Day 3: Opportunities for Specific Applicant Groups | FY24 Grants Assistance Workshop

Welcome to the third day of the NIFA Grant Support Technical Assistance Workshop. My name is Ahlishia Shipley and I serve as the Capacity Program Leader in the Office of Director here at NIFA. Just a quick note, so everyone aware is aware, this session is being recorded and will be accessible to the public on our website and we are just going to pop that link in the chat. So Please remember to submit all questions in writing through the chat box. We will have a question and answer session at the

end of today's presentations. Thank you for joining us to learn about writing grant applications for our funding opportunities and effectively managing awards with NIFA. To kick us off today, we have Dr. Kevin Kephart, who serves as our Deputy Director for the Institute of Bioenergy, Climate and Environment. Dr. Kephart will be providing opening remarks. And now the floor is yours. Thank you very much, Ahlishia. It's a pleasure to be here and I want to welcome everybody and thank you for puttin

g some time into visiting with us here at NIFA. It's a real pleasure for us to inform you and and try to and make you aware of the many opportunities that we have at USDA NIFA to support your work. And so we're pleased to do that and we want to do more than just have a an occasional webinar in this regard. We really enjoy developing relationships with our stakeholders and partners that that are out there. Today's webinar is a little bit different than yesterday and I'll kind of go through some o

f the list in that regard. But first I want to give some thanks to our folks here at NIFA for organizing this week. It's a lot of work to develop the these webinars and I mean especially when I give thanks right away to Ahlishia, she'll be she'll be moderating and and coordinating today's webinar. Thank you, Ahlishia. Danielle Farley's been involved in this, Lynn Elliston- Gittings as well. Thank you. And our AFRI team, our NIFA learning and development team Neerja and Suresh are on. So thank y

ou all for for doing this. It's very important for us as as an agency and and this is helpful to our folks that are interested in applying for our funding opportunities. So I'll just kind of briefly real quickly go through the lineup for today's webinar. We'll begin with a conversation about AFRI. Now there was a lot of attention put into AFRI yesterday, but today we really want to focus on opportunities for new investigators, people that are in early stages of their career and how we might be

able to provide support for you and getting your your career established. Secondly, programs that are focused on educational institutions, then the third session will be on minority serving institutions including tribal colleges and universities. So that.. that's an area that that we are very active in. The next one is on small businesses and how we support early stage development of technologies and innovations. That's in my institute. I'm very happy about that and we have some folks on board

that that will cover that area. And then finally we'll be talking about how we can support projects in community organizations and with NGOs. And so that that's going to be our lineup and there will be some opportunity at the end for questions and answers as well. So with that, I think we better get going. I'll hand it back over to Ahlishia. And again, thanks everybody for joining us today. Thank you so much, Dr. Kephart, for your warm welcoming remarks for what is shaping up to be a wonderful W

ednesday. The theme for today's workshops is opportunities for selective NIFA applicant groups. And so first up, we're going to cover opportunities for new investigators in the agriculture food and research initiative, our AFRI, including eligibility and other considerations. And I'm going to hand the the floor to Mark Mirando. Thank you, Mark. Thank you, Ahlishia. So as Ahlishia indicated, the next this first presentation will focus on new investigators in the agriculture and food Research init

iative and this is the only program within this where we have a specific legislative authority and legislative mandate to fund early career investigators and that is what the the authorization is for. We refer to this these as new investigators but the focus is really on early career investigators and the opportunities in the agriculture and Food Research initiative. Next slide please. So this slide lists the abbreviations you'll hear in this presentation, including AFRI, which is stands for our

agriculture and food research initiative or our agency's largest competitive grants program. PD is project director. You'll probably hear that multiple times, not just in this presentation, but in subsequent presentations. That is the term we use for the investigators because they may be leading projects that are research focused or extension focused and not just investigating research. A new investigator is the term we use for an eligibility status to apply for new investigative grants in the

AFRI program and then pre and post doc is refers to those that have received a fellowship and finally the Food and Agricultural Science Enhancement opportunity or FASE. It covers a whole suite of specific types of grants meant to strengthen investigators and the institutions abilities to be compete for competitive grants and this includes the phase grants include new investigators. Next slide please. So want to start by discussing who is a PD and or project director on grants and then especially

how they're eligible for new investigator grants at NIFA. So First off, when we're talking about new investigators, the eligibility rules apply only to the project director, the primary applicant and their recipient institution. So the PD project director, that's primary applicant or the lead person on the application. We do not have multiple PDS on grants like some agencies. We have a single PD and then anybody else on the grant is either a Co project director, Co PI, or a collaborator or a te

chnical consultant. So all the eligibility rules apply only to the project director. The eligibility rules for AFRI grants and for a lot of other our programs vary by grant type and project type. And there's a little subtlety to the eligibility rules for the two types of new investigator grants and the PD's institution. If it's funded, the PD's institution actually receives the funds, not the primary. Not it does... The funds don't go to the project director, they go to the director's institutio

n. So there's no citizenship eligibility restrictions for new investigators in this regard. And then if there are Co PDS on the grant or or collaborators and they're receiving sub awards, then the PD's institution down there on the bottom middle would then disperse any sub award funding to the Co PD institutions. Next slide please. So the rules for for eligibility are of new investigators or early career investigators are laid out in the legislative authorization for AFRI. So Congress has author

ized AFRI and they have specified certain eligibility including those for early career or new investigators. So the first thing on the left there there is the criteria is, is within the first five years of their career track position and we'll talk about what a career track is. So down there in the middle, it says career track is not necessarily equal to tenure track. So we'll talk more about what a career track means to us. And then new investigators must have a limited scientific, limited reco

rd of scientific publications. And so that's always a question of how many is limited. So NIFA has set that set those numbers ourselves and we've we've set the bar fairly high. So fewer than 75 total publications and fewer than 25 publications as first or corresponding author. So we've used those numbers because that captures most people in their first year, first five years of a career track positions. And so this was usually not limiting them. And then the last criteria over here on the right

in in blue, in the blue background is they cannot have had previous federal funding for competitive research grants other than a pre or postdoctoral fellowship. So having one of those does not disqualify a new investigator that is within their first five years of their career track position. And they are allowed under certain circumstances to have a seed grant or or equivalent from either NIFA or another agents. So again, down below it says competitive research grant funding only. So if it's non

competitive, it doesn't. It's not counted in eligibility. And if it's a teaching grant or an education, an education grant or an extension grant, it's not counted against eligibility. So again, the purpose is to support early career development. So it doesn't mean that everybody who's never applied to AFRI is a new investigator. It's they really need to be early career individuals that meet these eligibility criteria. And so career track is a career path at one or more institutions, it's not at

a single institution. And as I said previously, new investigator grants are only available in AFRI. So other things to consider down here on the lower left are that new investigator project directors, they may include Co project directors that are not new investigators that are more seniors. So that doesn't disqualify or count against the eligibility, and so they may include established applicants who do not who do not meet the qualifications restrictions. An established applicant is any projec

t director who does not meet the new investigative qualifications or restrictions. Next slide please. So the what is a career track is always a little bit confusing. So the time this five year eligibility clock that we call it doesn't necessarily begin from the time you get your degree or the time you finish a postdoctoral fellowship. Next slide please. The career track begins with the applicant's first position where the at an institution where they of employment where that institution allows t

hem to apply for grants as a project director. Whether or not you actually apply is irrelevant. It's when you first start that position in which you would be allowed to apply. That's when the five year clock starts. So this would include tenure track positions at academic institutions. It may include non tenure track positions such as research assistant professor at an academic institution. It would include career or career conditional appointment in federal jobs positions at for profit or non p

rofit institutions if you're allowed to apply for grants. And so your first institution may be your own company if you're self-employed. So so all of these would be considered career track and start to tenure clock. So over here on the right we say that most institutions do not allow postdoctoral scholars to submit as a project director except for a fellowship grant. That's a general rule and that's an institutional rule, not a NIFA rule. So postdoc is typically considered as training by NIFA an

d not counted as part of a career track. However, if you do apply as a postdoc, if you work it out with your institution and they allow you to apply as a postdoc, then your five year clock begins. It does and it does not pause for that. Individuals do not qualify as a new investigator if they had a successful career and extensive publication record and soft money positions in academia for success in industry or overseas. These are for early career individuals. Next slide please. So as I said pre

viously, the new five year new investigator clock starts with the first job when you are eligible to apply or when you first apply, whichever comes first. So there's no reset or pause in the clock. Whether you transition out of your current position or change institutions or or any other reason or a field change, once the new investigator clock starts, that's what what we go by. So whether you apply or not in your first career track position, if your institution allows you to apply as a project

director, that is when the new investigator clock starts when you begin that position. So for example, if you had a teaching position and you could have applied for primarily a teaching position and could have applied for research grants and had facilities to do so, you were eligible and you're are in a career track position. Next slide please. So some things that I mentioned previously or may not have mentioned that do not count against new investigator eligibility or pre and postdoctoral fello

wships. So if you have had one or a pre and a postdoctoral fellowship that does not count against eligibility. If you have an AFRI seed grant or equivalent that would not account against new.. part of new investigator eligibility and I'll come back to that in in a bit. Other federal grants, so from other federal agencies that are equivalent to an AFRI seed grant in.. in size and scope or anything. Any small research grants, so non research grants or teaching grants for example, those are not cou

nted against your eligibility. And then any awards grants received as Co project director or collaborator even if you've received a sub award on that grant, those do not count against your eligibility. It's grants received as PD that are looked at for eligibility. So those that are those grants that count against new investigative eligibility are all, all federal Competitive Research grants, including those from NIFA or other funding agencies, All of those listed above. So and then any and all a

wards received as Project Director that are not listed above. OK, next slide please. So being a new investigator does not mean a lack of expertise. So don't be thinking that when you compete for new investigator grants against more senior colleagues that you're going to be viewed as not having expertise. If you have it on your CV. It only means the lack of extensive experience. So that's what that means. But again, this is a competition and new investigators compete for these grants along with o

ther investigate other new investigators and other investigators. So I'm going to talk to you about two types of new investigator grants we have and one is a new investigator seed grant and the other is a new investigator standard grant. So lack of preliminary data is acceptable for seed grants. So I'll talk about that. I'll repeat that later on. But the new investigator must make the case for the knowledge gap in the field to justify the proposed project. So you don't have to have preliminary d

ata, but you have to provide a rationale for a seed grant. And then we also have new investigator standard grants. Next slide please. So new new investigative grants overall fall into two categories based on the strengthening status of their institution of employment. So we have new investigative grants for non strengthening institutions and these are new investigative seed grants and new investigator standard grants. And so then we also have new investigators seed grants that are strengthening

and new investigators standard grants that are strengthening. So we have these same two types of grants for new investigators that from strengthening eligible institutions and the difference there as indicated over on the right in the blue background is that there's two funding sources for non strengthening new investigative grants from non strengthening institutions. We only have regular program funds. However, at the further down, it says that new investigative grants from strengthening eligib

le institutions, they can compete for the regular program funds as well as funds that are set aside for strengthening eligible institutions. So new investigators have a benefit. New investigators from strengthening eligible institution have a double benefit. Next slide please. So focusing on the new investigator grants from non strengthening institutions and I'll talk about what's a strengthening institution, eligible institution in a minute, but from the non strengthening institutions, next sli

de please. So the PD must meet all the other eligibility criteria for application to AFRI plus a new investigator status which is a bonus, which is an added bonus. So and if they meet the eligibility criteria and they meet the eligibility as a new investigator, then there are 2 opportunities available. Two types of grants, New investigator seed grants on the left with the the beige background and new investigator standard grants on the right. So new investigator seed grants are for up to $300,00

