Documents released for UCF faculty member suspended for misconduct

Published: The Charge

Dr. Steven Berman, UCF psychology professor and Psy-Squared faculty advisor, was suspended for reported misconduct with students, according to university documents from Dec. 13, 2024 to Jan. 2, 2025. Berman has been a faculty advisor for Psi Chi, The International Honor Society in Psychology, for almost 23 years, according to UCF documents.  

Jan Perez

A UCF professor was suspended after reports of multiple instances of misconduct with students, according to a University Compliance and Ethics document that was publicly released on Feb. 5. The following information was gathered through the university documents.

UCF psychology professor Dr. Steven Berman was suspended without pay from Dec. 13, 2024 to Jan. 2, 2025. This suspension resulted from multiple accounts of Berman becoming inebriated with UCF students. According to the document, he is said to have inappropriately touched a female UCF student.

The Charge has reached out to Berman for comment and has yet to hear a response. UCF has also yet to release a statement regarding Berman’s employment status. 

Berman received a notice of suspension letter from Florian Jentsch, UCF professor and chair of the Psychology Department, in September following the documented incidents that include Berman drinking with UCF Psy-Squared graduate students. The Charge has also reached out to Jentsch for comment and has not received a response.

Berman is the faculty advisor for Psy-Squared, which is a registered student organization with the purpose of advancing graduate students in the field of clinical psychology. The organization gets together for conferences and organizes social events, such as group dinners, according to the report.

The club annually attends the Southeastern Psychological Association, or SEPA, conference. The most recent SEPA conference was in March 2024 in Orlando.

During the conference last year, Berman and a group of UCF students from the organization went to dinner at Carrabba’s Italian Grill, where “witnesses stated that Dr. Berman appeared inebriated during dinner,” according to the report.

Another witness said they recalled Berman asking an undergraduate student to drive him in his car to another bar. The witness said they saw the student and Berman leave dinner at the same time, but was unsure if the student drove Berman.

Berman said he didn’t recall asking a student to drive him and that after the dinner he went straight home.

The following day the students had agreed to meet in downtown Orlando to go barhopping. Before the full group was supposed to meet, a smaller group of UCF students went to one of the student's apartments to drink alcoholic beverages before going to downtown. Berman had also been in attendance at the apartment, drinking with them, the report said.

One student said Berman had “drank a shot with them,” according to the report. During the investigation, Berman admitted to taking the shot and also having a mixed drink while at the student's apartment. 

After drinking, Berman drove the "five or six students" from the apartment to downtown to meet up with the entire group. One of the students in the car said Berman "was driving erratically, and it was a little scary." Another stated Berman was driving in a bike lane, according to the document. 

When questioned by investigators, Berman said he did not hear any comments from the students regarding his driving. He also denied being intoxicated, according to the report.

When Berman and the students met up with the whole group downtown, witnesses stated he was “not sober the entire night.” One faculty member described him as inebriated, according to the report.     

Later on in the night, a student reported that Berman inappropriately touched her when he placed one hand on her lower back and the other just below her chest while speaking very closely to her, according to the report.

The student reported “feeling very violated and caged in,” according to the report. Another witness confirmed seeing it happen. 

Berman said "he could not recall this happening but that he would never do something like that," according to the document. 

According to the report, a witness mentioned Berman being picked up by his adult children from downtown. It is also mentioned that investigators found that Berman "unknowingly pressured at least one student to invite him to social events." 

"I organized the meet up and felt very pressured to invite Dr. Berman to join us," a student said, according to the report. "I felt pressured due to the precedence set last year...as he went out drinking with us and our second-years. The behavior was normalized, and Dr. Berman requested to participate multiple times, which led me to believe that I had no other choice but to invite him," the student said in the report.

As mentioned in the document, Berman showed similar behaviors during the New Orleans 2023 and Charleston 2022 SEPA conferences. Both times, he was said to have gone out to dinner with students while drinking alcohol with them during the conferences.

In his notice of suspension letter, Jentsch wrote that he placed restrictions on Berman while the investigation was ongoing in May. The restrictions were placed on his travel for UCF business purposes and having in-person interactions with students.