course before the Drop/Add period each semester. Faculty participating in the First Day® program during the previous calendar year are recognized during the event.
9. Apr 13^th, 2023: Successful Course Design or Transformation
   • Faculty representing every area in the College of Sciences were honored for their commitment to excellence at the Spring 2023 Faculty Recognition Event. https://sciences.ucf.edu/news/faculty-recognized-excellence-instruction-mentoring/
10. Apr 6^th, 2023: Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching
    • The In-Unit Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching Award recognizes outstanding undergraduate-level teaching.
11. Feb 2023: Award 2023 AIM High Impact Individual Award Recipients
    • The AIM High Impact Award recognizes an individual or a group of individuals who have made a significant impact and commendable efforts toward affordable instructional materials. The award guidelines are flexible to equally recognize faculty from across the university who teach various levels and class sizes.
12. Apr 7, 2022: Outstanding Performance in Service to the Chemistry Department
    • This award is from the Department of Chemistry to recognize a Faculty member’s service to the department that was impactful to the University
13. Apr 7, 2022: Outstanding Performance in Professional Development
    • This award is from the Department of Chemistry to recognize a Lecturer who pursued professional development and applied the skills obtained to improve teaching at department, college, and university levels.
14. Mar 2022: 2021-2022 Undergraduate Research Mentor of the Year
    • This award is sponsored by the Office of Undergraduate Research and the Student Undergraduate Research Council (SURC). It is designed to honor outstanding faculty mentors supporting undergraduate research across the UCF campus and within their research teams. Undergraduate students nominate for this award, and two students nominated me for this award.
15. Feb 2022: 2022 UCF Honorable mention for the Individual AIM Impact Award
    • The AIM High Impact Award recognizes an individual or a group of individuals who have made a significant impact and commendable efforts toward affordable instructional materials. The award guidelines are flexible to equally recognize faculty from across the university who teach various levels and class sizes.
16. Dec 2021: Volunteer Recognition for ACS Orlando Section
    • Recognized for my contribution to volunteering with the local ACS Orlando section

Publications

1. Bechard, C., Legron-Rodriguez, T., and ^‡Lapeyrouse, N. “Who Am I as a Future Professional? Examining Professional Identity Status Across Demographics in STEMM Undergraduates.” Canadian Journal of Career Development. January 2026
2. Bechard, C., *Castillo, A., Legron-Rodriguez, T., and ^‡Lapeyrouse, N. A Comparative Study of Self-Confidence and Future Outlook among Forensic Science Students. Journal of Forensic Science Education. 2025, 7.
3. Paradiso, J., Ford, C., Lapeyrouse, N., & Lahcen, R. A. M. (2024, December 10). Leveraging Open and Adaptive Learning Technologies at Scale: Faculty Reflections on Course Design and Instructional Practices. OSF. https://doi.org/10.35542/osf.io/zp5dr [Pre-print Open access article]
4. Paradiso, J.R,, P, Bechard, C., and ^‡Lapeyrouse, N. Leveraging Deterministic Algorithms to Personalize Education and Enhance Student Success: The Story of an Engineered Learning Experience. Springer. HCI International 2025.
5. , A, Miller, J., Legron-Rodriguez, T., Paradiso, J.R, and ^‡Lapeyrouse, N.; “Student Perceptions of Adaptive Learning Modules for General Chemistry” Springer. HCI International June, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-60609-0_8
6. Chiu, C. Yestrebsky, N. Lapeyrouse (2023) Teaching Through The Pandemic: Evaluating Students’ Experience In An Online Introductory Geology Course, INTED2023 Proceedings, pp. 2564-2571. https://doi.org/10.21125/inted.2023.0716
7. Barbara Chiu*, and ^‡Nicole Lapeyrouse. “Student Experiences and Perceptions of Emergency Remote Teaching.” Advances in Online Chemistry Education. American Chemical Society, 2021. 123-134. DOI: 10.1021/bk-2021-1389.ch009
8. ^‡Nicole Lapeyrouse and Cherie Yestrebsky. “Adaptation and Assessment of a Gradual Release of Responsibility Model for a Large-Enrollment General Chemistry Course.” Enhancing Retention in Introductory Chemistry Courses: Teaching Practices and Assessments. American Chemical Society, 2019. 137-146.
9. Nicole Lapeyrouse, Muqiong Liu, Shengli Zou, Greg Booth, and ^‡Cherie L. Yestrebsky, “Remediation of Chlorinated Alkanes by Vitamin B12 and Zero-Valent Iron,” Journal of Chemistry, vol. 2019, Article ID 7565464, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1155/2019/7565464.

News

COS News Blog

Chemistry

New UCF Study Reveals Opportunities to Boost Confidence in Undergraduate Students 

The College of Sciences’ Department of Chemistry published new research showing how professional identity evolves through students’ academic journeys.   Written by: Emily Dougherty | Published:…

Additional News

1. Faculty Recognized for Excellence in Instruction, Mentoring – College of Sciences News (April 18, 2023)
2. Reducing the Choice Between a Textbook and Your Next Meal | University of Central Florida News (March 6, 2023)
3. Pegasus Innovation Lab Aim High Award Dr. Nicole Lapeyrouse (February 23, 2023)
4. Nicole Lapeyrouse [Champion of Open – Chemistry] (February 4, 2021)
5. Fall ’18 Ph.D. Graduates Honored At Reception – College of Sciences News – College of Sciences News (December 20, 2018)