0 in total cost for two years. This is where you cannot have had a previous seed grant, Competitive Research Seed Grant, or equivalent from NIFA or another agency. If you had a seed grant, it, it excludes your eligibility for a new Investigative Seed Grant, and then you must apply for New Investigative Standard Grant instead. But if you haven't had a seed grant and are a new investigator, you can apply for a seed grant. You can only submit one seed grant in a given year. So you can't submit more

than one to even to different programs, and they're different seed grants. You also can only be PD or Co PD on only one seed grant application per year. So if you get at if you're going to submit a seed grant and get asked to be Co PD on someone else's seed grant, then you'll have to make the decision what you're going to do. OK, so new Investigative Seed Grants can only get one of them. But if you get a new Investigative Seed Grant, you can then you're still eligible to receive a new Investiga

tor Standard Grant. So as I as in the first bullet, under new Investigative Standard Grant, no competitive federal research grants except pre or Postdoctoral Fellowships or Seed grants or Seed grant equivalent you can apply even if you've received a new investigator seed grant from NIFA. So this grant you receive the grant over here on the left. You can still apply for one over here on the right. So seed grants to non strengthening institutions are only available to new investigators. So only ne

w investigators can apply for seed grants if they're at non strengthening eligible institutions. And I'll talk about what's non strengthening and what's strengthening as well as a funding advantage in the next slide. And again over here in this if you could back up in this olive background, new Investigator can only apply for one seed grant and one new investigator can apply for one seed grant and apply for a standard grant in the same program. But the projects differ. So you can apply for a see

d grant and a standard grant at the same time. I'm going to tell you why you should not later on next slide. So for new investigator seed grants, you compete only against other seed grant applications and seed grant applications of any type do not require preliminary data. So preliminary data is a requirement for standard grants but not for seed grants. OK, so that's some of the advantage is the competition and then not requiring preliminary data and for standard grants, for new investigators st

andard grants, if you're ranked above the funding line, then you get funded. So the funding line is where we is the line above which we fund the grants and below which we're running out of money. So if you're ranked above the funding line, then you get funded as a new investigator. If you're ranked below the funding line, we can we can still fund you as a new investigator. So we program leaders at NIFA are encouraged in AFRI to fund new investigators below the funding line to support the next ge

neration to sign. So you have a second bite at the apple for these new investigator grants. So that's where the additional benefit comes in. And finally, NIFA program staff working on AFRI, as I said are expected to fund new investigator grants, both seed grants and standard grants below the funding line and this is important to us because we feel it's important to support the next generation of agriculture and food scientists. Next slide please. So if you're at a non strengthening institution a

nd I know I've.. I'm delaying what's strengthening and non strengthening but I will get to that. There is this project type and grant type form that you would check. So non strengthening institution you would check the new investigator box actually I believe you got to have to check the food and agricultural science enhancement FASE grant box above it. Then you check the new investigator box and then you would and that would be for standard grants. And then if you are applying for seed grant, yo

u check the seed grant box down here as well. So new investigator standard grants would check the FASE and the new investigator, new investigator seed grant would check the phase box, the new investigator box and the seed grant box. Next slide, please. So if you're at strengthening institutions, strengthening eligible institutions, again, new investigator seed grants compete only against other seed grant applications. You compete for program funds and strengthening funds and seed grant applicati

ons still do not require preliminary data. So there's the additional advantage of competing for the extra pool of strengthening funds, from strengthening eligible institutions and for new investigator standard grants. Again, from strengthening institutions. If you're ranked above the funding line, then you're funded with our regular program funds, so you compete for program funds and strengthening funds. So if you're below the funding line, you can get funded with the strengthening funds. Above

the funding line, you compete for program funds. Below the funding line, you compete for strengthening funds. So again, you get a second bite at the apple. Next slide please. So for strengthening institutions, new investigators would mark the FASE box, the new investigator box, the strengthening box and either the seed or the strengthening standard depending on which of those they are applying for. So if it's a seed grant, you'd mark the one over over there and if it's the if it's a strength, i

f it's a standard new investigator standard, you'd also mark the strengthening standard because you're a new investigator standard, but you're also a strengthening standard. So you qualify for both of those and get both of those advantage. Next slide please. OK, so the preliminary data requirement of new investigator seed grants and versus new investigator standard clients are shown on this slide because one goal of seed grant is to collect preliminary data to support a future standard grant app

lication to AFRI. Seed grants do not require preliminary data in the and that's listed in the review criteria, and the reviewers are told that. However, you still need to provide strong justification and a strong rationale, and that may be information in the literature or unrelated information to make the need for the work compelling and convince the reviewers over there on the right. For standard grant applications, the quality and the rigor of preliminary data are important, so these are stand

ard grant applications in all respects. It's just that you get a little bit of an advantage in funding by being a new investigator. So their new investigator grant applications are standard grant applications in all respects they are, and they are reviewed with all the other standard grain applications from experience, even from experience or more senior applicants. And I will say that some reviewers depending on discipline and panel and the culture of the discipline may sometimes be less criti

cal of the extents, the amount of preliminary data, my personal experience in 23 years with NIFA and 10 years as a faculty member are the the ones that are most lenient on new investigators are the are the most experienced reviewers. The senior reviewers tend to cut the new investigators or break the motion. Next slide, please. OK. Before I discuss this, let me talk about what's strengthening or not. So strengthening eligible institutions, I spent a lot of time on that and I realize now that we

don't have slides on that because we covered it yesterday. Strengthening eligible institutions. Are those in that are minority serving institutions, That is, they have greater than 50% minority enrollment of all their students and are not among the most successful institutions for receiving federal research funding. So minority serving institutions with limited success, small to mid size institutions. So small to mid size institutions are those with 17 1/2 thousand total students, 17 1/2 thousa

nd or fewer total students, again with limited institutional success at receiving federal grants for science and engineering. So those two and the third category of strengthening is EPSCoR. it all institutions in EPSCoR States and and institutions in EPSCoR states that stands for established program for stimulating competitive research EPSCoR. So NIFA has its own EPSCoR program and EPSCoR state list and EPSCoR state calculation. And every year we calculate the EPSCoR States and we publish those

in the RFA. So the Grant types document in the RFA that describes the new investigator grants also describes the strengthening types of grants and also includes the EPSCoR list. So that is the strengthening eligibility. So the question comes up about submitting multiple applications. We have no rules against submitting multiple applications other than one seed grant per year, and you may submit multiple applications to the same or different programs in the same year if projects are different. Ho

wever, I always advise applicants against doing this, and these are the reasons our AFRI programs are highly competitive. Typically our success rates might be on the order of 10 to 15% chance of funding. But you have a finite amount of time to write each application, so the time that you have available to write the applications will be divided among the applications you submit. If you submit only one application, then you can spend more time to make that a better application. And finally, submi

tting multiple applications is likely to reduce the quality of each application because you're not putting the time into it. And what I've seen over and over again is a success, is dependent on quality of applications submitted, not the number of applications. So my own personal experience in managing and Co-leading about 60 different grant panels is with success rates of about 10 to 15% people that submit 2 program, 2 grant proposals at the same time, the success rate is about 1 to 2%. That's v

ery rarely have I seen anybody get funded when they submit two applications to the same program or different programs at the same time. Now, once you submit a proposal to 1 program, if you plan to then start working on another probe proposal for submission four or five months later or even 3 months later, that's a whole different story. But submitting multiple proposals at the same time to the same or different programs is not advisable. Next slide please, so you can read if you want to learn mo

re about how we review proposals you can read about. Our peer review process at this link here. I believe somebody's going to put it in the chat for you, but these slides will be available. You can volunteer to serve on review panels and that's the best way to learn. But our review process is transparent. We want people to know how.. how we do things. You can volunteer to serve on review panels. Click on this link to our peer review system and under Panelist Recruitment, there is a volunteer lin

k and you can click on that and fill it out. I will say and it and it's stated above here, in this peer review process description, that NIFA does not allow applicants to serve on review panels in which they have an application pending for review during that fiscal year. So if you're submitting an application to a program, we don't let you serve on that review panel. So every.. all.. the another way of looking at this is everybody serving on the review panel has no vested interest in any of the

proposals. They haven't submitted it as PD, they haven't submitted them as Co PD. They haven't submitted them as a collaborator on any of those proposals. So we have no conflict of interest from that standpoint. So we keep it very clean there. Next slide. So this is the AFRI coordination team. We have an e-mail address its afri@usda.gov Leland Dixon is our AFRI coordinator. Keesha Corbin is our AFRI program specialist. We have another vacancy. Normally we have two AFRI program specialist, but Ke

esha right now is doing the work of two people actually her in Lelan. And then the AFRI science coordinators are Mallory Koenigs and me. So that is all I have, I believe. Next slide please. OK. We ask that you put your questions in the Q and A box. We do have a new Investigator frequently Asked Questions page and I'm going to put that in in the chat. So you'll have that link. So this is an AFRI New Investigator Frequently Asked Questions page. Thank you. Well, thank you so much, Dr. Mirando for

that presentation. I see that you have received some questions and I know you'll be back later on to answer some of those questions in the Q&A and some of our team I see are putting responses in for those questions. So building on yesterday's panel, we'll be utilizing case studies to illustrate the broad scope of four more of NIFA's program topic areas. The projects highlighted will be a blend of AFRI and non AFRI programs. Now if you're a grantee, you may or may not see your project highlighted

