SOLVED!!!!! Loading a list of files from a folder as option names in a dropdown. So this was a really tough one. Several people helped with this one, and some people thought it wasn't possible to even do. Thanks to magoo, bill bogacz, and ubotsbiggestfan for help with getting this to work. This was several days of work to get this to function. I have included the code below because I wouldn't want others to have to go through the nightmare that was this problem!
ui html panel("<select name=\"dropdownoptions\" style=\"width: 200px;\" variable=\"#dropdownoptions\" fillwith=\"value\">