For Olympic speed skaters and University of Florida graduate Erin Jackson, the path to gold did not wind through The Swamp.
The UF materials science graduate is the first Black woman to win a gold medal in an individual event at the Winter Games. She came within milliseconds of medaling at the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan and even carried the flag for Team USA during the opening ceremony. She remains one of America’s most celebrated athletes.
But reaching the top of the Olympic podium came with sacrifices, especially during her years of studying at UF and then racing back to her native Ocala for training. She did not attend football games, never mind tailgate parties.
“I saw one volleyball game my first year there because one of my friends from high school, her sister, was playing,” Jackson said from her home in Salt Lake City, her cats Reggie and Bradley nearby.
Jackson is a proud Gator who still keeps in touch with her engineering professors. She adores UF and returned in 2023 — a year after winning a gold medal — to deliver a commencement address in The Swamp.
And while Jackson wishes she had a more traditional college experience, she is not done with classes yet. She developed an interest in prosthetics while at UF and now hopes to make them better. So she is back in college and exercising those problem-solving skills honed at the Herbert Wertheim College of Engineering.
She is working toward a degree in kinesiology.
Here, the MSE graduate talks about her time at UF, the Olympics and her continuing education.
What was it like carrying the American flag at the opening ceremony in Milan?
Amazing. Just finding out that I had been named the flag bearer was a really nice surprise. I was up against some really big legends in their sports. They let my coach deliver the good news at practice, so I got to share that moment with my teammates, which was really cool.
Carrying the flag was a really, really surreal moment, just being in that huge arena, walking out and staring up at the flag the whole time, grinning ear to ear. You know, it was a really special time.
Was it hard to carry for that long?
No. Before we walked out, I was like, ‘Oh, this is kind of heavy. I feel like this might start to hurt my arms.’ But in the moment, I didn’t think about any of that. I was just locked in.
Did you have any time to enjoy UF?
If I could go back in time, I would have the real college experience, because I feel like I was just so busy. I was traveling around the country, around the world, so I was maxing out my schedule every semester, including the summers.
And I was still training multiple days a week, so I would find myself getting back on campus around 1:30 in the morning, then having to get up for an 8 a.m. class. It was kind of a whirlwind, but I had a blast.
The campus is beautiful, all the bricks and everything. I had a scooter while I was there, so I got to zip around.
Why did you major in engineering?
My dad is a mechanic. He worked on the big trucks in the Army, and then he built firetrucks pretty much my whole life.
I feel like I’ve always had that technical mindset, always analytical. I loved math and science, and when I was younger, I always wanted to be an astronaut. As I got older, I morphed into wanting to build the things that astronauts use.
Going to the EMIT program at Forest High School [Engineering and Manufacturing Institute of Technology] in Ocala gave me the opportunity to explore the different types of engineering and see what they’re all about. I knew I didn’t want to do electrical, so that kind of led me to materials science, and I feel like it’s so broad, but so focused at the same time. I felt like it was a really cool field.
If you became an engineer, what would you do?
When I was in my junior year at UF, I did this project on prosthetics. I’ve always found prosthetics really interesting. And it’s come full circle now that I’m part of the Olympics and Paralympic movement, so I get to see a lot of the Paralympic athletes and hear what they go through and what they’re experiencing.
And I just feel like their prosthetic devices should be so much more advanced than they are right now; there should be a way to make these things easier for them, and I would like to get back into that. I feel like my focus now would be more on biomechanics.
So there’s my engineering degree, and then I’ve also picked up a computer science degree here in Salt Lake. And I’m in the middle of a kinesiology degree.
What brought you into those classes?
I’m trying to get all the different pieces I’m missing to be good at biomechanics, so kinesiology gets me the bio side of it, and it’s also just really cool to take Kinesio while I’m an athlete, learning about all the things that I’m doing every day, basically.
What was it like doing UF’s commencement address?
Amazing. I loved just being back on campus, going to some of the old rooms.