. Given the time limits and the need for variability, we can only discuss a few projects. The selected projects will illustrate the broad scope of the topics funded under this portfolio, the diversity of the institutions funded and the stakeholders served. We've also selected projects to help identify some of the information that you'll need to write a good project. For example, the different grant and project types, number of partners, the expected impacts including student involvement, publica

tions, and our stakeholder served. We won't read all the slides as you will find them accessible on your website, as many of you here with us today represent different disciplines and interests, so we'll avoid taking a deep dive into the science. If you need more information, the QR code on the slide will help you locate the report submitted by the project director and you can get the information you need. The purpose of highlighting these case studies is to really help illustrate the scope of t

he portfolio and help you write a strong application. Feel free to drop questions in the you have in the chat box. Our first program topic will be opportunities for educational institutions and Dr. Peter Motavalli and Mr. Chris Green will be presenting on that and I'll pass the floor to them. Thank you very much, Ahlishia, and welcome everyone. And what we plan to do today is talk about the competitive grants at NIFA that focus on education. And most of those educational programs are housed in t

he division of community and education, which both myself as division director and Chris Green, who is the national program leader are based. And so we wanted to give our contact information if you have any questions as we go along. One of the things we're going to do is we're going to try and give you sort of the broad overview, talk about the goals of the programming, the diversity of programs that are available to you, as well as address some of those programs that fit within those goals and

also provide some examples of proposals that have been funded for some of the programs. So that's what we're going to do today. And I hope as a result of this, you are encouraged to participate in these programs 'cause that's our real goal, is to is to encourage you and provide you with the information so that all of you can bring your innovative ideas to these programs. Next slide please. OK, Our education programming at NIFA have multiple goals as you can imagine. One of them is to improve the

scientific and agricultural literacy. This is primarily focused in the K through 12 through or fourteen grade levels. We also are recruiting and training a skilled workforce to face societal challenges. So workforce development is is a major part of the objectives of these programs. Also to improve learning and engagement methodologies through both formal and informal instruction and teacher training. As part of this these efforts we also are advancing science because many of our programs help

fund graduate education and postdoctoral fellowships. So that helps in in terms of advancing science. And then another area is strengthening the capacities, the educational capacities of minority serving institutions and tribal colleges and non land grant colleges of agriculture in instruction, curriculum and research infrastructure as well as the faculty training. Next slide please. This illustration really was meant to show you the breadth of the educational programming that we have at NIFA. A

s you can see, we have programs that are targeted for various grade levels all the way from kindergarten through postdoctoral areas. And then there are also some educational programming that's specifically focused for minority serving institutions. And tribal colleges will not be discussing the educational programs for minority serving institutions and tribal college because that'll be addressed later on. And also as you can imagine, the division of community education does not have all of its t

he education programming at NIFA. And so we'll also talk about some of those, but we won't focus on those as much today. And and just realize that part of our goal is to train that next generation of AG scientists. So to do that we need to be having educational programming at all levels and and so that's been a big part of our effort. OK, next slide please. One of the one of the features of the educational competitive grant programs is that they tend to have very wide eligibility And so this ill

ustrates some of that and that we have land grant universities, Community College, public educational institutions, non profits, non land grant colleges of agriculture all of them are often eligible for these programs to check to make sure that you are eligible for a specific program it's important to consult the RFA, the request for applications. In it, it will indicate what who is eligible or how you may become eligible by applying for for that eligibility. And next slide please. As you imagi

ne, education is an extension are part of training and so it's important to understand the distinctions between these. Education focuses on schools, universities and other organizations for training the next generation of scientists, education educators, producers, students. And some of this is formal and some of it's non formal and we also have extension and there's extensive training that goes on in extension programming as well. And I believe that there will be some additional sessions on the

se extension programs for which you might be able to apply. We will have some mention of a non formal educational program for a youth focused on youth and that that is also part of our educational portfolio. OK. Next slide please. OK, so let let's let's look at those programs that fit within the goals that we have for our educational programs. Next slide please. Now I'm going to excuse the fact that we have this alphabet soup with all these acronyms. We use these for identifying our programs and

because we're, I think we're gonna have about 14 programs that we're talking about, we wanted to group them by goal, but this presentation has has an appendix. So if you're interested in a specific program to look at these various programs, what they're called, please refer to the appendix and and you'll get that information. So one of our goals is to enhance agriculture and scientific literacy and workforce development and they're programs that fit within that. A good example be our agricultur

e workforce training program that's part of AFRI and that focuses on training programs that are often offered at community colleges. And so these are the types of programs that if you're interested in this particular area, you would you would look to apply to. So what is the scope of these types of programs? Well, typically they are in teacher development and training, in teacher continuing education, in curriculum development, experiential learning, non formal education to foster development of

tech savvy youth and also as I mentioned with the agriculture workforce training program to develop or expand existing workforce training programs. Many of these programs include in service training. So they would support these K through 14 educators to increase their knowledge of food and agricultural science disciplines and career opportunities and supporting the development of new curricula. Because as we know, agriculture and food science are rapidly developing and the curricula needs to de

velop to meet those changing needs. And so this is an important part of agriculture education and getting exposure for the K through 14 students to this type of programming is very important to strengthen their education. And so as I say, please look at the appendix and you can see which of these particular programs you might be interested in. All right. Next slide please. Another goal is to is focusing on undergraduate programs. I think we need to go back one. Thank you. And these programs incl

ude this hack it stands for higher Education Challenge grants. It's really to enhance educational experience and capacity. And so these include faculty development, curriculum development, exponential learning, student recruitment, and very importantly, many of our programs offer scholarships or fellowships. And so for students who can't afford school, these are an opportunity either for an institution to apply and have these scholarships available to students or for the individual student. An e

xample of our post doctoral fellows where they themselves apply for the fellowship. And so there's a very important part of our programming is to support those students for going through their education. The other one is internships and these are experiential learning opportunities and one that enhances your experience and starts to train you and motivate you for your professional career in agriculture and food science. And as I mentioned, this has become a very important part of the student exp

erience for this form of hands on education and getting those skill sets that you need to be a successful professional in, in agriculture and food science. So most of these programs focus on undergraduate education. OK, next slide please. And I mentioned earlier about the goal of advancing science and This is why we invest very heavily in education programming focused on Graduate School and graduate experience. So we provide scholarships and fellowships for graduate students and postgraduate edu

cation And another AFRI. One of those AFRI programs is the pre doctoral and postdoctoral fellowship programs that are supporting these these particular students to in their research effort. And very often they're going to be looking for careers in agriculture and food science subsequent to their experience. In fact, some of these can be transferred when they move in. For example, some of them might be going into faculty positions. They may be able to transfer some of their grant into that, into

that experience. So these are various programs that support graduate education. One other area that isn't listed here is the DVM in veterinary medicine. We do have programming that supports that as well. So what are we trying to do? We're trying to help in the recruitment, retention and training of our next generation of agricultural professionals. Next slide please. OK. I'm going to turn this over now to Chris Green, who is a national program leader in the Division of Community and Education In

stitute of Youth, Family and Community. And he's going to provide you with some examples of successful grants for some of these programs. And that just gives you an idea of, you know, some of the themes and topics and areas that these programs cover, as well as the successful ones that we're able to go through. Chris. Thank you, Peter. Yeah. So as Peter said, my name is Christopher Green. I'm a national program leader. So we're gonna be going over 4 examples from the programs Peter just spoke ab

out, dealing with curriculum development, scholarship programs, workforce development and experiential learning. Next slide please. So for our first example for curriculum development, this is through the Higher Education Challenge Grants program. The title is Education of Novel CRISPR Technologies for Hawaii undergraduate and Graduate Students. Throughout this presentation, you can use the QR code at the bottom corner to bring yourself to a web link. That will show you the abstracts from the pr

oposal. If you'd like to learn more about these awards, all the awards we're speaking about today are also still currently active. The funding amount for this project was $200,000 and the project. Will be from 2023 to 2025. Next slide please. Some more details on how the University of Hawaii is relating back to curriculum development. The objective of this project was to enhance the teaching capabilities of the first official CRISPR laboratory course is to establish equity minded CRISPR workshop

s for the University of Hawaii Bachelor, Bachelor and two year post secondary students. The expected outcomes from this project are for the students to learn the process of designing CRISPR gene editing experiments, enhance.. enhance the agricultural sciences education in Hawaii by training students with cutting edge genome editing technologies and to educate and train about 120 students in CRISPR genome editing through this workshop series. Next slide please. So in regards to our scholarship ty

pes of programs through the Multicultural Scholars program, we have a project titled, Paths Partnership for Agro Security Training Health and Science. This was done through Oklahoma State University. The funding amount was $200,000 and the project. Was 2021 to 2025. Next slide please. So the objective of this project was to develop qualified tribal students who will positively impact agricultural security through understanding of plant insect interactions. Through this project, through the schol

arship program, we provide practical experiences with public and private entities to improve protection from arthropods and insects transmitting diseases and agro ecosystems. The expected outcome from this project is to increase transfer rates from Northeast Oklahoma Agriculture and Mechanical College to Oklahoma State University is to increase the graduate.. graduation rates from Northeast Oklahoma Agriculture Department as well as increase the graduation rates at OSU Ferguson. We they also thr

ough this project are increasing the diversity of agriculture students through both institutions and to increase food and agricultural natural resources and human science careers in tribal communities to really expose the students to different types of careers as well as where they can transfer these skills into agricultural positions in the future. Next slide please. And in regards to workforce development, we have the AFRI Agricultural Workforce Training Grant. The project title for this progr

am project was design of a two year degree certification pathway for industrial agriculture in rural Arkansas. This was complete or started through Cossatot Community College of the University of Arkansas. Their funding amount was $250,000 and the project period last is lasting from 2023 to 2024. Next slide please. And in regards to workforce development, this the objectives of this project are to modify current courses and to create a new degree pathway designed to test and acquire industry rec

ognized credentials in a field related to industrial agriculture. The.. this is to address known bias and or system systemic barriers in agricultural workforce training to increase placement of Hispanic students in senior level career tracks. Create an objective was to create and codify collaborative activities including experiential learning opportunities with up to three different relevant industry partners and also to create pathways of immediate credentialing upon course completion for indus

