Saturday, November 19, 2011

Higher Education Challenge Grants Program

The National Institute of Food and Agriculture, more commonly known as NIFA, is a United States federal government agency operating under the Department of Agriculture that's primarily answerable for consolidating all federally-funded agricultural studies.

The founding of NIFA was mandated under the Food, Conservation, and Energy Act of 2008 in an attempt to initiate and enable technological innovations that have the potential to enhance American agriculture, thus make it more productive, environmentally tolerable, and economically viable.

In accordance with this mission, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture has recently constituted the Higher Education Challenge Grants Program in an effort to boost and enhance the standard of formal, postsecondary-level agricultural sciences education.

The projects that will be funded under this programme are those that mean to work towards ensuring a competent, admissible, and varied system that will be favourable to the food and agricultural sciences industry.

In that context, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture also wants the suggested projects to achieve the following goals:

a) Significantly increase the quantity of students who are ready to pursue and finish a postsecondary degree in the food and agricultural sciences.

b) Stimulate and inspire studies in areas that will contribute to any of the NIFA Priority Areas.

c) Improve the quality of secondary and postsecondary instruction in an effort to help achieve the present and future needs of national food and agricultural sciences offices.

In addition, NIFA has stipulated that all of the projects that'll be funded under this programme should focus on improving the standard of educational instruction in the postsecondary education system, which may hopefully result in the recruitment of a larger number of qualified and diverse graduates.

In order to financially support these projects, NIFA is set to administer a total funding amount of $4,770,000 to multiple grant awardees.

The institutions and setups who will be judged eligible to submit an application under the Higher Education Challenge Grants Program are the following:

a) US public or private nonprofit colleges and universities that are providing a baccalaureate or first professional degree in one discipline or area of the food and agricultural sciences;

b) Land-grant schools and universities

c) Universities and schools who are having significant minority enrollments as well as sufficient capacity to carry out the teaching of food and agricultural sciences;

d) Any other college & university who manifest a credible capacity to do the teaching of food and agricultural sciences.

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