try recognized stackable credentials. A great part of this project is showing how the industrial side of agriculture always is looking for people to add to the workforce. The expected outcomes from this project are mechanisms and strategies for employer engagement to create universal skills needed and needs that will be met through the region to leverage the employer collaboration to determine regional industrial agricultural skills as well as micro analysis of each employer's needs. Employer co

llaborators will create a shared language to better community hiring requirements of jobs. So it's really training not only the students but it's also training the people who are already a part of the workforce. Next slide please. And for our final example, as an example for experiential learning, this is through the Research and Extension Experiences for Undergraduates program. The project title is Year Round Aquaculture Training and R&D Engagement in professional setting. This is hosted throug

h University of Southern California. The funding amount was $500,000 and the project. Is lasting from 2021 to 2026. Next slide please. So for the project details. The objectives of this project are to promote the success of underrepresented and rural students through partnerships with aquaculture research companies. This is to engage students in research and development with commercial aquaculture companies, enable rigorous training and experimental design, acquisition and analysis through bioin

formatics, genomics and artificial intelligence to invite trainees from underrepresented communities to attend summer research trainings at the Atla Sea facility. While trainees from broader geographic regions would be able, regions would be able to attend virtually. The expected outputs from this project are to develop a remote certification training program for disadvantaged communities or locations, develop aquaculture curricula at various levels for the University of Southern California, as

well as to develop a month long course on biodiversity and aquaculture sustainability at the National Taiwan University as well as the Wrigley Marine Science Center on Catalina Island, California. Next slide please. So other programs which support our education goals that we didn't get a chance to really speak about today are the AFRI Initiative, the Extension Education in USDA Climate Hubs Partnership, the Sustain.. the SAS Program, Sustainable Agricultural Systems, the Beginner Farmer Rancher

Development Program, the Organic Agriculture Research and Extension initiative as well as the SAR.. SARE program which is the sustainable Agricultural research and education program. We also have many more programs within our division and institution as well as throughout NIFA. And on the next slide it'll we'll show you the appendix. Next slide please. So I think we're gonna hold here for a minute. So we give everyone a chance to be able to go through the programs to see, you know what that alph

abet soup was really saying. Any of these programs, feel free to look at the program page, the NIFA website, reach out to the training staff, reach out to myself or Peter to direct you in the right direction to who is leading those programs. And I will turn it back to Peter if he has anything else you'd like to add. No, thank you, Chris. And we know we gave you quite a lot of alphabet soup here today and it is quite a lot of opportunities that we encourage you to apply for. If you have any parti

cular questions, specific questions, we have a very large staff of national program leaders and and program specialists that are there and each of them would be assigned to a specific program so that they will.. will know to how to respond to your specific questions. Chris has programs within here that he manages and but we can steer you in the right direction. So you have our emails, so please contact us. So whenever you need to and we're.. we're here really to encourage you to apply. In many o

f these programs there's just a lot of opportunity to make a big impact on our workforce development and education of our of our, our students and.. and other other people. So thank you very much. I did notice that we do have some questions in the Chat and I don't know, Ahlishia, if we have time to address those or what would you like to do? I think we're going to leave those questions for the end of the presentations. OK, good. All right. Thank you. Thank you so much, Chris and Peter, for walki

ng the audience through opportunities for educational institutions and highlighting those examples. Our next topic is opportunities for minority serving institutions and we have an esteemed team of colleagues walking us through that. I'll pass the floor over to Dr. Edwin Lewis, and he will allow his other teammates to introduce themselves. Dr. Lewis. Thank you, Ahlishia. I really appreciate that. Hello, my name is Edwin Lewis. I am a national program leader and the Acting Division Director in NI

FA's Division of Family and Consumer Sciences. I will be co presenting today with two of my outstanding colleagues who will introduce themselves during their section of the presentation. So this presentation will focus on NIFA's funding opportunities specifically for minority serving institutions. We'll discuss targeted MSI programs which are exclusively for MSIs. and we'll also cover strategic opportunities within some of NIFA's non targeted programs. Next slide. NIFA's MSI programs support our

commitment to diversity, equity inclusion and accessibility to USDA's resources intended to benefit all communities. There are four key goals to NIFA's MSI programs. First, to strengthen the capacity of the targeted institutions. Second, to enhance collaboration with strategic partners, with strategic partners. 3rd, to develop students to ensure that future agricultural workforce is both diverse and highly qualified. And then finally, to support these institutions in addressing critical communi

ty needs often in communities that have been historically underserved. Next slide. So NIFA has targeted programs for our 1890 land grant universities which are also historically black colleges and universities, our 1994 land grant institutions which are our tribal institutions, Hispanic serving institutions and Alaska, Pacific and Insular area institutions. In addition, several of NIFA's non-targeted programs have special opportunities to promote collaboration and encourage applications from MSI

s. Although this presentation highlights some of the non- targeted programs, we encourage you to review other NIFA programs and contact the appropriate national program leader For more information. Now I'm going to turn it over to my colleague Rizana. Thank you, Edwin. Hello everyone. Greetings and my name is Rizana Mahroof. I am the National program leader for 1890 competitive programs located in Division of Community and Education Institute of Youth, Family and Community and here I am just goi

ng to touch base on targeted programs that support NIFA's MSI goals. I just want to re emphasize what Dr. Shipley mentioned. These are merely some of those selections. We are going to highlight some of these institutions in order to give an understanding for the diversity of institutions funded through these schools and the various stakeholders we are serving. At the same time, we wanted to highlight the broad scope of the topics funded under this portfolio. So we have selected actually a single

example for each of the institution given the time limitations, although there are numerous good projects are available to showcase. So first I wanted to please next slide, next slide please. Yes, next please. Yeah. First, I wanted to start with the 1890 land grant universities. Actually, the 1890 land grant institutions are mostly spread around southern states. There are nineteen of these institutions and 1890 land grant institutions are the key customers. For our USDA NIFA, we have actually s

ix programs targeting research, education, extension and facilities and it has an approximately $232.5 million for fiscal year 2023. So I'm just going to touch base on the scope of these programs and and what we are really promoting through these programs. You may have heard of it, 1890 programs are different types. There's a capacity building program, which is a competitive program. There is a facilities program. There is a capacity program for extension and research, which is known as Evans-Al

len program. There is a scholarship for 1890 students and centers of excellence. So many of these programs have a wider scope. These programs are mainly encouraging to strengthen linkages among the 1890 institutions with other institutions such as 1862 institutions, other universities and colleges, of course, the federal agencies like USDA-ARS and other federal agencies and private entities. So the overall scope of these funded programs is to improve the innovative applications in teaching, educ

ation, research and extension in the area that address mainly local, regional or national issues in Food and Agriculture sciences. So example of these innovative areas could be in for maybe in applications for developing A curriculum, designing a classroom material or designing a hands on lab encouraging the development offer a new student learning opportunity or building infrastructure for a centralized research support system. These programs also seeking for multi disciplinary projects those a

re investigating with established collaboration with other institutions. At the same time, bringing in a wider areas of research such as biological, physical, chemical or social sciences and then establishing a centralized reset support system. These are all some of the examples of how we are promoting 1890 institutions to come up with research ideas. Next slide please. So here's an example. Again, this is just to discuss and illustrate a broad scope of the portfolio we are serving. Given the ti

me limitations. As I said.. mentioned, we could only discuss one project for targeted institution, so not all valuable good projects are being highlighted here. This is just an example of an 1890 teaching research and extension capacity building program. The title of this project is Establishing Plant and Soil Science Curriculum and Experiential Learning at West Virginia State University. So this project actually combines two major areas, teaching and research to address the shortage of graduate

students in Food and Agriculture sciences. At the same time, it also tries to establish undergraduate course and giving some hands on experience for the students in mainly in the plant and soil sciences at West Virginia State University. It was funded for 36 months and for an amount of about $533,923. Next slide please. So let us look at the project details, and I'm not going to go into details of each of the goals and the expected outcomes, but there are four major objectives. 2 are related t

o the teaching objectives and two of those who are related to the research objectives. So this goal of, this main goal of this project is to bring back AG or agriculture to the academic curriculum at West Virginia State University by creating or revising 3 upper division level courses as well as adding a new and existing experiential learning opportunity in the field of rare earth elements for students which will be also integrated into classes. As you may know West Virginia is a highly coal min

ing state. It has some environmental problem. So this there are, this particular project is integrating those aspects of all the problem of that along with giving some experience to the students. So there are these education objectives are mainly to accomplish increase number of students who will be declaring plant and soil science options enrolling into these classes and then they learn more about the soil science as well as plant, I think greater pest management aspects of the agriculture and

then they may end up in taking internships and research opportunities. In related fields. So ultimately this will make awareness for them in the Food and Agriculture related careers leading to them finding in jobs in allied areas. So for example, I just want to highlight the success of this project even though it was only launched a year ago. Actually two years ago one of the undergraduate recruited in the research part of this project participated in the you know research program ongoing in tha

t laboratory and then presented a poster at West Virginia State actually West Virginia Undergraduate Student Forum held in the Capitol building in Charleston, WV. And then ultimately secured a summer undergraduate research experience program that led to ultimate success of their students to ending up in finding actually leading a pathway through the Food and Agriculture sciences. So just just to highlight the outcome of that even though there are many good outcomes forecasted in this project. So

I will move on to next slide please. Here I'm going to switch gears and talk a little bit about the Hispanic serving institutions. The, there are about 570 institutions which are as well as Hispanic institutions. These institutions are basically promoting, strengthening the ability of them to carry out higher education programs to attract, retain and, you know, graduate outstanding students capable of enhancing the nation's Food and Agriculture as well as natural resources and human science wor

kforce. In 2023, Hispanic Serving Programs institutions programs targeted research education extension had approximately $16,000,000. So these grants programs from NIFA aligns the efforts of the HSIS to support academic development and career attainment by developing and enhancing curriculum, developing faculty, giving them a professional development opportunity, improving infrastructure delivery system for those institutions as well as developing infrastructure within the institutions such as l

ibrary facilities, laboratory equipment facilities. So next slide please. Again, we wanted to highlight a successful example how the NIFA's investment has led to a very successful pathway. And this program here, which I'm going to talk about was one of the Terminator project a long time ago funded, but it has established A pathway to a very successful program in that university and beyond. So in 2005, the Florida International University became one of the first university to receive USDA's HSI g

rant to develop an Agro Ecology Education program. So this is an example of a project that has leveraged an MSI grant to build a successful program. So after developing the curriculum through this grant only given for about 223,000, the University received more than 5 million in competitive grants through various different USDA NIFA programs such as Multicultural Scholars Program, National Needs Fellows Program and AFRI programs in order to establish a nationally recognized agroecology program.

So if you have a smartphone, you can scan this QR code to get all the details of this project. It is one of the highlight of the project to show the success it has secured since then. Next slide please. So again I just wanted to highlight the some of the example, I mean some of the success here. So this project we funded, so NIFA offered the multiple opportunity to leverage those funds since the first funding. So the MSI program which was built the capacity to subsequently complete for additiona

l funding for research education and extension program related to that agroecology curriculum. So the project implemented a new agroecology higher education program. Then this main objective actually help them to within two years to achieve a dynamic higher education, multidisciplinary agroecology as well as urban landscape curriculum. Then it ultimately help them to implement very cost effective multi institutional instructional system over the time by securing other grants. One of the highligh

t of this project was at that time the one of these Hispanic student who, actually female student participated in the program has considered careers in the higher education in agriculture and related natural resources as well as the outside of Florida because it they went outside of the state. At the same time two other students who graduated degree programs through that particular program also now working in USDA. So this just highlights the success of that program and it shows how the new firs

t investments pays off. With that, I am going to give the podium to my colleague Janyce next slide and Janice, please. Thank you very much, Rizana. Hello everyone. My name is Janyce Woodard and I am one of two national program leaders in the Institute of Youth, Family and Community, Division of Community and Education working within the Tribal Programs portfolio. As Edwin mentioned earlier, the 1994 land grant institutions are the tribal colleges and universities, of which there are 35, mostly l

ocated in the Midwest and Western regions of the United States. The NIFA Tribal Programs Team works with each of the Tribal colleges and universities through programs such as the Tribal Colleges Equity and Tribal Colleges Extension Grant programs, as well as the Tribal Colleges Research Grant Program, among others. Next slide, please. The Tribal Colleges Extension Special Emphasis Program supports pilot projects and extension at the 1994 land grant institutions. A pilot project allows extension

offices to be responsive to community needs through two year projects that address youth, agriculture, economic development or other issues important to stakeholders. An example of a project that began with a special emphasis funding is the Michigan Intertribal Land Grant Extension System. The MILES Initiative was submitted as an Extension Special Emphasis proposal by Bay Mills Community College, a 1994 land, land, in collaboration with Michigan State University Extension, their 1862 partner. Th

e first Two years of the MILES Project was partially funded by their Special Emphasis Award. MILES is building the foundation for a seamless, integrated and intentional land grant system in Michigan, serving all Michigan tribal nations and communities. The integrated system includes the four land grant institutions in Michigan, including Michigan State University, Bay Mills Community College, Keweenaw Bay, Ojibwa Community College and Saginaw Chippewa Tribal College. This project also includes t

he 12 federally recognized tribes as partners that land grant institutions have a responsibility to be responsive to. Scanning the QR code will allow you to see the details of this exciting project. Next slide please. The existing integrated Land collaboration between Bay Mills Community College and Michigan State University, National Institute of Food and Agriculture and Community Partners is serving the Bay Mills Indian Community and has produced a template for expanded and impactful involveme

nt with all tribal nations and communities in Michigan. This is precisely the model of integrated and sustained 1862, 1994 collaboration that the leadership at NIFA had been working to establish. Goals of MILES include addressing programmatic and research requests in the areas of agriculture, tribal youth and leadership, leadership development, conservation of natural resources and land issues, family and consumer science, health and nutrition, economic development. Also increased input from Mic

higan Tribal Nations with regard to educational programming efforts. Input from Michigan Tribal Nations regarding research needs Increased collaborative scholarship with Michigan Tribal Nations and Michigan State University Extension. A clear message that MSU Extension staff are supported and encouraged to continue building relationships, dedicating time and effort in programming with Tribal Nations and communities. The recognition that Tribal Nations are self governing and no matter population

or resources, the Government to Government relationship will be honored. Next slide please. NIFA also provides funding opportunities for insular Alaska Native and Native Hawaiian serving institutions. Insular area land grant institutions receive both capacity funding and competitive funds through resident instruction grants. RIIA Distance Education Grants, DEG and Agriculture and Food Sciences facilities and Equipment programs. There are 8 insular areas, including American Samoa, the Commonwealt

h of the Northern Mariana Islands, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the Federated States of Micronesia, Guam, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, the Republic of Palau, and the United States Virgin Islands. NIFA is committed to providing technical assistance and resources to insular area land grant institutions to assist them with preparing competitive grant applications, managing competitive and capacity awards, complying with grant requirements, and submitting accurate and timely reports. Th

e Alaska Native and Native Hawaiians Serving Institutions Program, ANNH promotes and strengthens the ability of Alaska Native serving Institutions and Native Hawaiian serving institutions to carry out education, applied research, and related community development programs. Institutions eligible for ANNH funding includes individual, public or private, non profit Alaska Native Serving and Native Hawaiian Serving Institutions of higher education. Next slide please. Go Farm Hawaii, based at the Univ

ersity of Hawaii at Manoa has received multiple ANNH grants to create and sustain different portions of their programming. Go Farm Hawaii is a statewide beginning farmer training program with sites on Oahu, Kauai, Maui and Hawaii Islands. The mission of the organization is to enhance Hawaii's food, security and economy by increasing the number of sustainable local agricultural producers by providing hands on commercial, farm and business training. Go Farm Hawaii supports the Native Hawaiian comm

unity through collaborations with local organizations and creating visual profiles of Native Hawaiian farmers. Go Farm Hawaii will also be translating videos and creating showcasing the connection between Native Hawaiians and agriculture from English to Hawaiian. Next slide please. With this specific grant, Go Farm Hawaii seeks to expand opportunities in Maui and create an incubation farm site. Create mentorship and apprenticeship opportunities for farmers to support farm start-ups and provide b

usiness education, Offer a non credit certificate program and additional coursework based on student feedback. Provide K12 support and career exposure to students in Kauai. Expand agricultural education and support targeted to adult learners across the state who want to become farm entrepreneurs or obtain employment in the local food system. Go Farm Hawaii develops and supports commercial farmers who are well prepared to meet production and business challenges and immediately contribute to the s

tate's food sustainability goals. Go Farm Hawaii has had much success in part through NIFA ANNH funding, with more than 40 Go Farm Hawaii graduates farming commercially, while other graduates are working for for others in farming or supporting the food system as of 2023. Additionally, extension professionals conducted more than 60 one on one business consulting sessions to support existing farming operations and taught sessions on topics including on farm scaling and value added product developm

ent. Next slide. And with that we will turn this over back to Edwin. Thanks Janyce. Now let's discuss special opportunities for MSI in some of our non targeted programs. Next slide. In addition to NIFA's targeted MSI programs, the agency offers several programs that include special opportunities and incentives for MSI applicants and to encourage strategic partnerships for MSIs. This slide does not include an exhaustive list of programs. However, it demonstrates the broad nature of the programs t

hat offer unique opportunities for MSIs. These programs support research and education and extension or outreach initiatives. Some of the benefiting communities include women, veterans, the socially disadvantaged, minorities and other historically underserved groups. Now let's take a closer look at three of the non targeted programs. Next slide. First, the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development Grants program we refer to as BFRDP provides grants to organizations for education, mentoring and te

chnical assistance initiatives for beginning farmers and ranchers. While eligibility for this program is broad, priority is given to projects that include collaborations with non governmental organizations and community based organizations who have the expertise to lead those projects. BFRDP includes targeted set aside projects for two subsets of beginning farmers and ranchers. First, at least 5% of the funds are available for projects targeting socially disadvantaged, limited resource and farm

workers, including immigrants and refugees who desire to become beginning farmers and ranchers. Second, at least 5% is available for projects targeting military veterans. Next slide. Another program that offers special opportunities for MSIs is the food safety outreach program FSOP. This program supports food safety training and education for farmers categorized as small and mid sized, beginning, socially disadvantaged veterans and other targeted groups who are affected by the Food Safety Modern

ization Act. Now this program offers several incentives for the benefit of MSIs. Let me give you two. First, Regional Center projects must include partnerships with 1890s, 1994s, Alaskan Native Native Hawaiian institutions, and other MSIs or community based organizations working with underserved communities within their region. Another example is collaborative engagement supplements of $150,000 are available for certain types of applications that support significant collaborations among 1890s, 1

994s, insular areas ANNH and other MSIs or community based organizations serving underserved populations. Next slide. The final example that we'll cover is the Women and Minorities in STEM Program, which we refer to as WAMS. This program supports education extension or outreach and integrated projects that increase participation of women in underrepresented minorities from rural areas and STEM related food and ag careers. WAMS will only support projects targeting students in kindergarten through

12th grade, plus two year post secondary schooling such as vocational tech schools or community colleges. While eligibility for WAMS is broad, all projects must focus on enhancing equity for women and underrepresented minorities in STEM. Next slide, let's briefly review two projects that were funded through NIFA's non targeted programs. The purpose of sharing these examples is to demonstrate the scope of topics and diversity of institutions funded through NIFA's non-targeted programs. Next slid

e. The first project is a project funded through the Food Safety Outreach program, which we discussed earlier. Now I will not cover all of the information about this project. As was stated earlier, you can obtain that information from the QR code located in the bottom right of the slide. However, I do want to note a couple of things. This project is a technical assistance project awarded to Alabama A&M, which is an 1890 land grant university and a historically black college or university. The ta

rget audience for this project is socially disadvantaged farmers in rural Alabama, Georgia and Mississippi. Next slide. Again, we are not showing all the objectives and outcomes, however, I will share a couple of highlights. The objectives include technical assistance for socially disadvantaged farmers and communities for GAP training, the good ag practices and other critical policy requirements. Now, previously I mentioned that this program offers collaborative engagement supplements of $150,00

0 to support significant collaboration. Well, for this project, Alabama A&M was awarded the supplement, which allowed them to partner with the 1890 Land grant in Mississippi, Alcorn State University, and the 1890 land grant in Georgia, Fort Valley State University. Some of the key outcomes for this project reduce gaps in information for hundreds of socially disadvantaged farmers, minimize risk and enhanced food safety. Next slide. Now this final example is with the Crop Protection and Pest Manag

ement Program, CPPM, which also encourages applications from MSIs. Now this award was made to Humboldt State University, which is a Hispanic serving institution. The CPPM program addresses high priority issues related to pests and the advancement of pest management using IPM approaches at the state, regional and national levels. The title of this project is Optimizing the Use of barn owl nest Boxes for Rodent Pest control in Wine Grape Vineyards. Next Slide. This research project addresses criti

cal problem, a critical problem to the crop of enormous economic impact in California. It focuses on pests that cause extensive crop damage and is difficult to control with conventional practices. A couple of highlights from the objectives that made this proposal appealing to peer reviewers is one, the development of a method or strategy that is innovative and cost effective to implement and two, this project has broad impact, regional or broader. A couple of key outcomes future workforce develo

pment by supporting training of undergrad and grad students and second the advancement of science by developing an effective method for controlling a pest that has caused economic damage. The last thing I want to note about the CPPM program. In FY23, this program awarded a Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Accessibility focused project to the North Central IPM Center. The goal of this project is to provide opportunities for more involvement of MSIs in IPM related activities. The North Central IPM

Center is awarding small grants to support this initiative now. For more information, please reach out to the CPPM national program leaders. Their contact information can be found on the CPPM program page on the NIFA website. Next slide. Now, this presentation highlighted special opportunities in NIFA's MSI programs as well as some of the agency's non targeted programs. However, it's important to note that NIFA is committed to advancing diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility across all

of our programs. NIFA's DEIA statement is included on page two of all RFAs. Next slide. Now finally, we use several acronyms in this presentation as we listed NIFA's targeted MSI programs. This appendix provides the full name of each program, which will assist you in locating the respective programs on the NIFA website. Now this concludes the MSI presentation. Ahlishia, back to you. Thank you so much to our presenters at Edwin, Janyce and Rizana. That was a wonderful presentation. Our next prese

ntation is for those who have an entrepreneurial spirit. It will cover opportunities for small businesses. Nurun Nahar and David Songstad are going to be our prestenters and I am going to pass the floor to them. Thank you. Thank you, Ahlishia. So good morning or good afternoon, depends on where you have located. Thank you for joining USDA, National Institute of Food and Agriculture. We call it NIFA Grants Workshop. And I hope you're excited to know about the wide ranges of NIFA funding opportuni

ties. Today, I am Nurun Nahar. I'm a program specialist in the Institute of Bioenergy, Climate and Environment and I work in the small business programs. On behalf of my fellow presenter and colleague, Dr. David Song- stad. We welcome to our presentation on the opportunities for small businesses. So today we will be discussing general scope of the Small Business Innovation Research that's SBIR and Small Business Technology Transfer programs that's STTR. Then we'll go into the broader topic areas

, different program phrases and then we'll try to cover who are eligible to apply for this funding opportunity. And most importantly which program is right for you to apply, how the university and government scientists may involved in the SBIR/STTR program. Lastly, we'll share with you few success stories of the SBIR/STTR program. Next slide please. So the Small Business Innovation Research and Technology Transfer program shortly. SBIR and STTR programs are administered by NIFA on behalf of USDA

. The SBIR/STTR programs are congressionally mandated to support scientific excellence and technological innovation through the investment of federal research to funds and build a strong national economy by stimulating technological innovation. Go to the previous slide please. So SBIR/STTR program goals include actually fostering and encouraging participation by historically underserved population, and women owned small business as well. So USDA SBIR/STTR programs are in a unique position to mee

t the both goals of the USDA and the purpose of the SBIR/STTR legislation by transforming scientific discovery and innovation to both social and economical benefit and emphasizing private sector commercialization. So once we look at the general scope, you can see that small business is the core of the program and what involved research and development. We want innovation lot of cooperative agreement are involved. We that ended up with increasing commercialization of the innovation, filing patent

s thus creating the new market. So all those keywords innovation, commercialization, patent or market those are particularly very relevant for our SBIR/STTR program. Next slide please. So USDA SBIR/STTR programs actually offer 10 solicitation topic areas and they are intentionally a very broad spectrum for eligibility of innovation, science and technology based small business to compete for funding. So there are keywords listed on the slides that you can see and I'm going to just cover what is t

he main objective, what kind of area are covered for particular research area. So the first one is forest and related research. These topic area actually aims to address the health diversity, productivity of the nation's forest and grassland. So any new technologies that focused on sustainable bioenergy and development and evaluated biofuels from woody biomass falls into this topic area. So we say that proposal targeting yield and forestry is reducing the impact of pathogen or insect that attack

important woody species would be in this area. Also urban forestry and the influence of climate change and forest health covers in this area any research that provides systems for detecting and managing wildfire, tools and equipment for improving the efficacy or safety of the firefighters or the communication or navigation system for improving the coordination of the fire management activities are also good fit in this topic area. So you can see that lot of keywords and many more. The second on

e is plant production and production biology area. This topic area support research to examine novel ways of enhancing crop production and protection. So basically it's a new food and non fruit cop plant through plant breeding and diagnostic technologies for plant diseases are included in here. Third one is animal production and protection topic area that support the development of innovative marketable technologies that provide significant benefit for the production and protection of animal or

agricultural animals. So any new technologies that could be used for rapid detection, point of care, treatment and prevention of diseases to improve animal health and well-being, improving the bio security, alternative to antibiotics, all those are included in this research. Tropic Areas Conservation of Natural Natural Resources focuses on new technologies and innovation that will make use of waste of bio product, help improve, solve health, reduce soil erosion, improve water and air quality, im

prove nutrient management and conserve use of water more effectively. So technologies that are targeted to develop to conserve or monitor, improve or protect the quality or quantity of natural resources are really right fit for this program. The last one in this scope area is the food science and nutrition. These areas support research focusing on developing new and improved process technology products or services that address emerging food safety, food processing and nutrition issues. So projec

t that exclusively focus on nutrition supplement rather than food ingredients and not really right fit for this program. Next slide please. The rural and community development popping area actually aim to improve the quality of life in rural community by creating and commercialization technologies that address important economic and social development issues in rural areas. So the applicants need to be centered on agriculture, but may be focused on any area that has the potential to provide sign

ificant benefit on rural Americans with new application or even with existing technologies they could use. The next is the aquaculture. Aquaculture topic area focuses on new technologies to improve production efficiency, Protect aquaculture species again disease, ensure the quality of aquatic products. Couple things to keep in mind that seaweed, seagrass, microalgae from both freshwater and marine environments are also included in this topic area. Next one is biofuels and bio bio waste product t

opic area. These area promote the use of non food bio waste products and biofuels by developing new or improved technologies that will lead to the competitiveness of value added product development from agricultural materials. So anything with the conventional or cellulosic or advanced biofuels or other non food bio based products, crop residue conversion, animal manure or cusp carcass waste conversion could be covered and up to this one. So keep in mind that there are couple area that biofuel a

re involved. Biofuel from woody biomass should be applied to the forests and related resources. Biofuel from conventional or unconventional biomass could be submitted to the biofuels and bio waste products area. Biofuels or solar energy that benefit the rural area could be applied to rural and community and development. So based on the objective you could choose different topic areas. The next one is small and mid size farm. This topic area promote the sustainability and profitability of small a

nd mid size farms and ranges. Any source of off the shelf technologies can be used in an innovative way. For this one small and mid size farm. It doesn't have to be innovative new technology, it could be of the shelf technology as well. The last one is plant production and protection engineering. This focuses on engineering solutions that directly include crop production and protection and you can see a lot of keywords and there are many modes. Next slide please. I'm going to go through the SBIR

/STTR eligibility. Thus only certain types and sizes of small business actually can apply and receive SBIR and STTR award. What are those requirement of the eligibility? The first one is the small business must be for profit. So any nonprofit entities are not eligible to apply for this program. Only exception is university or federal lab. Those are nonprofit organization. They can apply under the STTR program. Also, nonprofit could be a subcontractor or a consultant, not the applicant. Applicant

has to be small business and must be for profit. That's the first requirement. And another keynote is any research and research development work must be performed in the United States. The second requirement is the small business must be primarily US owned, meaning at least 51% of its ownership should be by U.S. citizen or permanent residents. The purpose of the ownership requirement is limit, is to limit the program to independent firms controlled by U.S. citizen to stimulate to stimulate inno

vative activity within the US economy. And last what is small business? So a small business definition is actually fairly very simple. It is a farm with 500 or fewer employees. It does not matter if you have full time, part time or even leased or temporary employees. They all count to towards the 500 employee limit. At the low end of the employee spectrum, the small business could be just start up with one employee and that count also as a small business. Next slide. So there are three differen

t phases for the SBIR or STTR program. For the first one is the phase I awards. The phase one determine the scientific and technical merit and feasibility of ideas that appear to have commercial potential. Phase I RFA published in July with a deadline in September and duration for SBIR program is for eight months and for STTR program for 12 months and the amount of award is $125000-275 thousand. Two programs rural and community development and small and mid size firm they are allowed to use off

the shelf technologies and their amount is small $125,000. Rest of the topic area really required to have a innovative new technology or idea. So that amount is $175,000. Then phase II awards, phase II awards to further develop work from the phase one that meets particular program needs and exhibit potential for commercial application. One of the requirements that only SBIR/STTR phase I awardees are eligible to participate in phase two for our USDA phase two program. No one can directly just app

ly for phase II. They have to go through from phase I to phase II. USDA SBIR/STTR typically announced the phase II in early December with the deadline in early March and this is the duration for 24 months doesn't matter either, either SBIR/STTR both for 24 months and then award amount is $600,000. Now the third one, we call it phase III or the market. USDA need for recognizes that phase one and two awards may not be sufficient either for the dollar amount or for the time for small business to co

mpete and bring their commercialization activities into the market. So we really encourage all those phase two awardee to go through phase III for the market and successful phase two grantees are encouraged to secure any funding either personal, public, private or state resource and investment to enable the commercialization. And if you would like to know more about the different phases of SBiR/STTR information, QR code in here, please look at the last year presentation as well. Next slide, now

the big one, I like this slide because a lot of people ask which program is right for me because I hear SBIR, I hear STTR, I even hear both I can apply. So both someone can apply meaning in the same application. They could either choose SBIR and STTR both they could be eligible. How that is taken? So one of the mistake, that mistake I'm going to first address. Some people mistakenly believe that university can submit STTR proposals. They cannot. Please remember that Small Business Innovation Res

earch and Small Business Technology Transfer is the name of this program. So the both programs required that small business must be the applicant, so applicant must be a small business not any research institution or individual award also goes to small business not any research institution or individual. So that's that's the first thing I would like to clear up. Now there are key difference between USDA SBIR/STTR program including the percentage of research involved and you can see in the slide

that nonprofit research institution or federally funded center participation. For SBIR it's not a requirement, you may want to include that but for STTR program this is a must. You need to have a nonprofit research institution, meaning university or federal funded land. Once we apply for both, it is the same requirement. You have to have nonprofit research institution or, or federal funded land and what is the percentage of participation That's the big difference for SBIR program. For phase one,

it has to be 33% or less participation from the university. For phase two SBIR program it goes up to 50%. For STTR program doesn't matter. Phase one and phase two participation could be 30 to 60%. So we only want small business to do at least 40% list either 30 or 60% could go to other institution. For both you can see that there are little bit sweet spot between SBIR/STTR. For SBIR, we say that percent of participation start at 30, SBIR start 33 or less. So if anything fall between 30 and 33%

then you can choose as a both because that's the sweet part. You can be eligible for both. Now the next criteria that I'm going to describe is the primary employment of the principal investigator that we call PI or PD project director for SBIR program. Any principal investigator must be employed with the small business for both programs. Once you applied it has to be also with the small business. However, STTR has some flexibility a any primary investigator or project director may be employed wi

th the small business or with the nonprofit research institution. That's a big difference. And the last one is the formal cooperative agreement. A formal cooperative agreement detail the allocating of intellectual property right to carry out any follow on research, development or commercial activities. As an objective of the STTR program is to stimulate cooperation partnership of ideas between small business and nonprofit research institution, thus university or federal lab. So this is a require

ment for STTR and both option but not required for SBIR. So there are lot of challenges, but basically think about that percent of participation, primary employment and formal cooperative agreement is the biggest one to decide are you going to apply for SBIR or STTR Next slide. Thank you. Now I'm going to describe how the and what is the percent that the university of government scientists can be involved in different program. Let's look at the SBIR program. First, scientists may serve as a cons

ultants to receive a subcontract or continue to work full time at their home institution. However, it is limited no more than 1/3 of phase one award that close to 33% and half of the phase two award that goes to 50%. Again, scientists may serve as a PI project or a principal investigator by reducing employment at their home institution to 49% for the duration of the grant. So that's another one, usually not acceptable, acceptable for university or government scientists to service consultants and

have all the research done in their lab. And that probably makes sense to everyone. Let's go to the next one. How about university and government scientist involvement in the STTR program? In these STTR programs, the principal investigator can be employed with the small business or the research institution. So there are flexibility in here. And STTR specifically states that small business must perform at least 40% of the work on their project. The research institution that is university or fede

ral lab must perform at least 30% of the research and development. The other 30% of the work can be outreach to either of the research institution or another subcontractor. So STTR program really gives lot of flexibility how the work has to be done or sorted out different way and then a lot of good opportunities for university folks to be joining and applying to this program. Next slide please. We always encourage our applicants to work with the federal research partner. So it's called CRADA or

CRADA however you want to say it. It's a cooperative research and development agreement. You usually try to applicant usually try to develop a CRADA with the federal lab or federal license innovation and we encourage to do that because if two or more applicants are equal married then we look for CRADA and that has a better consideration to get funded. If you are looking for CRADA activities or finding it available technology, I have posted here, ARS available technologies and then also CRADA. If

you want to establish a CRADA with the ARS lab, the e-mail address is there. So this is a good consideration to kind of think about it. Next slide please. All right, now we we talked about innovation, patent market and all those things, but now kind of a think about how do we quantify our success metrics. There are a couple of way we think about our program success. First of all, what is the sales of the new technology or services? That's one thing. Did you have patent or licenses? So number of

license or patent is another way that we think that someone is successful. And then also if you are a small business, how do you create new jobs, how do you hire new employee those new jobs getting a bigger company from the small company to a little bit bigger would be really a good success metrics for us. So these are the success. So we are kind of always look for and today we are really excited to share some of the success that we are really proud and happy, not all of them we could focus on

here. We selected few that Dr. David Songstad is gonna go through and make sure that he tells us how we think those small business are successful by the funding that we they received from SBIR/STTR programs or from other programs. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you, Nurun. Let's go to the next slide. I'm going to go through different examples of success stories. These are actual small businesses that have received SBIR funding and have been successful, no backup. And the the first example is a company t

hat developed a piece of equipment called GrainGoat and this is a small company that is located in Nebraska and they developed a a small harvester. So when you think of harvesting grain, you think of a combine. So you can think of this as a handheld combine. So they're able to go out and do for example, pre harvest sampling to get an idea of the moisture content of the grain. There's one good example and they received SBIR funding and let's go to the next slide where the GrainGoat has been able

to demonstrate that it is totally functional out in the field. They have developed a a version 2.0 and they are currently selling this throughout the United States in Mexico, Canada and Australia and they plan to expand further into the international market. So truly a success story. Let's go to the next next slide. Another example is a company called Green Heron Tools and this is a woman owned company and for this small business they designed agricultural tools that were more functional for fo

r women and initially started off with excuse me handheld tools and then applied for funding to to develop a a machine that could do something similar to their, their first handheld tools. So go to the next slide please. This is a company in Pennsylvania. So they've been able to develop a prototype of this automated machine that is safe and efficient and it has addresses some of the ergonomic issues with the the handheld instruments that were initially developed and it's particularly developed

for female users. So another example of of a successful small business. Next slide please. This is a a company that I actually visited. It's the current name is Houdek. Initially it was started as Prairie Aquatech, it's located in in Brookings, SD and they have developed plant based meals suitable for aquaculture and this company has received SBIR funding and I've been to their production facility and it's right next to a soybean production and processing plant. So they basically take the soybea

ns from the the that when farmers deliver the harvest, they go to their facility where they produce the meal and and treat it with their their fungal isolate. Go to the next slide please for the details, where they've been able to isolate a fungal strain that can breakdown soybean meal into its nutritional components that are suitable for an aquaculture diet. And they're currently processing 30,000 tons of soybeans per year that that's a lot. And they're using this as a way to provide fish food

and aquaculture diet not just in South Dakota, not just the United States, but all throughout the world. And I was at a a meeting in Washington D.C. about a year ago asked to give an example of a a technology that's really unexpected that came out of SBIR. And I gave this company as an example because when you think of aquaculture, at least I don't think of South Dakota, I think of something you know along the East Coast, along the West Coast, but certainly not South Dakota. So this is totally a

total game changer and a very clear success story. Next slide, this is another company that I visited. This is located in Slater, IA and the name of the company is Gross- Wen Technologies and I met with Martin Gross and he received his PhD from Iowa State in 2016 from Professor Wen in the Agricultural and Biological Engineering's department at Iowa State. He fully enabled his PhD dissertation through this business in 2016, received his degree eight years later. He's been able to receive phase o

ne funding to show proof of concept, Phase two funding to develop a prototype where they're using a membrane based system with algae to clean up sewage waste initially in the city of Slater, Iowa. And let's go to the next slide for more of the details and where they this membrane system will clean up the sewage waste they harvest the algae 'cause it is now rich in nitrogen, potassium and phosphorus. So it's now a bio fertilizer. So it's a bio based product. So it's it's a win win when it comes r

ight down to it. And when I met with Martin, he told me he did receive phase three funding. So you know highlighting what Nuran just went over with phase one and phase two, phase three, I look at it in terms of reducing risk. Initially Martin Gross, when he started the company, the risk level was up here because he needed to do the proof of concept. He lowered it after phase one, lowered it even more after phase two to the point where private equity got involved and that's where phase three come

s in. He was so happy when I met with him just back in October that he was going to be cash flow break even. In other words, his investors were going to start making money. So this is clearly a success story. He's been able to take this across the United States and is even implementing this in Singapore. So I'm very, very, you know, pleased with the outcome of this. Next slide please. This is for a company called Iso Truss and I haven't visited them, but I was involved with an out briefing and I

got to learn about how they've been able to enable their technology. They produce towers that are used for cell phones and it it's but the uniqueness is that they're very lightweight. They do not require a crane for assembling and they're very, very strong. And they gave an example where they had a US Forest Service location up in the mountains where they need that location to look for fires when they break out. This is one way in which the the technology is needed in order to communicate with

you know the the Forest Service if a fire does break out. This particular location where they implemented this historically had towers fall over due to the high winds. Thankfully when they installed this, they don't have that problem anymore and they're starting to expand their their network, expand their their market. So another clear example of a success story go to the next slide please. So again very lightweight composite to tower technology. They can deploy these in very remote areas includ

ing mountain tops and and they're probably still finding new areas where they can be deployed as well. So next slide and that's it for our success stories. I guess is there time for question and answer? Defer back to the the moderator for that. Thank you very much, David and Nurun, we're going to wait for questions until after the next presentation. OK. So our next presentation is going to cover opportunities for community based organizations and after that we're going to have our question and a

nswer session. So please feel free to include and submit your questions to the question and answer box for the next presentation. Dr. Jody Williams and Dr. Cassandra Huey will be your presenters and I will now pass the floor to them. Thank you, Ahlishia. Thank you everyone for hanging in there with us till the last presentation of the day. My name is Jody Williams. I'm a National program leader at NIFA in the Institute of Food Safety and Nutrition in the Division of Food Safety. So I'm going to

share some information on selected opportunities for community based and non governmental organizations. So much like my colleagues who presented before me, I'll share an overview of several programs and then my colleague Cassandra will go over some specific projects within this program portfolio. Next slide please. So NIFA funds programs that allow nonprofit and community based organizations to leverage their established relationship to bring agricultural science, educational and socio economic

support services to rural and urban communities. We also partner with professional societies, commodity groups, grower associations, multi state research committees, citizen groups, foundations, task force, and other groups. These stakeholder groups can leverage their anecdotal, qualitative and quantitative data, local and cultural partnerships, and resources to make real changes within the community for sustainable economic growth, food access, and food security. Working through established pa

rtnerships increases access to communities that are traditionally underserved for a variety of reasons including distrust and historical inequities across federal program. Working through community based organizations allows funding to reach the people with the most need and provide education and tools for self-sufficiency. You can using local foods and training styles that are culturally appropriate. Next slide please. So some of the programs and projects we'll briefly highlight today are the f

ood safety outreach program and I'll very briefly touch on that one because it it's popped up a couple times already. I'll also discussed the bio product pilot program, the Gus Schumacher Nutrition Incentive Program or GusNIP, the Community Food Project Competitive Grants program, the Food and Ag Service Learning Program or FASLP, the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development program, AFRI or the Agriculture Food and Research and Research Initiative. So we'll be using a lot of these acronyms to r

efer to each of these programs throughout the program presentation. And you can always refer back to this slide for the full names of each program as we go as once you are able to download the recording and listen and see it again. So next slide please. So Dr. Lewis touched on this program earlier. He touched a lot on the purpose of the program, which is to provide customized food safety education to specific audiences that are affected by the Food Safety Modernization Act. This program specific

ally targets small and mid sized farms, beginning farmers, socially disadvantaged farmers, small processors and small fresh produce merchant wholesalers with the goal of providing trainings that are closely appropriate and relevant to this target audience to really offset the cost of traditional trainings that we'll get products in order for these entities to gain market access. Next slide please. The bioproduct pilot program looks to advance the development of cost competitive bioproducts with

environmental benefits compared to incumbent products. The priorities of this program are looking at bio product development and production, scale up cost savings that are relative to other commonly used materials, greenhouse gas reduction and also looking at landfill quantity and waste management costs. This program was authorized and funded by the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act and it presents a unique opportunity to really spur economic activity in the nation's rural areas while lower

ing the commercialization risk.. risks associated with bringing bio based products to market. The program focuses on exploring the benefits of products like cost, cave cost savings, reducing some of those greenhouse gases and product development as a compared to its commonly used alternative materials. The program really focuses on techno economic analysis, environmental benefit analysis as well as market impact. Next slide please. The Gus Schumacher Nutrition Incentive Incentive program builds

on the foundation of the Healthy incentive pilot and the Food Insecurity Nutrition Incentive grant program. Over the past four years these this program has gained significantly in terms of funding. The overall goal of the project has increased the purchase of fruits and vegetables by USDA, SNAP, and NAP participants. From 2019 to 2020 to 2023, GusNIP has invested over $290,000,000 in nearly 230 projects. The Nutrition Incentive Program provides incentives to increase the purchase of fruits and v

egetables by consumers participating in the Food Nutrition Services administered SNAP and NAP food assistance programs. The produce prescription program leverages medical assistance programs where healthcare providers write prescriptions for fresh fruits and vegetables and they're training technical assistant evaluation information centers support potential applicants awardees and they also collect and aggregate data to identify and improve best practices for the overall program. Next slide plea

se. The Beginning Farmer and Rancher development program supports the the delivery of education, outreach and technical assistance for beginning farmers and ranchers in the US and its territories that are entering, establishing, building and managing successful farms and ranches. BFRDP projects support programs or services related to basic livestock forest management and crop farming practices. Innovative farm, ranch and private non industrial forest land transfer and succession strategies. Entr

epreneurship and business training. Technical assistance to help beginning farmers or ranchers acquire land from retiring farmers and ranchers. Financial and risk management training including the acquisition and management of agricultural credit, natural resource management and planning, diversification and marketing strategies. Curriculum development, mentoring, apprenticeships and internships, resources and referral, farm financial benchmarking, agricultural rehabilitation and vocational trai

ning for veteran farmers and ranchers. The program also focuses on farm safety and awareness, food safety and record keeping, and other similar subject areas of use to beginning farmers or ranchers. So in addition to the afford listed, it also looks at projects that address climate change with climate, smart agriculture, food and forestry solutions and improve nutritional security and economic revitalization, particularly in socially disadvantaged communities. The BFRDP, the BFRDP program has 2

grant two types of grants. They have standard grants and education team grants. Next slide, please. The Community Food Projects Competitive Grants program is intended to bring together stakeholders from distinct parts of the food system and to the foster understanding of national food security trends and how they might improve local food systems. Understanding that low income individuals experience disproportionate access to healthy foods, projects are to address food and nutrition insecurity, p

articularly among our our nation's most vulnerable populations. Nutrition security is defined as having consistent access, availability, and affordability of foods and beverages that promote well-being. The planning projects bring together stakeholders from distinct parts of the food system to foster understanding of national food security trends and plan how they might improve local systems. One to one match is required for planning grants. This program also offers community food projects, whic

h are larger than the planning grants, and they invest in new startup projects or invest in completing project plans toward the improvement of community food security. In keeping with the primary goals of the program, the Community Food Project also requires a one to one match. The third grant site is the Training and Technical Assistance Priority, which provides several services to program applicants and awardees. There's no match required for the Training and technical assistance program. Next

slide please. The Food and Agricultural Service Learning program is the next program I'll highlight. The goal of this program is to increase the knowledge of agricultural science and improve the nutritional health of children. The program does this by increasing by increasing the capacity for food, gardens, and nutrition education within host organizations or entities such as school at cafeterias and classrooms, while fostering higher levels of community engagement between farms and school syst

ems. By bringing together stakeholders from distinct parts of the food system, the program also seeks to increase access to school meals for children living below the federal poverty line, but also to improve the quality of these meals. All projects must involve underserved rural and or urban communities and facilitate a connection between elementary and secondary schools with agricultural producers in the local and regional area. Next slide, please. We talked a lot about the AFRI program earlie

r yesterday and then again earlier today, but just very briefly. AFRI is NIFA's flagship program. It's the Agriculture and Food Research initiative. There are 6 priority areas with multiple program areas under each. AFRI has broad eligibility. That's why you keep seeing it come up in multiple programs. But the priorities of the program are research, education and extension grants to improve rural economies, increase food production, stimulate the bioeconomy, mitigate impacts of climate variabili

ty, address water availability issues, ensure food safety and security, enhance Human nutrition, and train the next generation of the agricultural works workforce. Next slide please. I will now introduce my colleague Cassandra Huey to talk a little bit more to provide some details on our funded projects. Thanks, Jody. Hi everyone. I'm Cassandra Huey and I serve as a Program Specialist in the Institute of Youth, Family and Community and I work with 1890 programs. Like the previous presentations

and the following slides, I'll show a few of our success stories from the projects that were funded through the programs that Jodi just described and I'll highlight some of the factors that may be important during the peer review panel discussions. Next slide, please. In this first example, you'll see this project was funded through the Beginning Farmer and Rancher Development program. There's a broad range of entities that are eligible to apply to this program. We are specifically highlighting

this project that was awarded to the Catholic Charities of Northeast Kansas. While land grant institutions are eligible to participate and receive funding through BFRDP, the panel likely recommended that this project be funded due to the organization's pre-existing and successful relationships with the community they serve. These relationships help to reduce barriers to accessing community resources as well as help to leverage opportunities to support communities in multiple ways, including land

and market access and training opportunities. Next slide please. This project is a medium standard grant proposal. BFRDP allows for small, medium and standard grant proposals, but they use the same evaluation criteria. These criteria include priority for partnership and collaborations that are led by or include non governmental organizations, community based organizations, or school based agricultural education organizations with expertise in beginning agricultural producer training and outreac

h. A smaller project scope of work is expected to have a smaller audience, limited geographic reach, and less complex collaborative arrangements. This provides an opportunity for smaller or less experienced organizations to propose projects that have smaller budgets and less complex administration. Proposals with larger award requests will be expected to undertake larger scale projects in terms of the numbers reached, the intensity of training, other services to be provided, and geographic servi

ce areas including statewide, regional or even national in scale. All standard grant proposals for federal funds requested should align with the scope of work. Successful grant applicants provide training and assistance with business and financial management as well as production and marketing topics. You can see in this example that the objectives are well aligned with the goals of the BFRDP program and the expected outcomes highlight the potential long term positive impacts in this project. Ne

xt slide please. This next example highlights the project funded through the Food and Agriculture Service Learning program. These projects are intended for eligible applicants to expand existing farm to school initiatives and other Food and Agriculture experiential learning initiatives. These initiatives include training and technical assistance, evaluation activities, curriculum development or the incorporation of farm to school strategies in trainings and professional opportunities along with

working closely with agricultural producers in the local and regional areas with primary and secondary schools. Like many of NIFA's programs that encourage applications from community based organizations, FASLP prioritizes organizations that hold a proven track record in carrying out the purposes of the program and are currently working in the communities they plan to serve. This project from Our Space World Incorporated was chosen as an example because the organization is already active in the

community and they propose to increase the opportunities for rural and urban African American youth to access fresh produce. Another goal of the project is to affirm the historical contributions of African Americans to agriculture. Next slide please. FASLP applicants are encouraged to seek and create partnerships with public or private, nonprofit or for profit entities, including academic institutions that includes minority serving institutions and other appropriate professionals, community base

d organizations, school districts, and local and state government entities. This project is working with African American farmers to host African American youth on their farms and provide experiential learning opportunities for these youth. The objectives of this project highlight the plan to provide students with access to non traditional learning environments that may not have been available through university partnerships. The unique relationships that our space world has developed with local

African American farmers in their community help to create these opportunities and these relationships are necessary to accomplish the goals of these types of projects and to maximize the positive impacts on the community members served. Next slide please. In 2023 the Gus Schumacher Nutrition incentive program funded this produce prescription program project to Community Action Duluth. This three-year project is working in collaboration with Essentia Health and Ensure to provide produce prescr

iption gift cards to communities with limited access to grocery stores and markets in Duluth, MN. Community Action is uniquely positioned to excel in their work in this project because they are already well established within the community. In addition to their farmers market posted through the late spring and summer months, they have a mobile market that serves low income communities throughout the winter months. They also have a winter greenhouse that supplies the mobile market and local food

pantries. This project not only provides the gift cards to use their produce prescriptions, they also provide food preparation demonstrations to ensure their participants know how to properly prepare the produce. Next slide please. Working through Community Action Duluth, the NIFA funds will support strategies to increase consumption of fruits and vegetables, reduce food insecurity and reduce associated healthcare costs. In addition, the education provided at the markets will increase knowledge

of fruit and vegetable preparation for the 180 selected participants and others within the community. An increase in participation of the entire community is expected due to other programs led by CAD. Community Action to Live will leverage these NIFA funds to engage the community in their food access and food security programs. This increased community engagement will show incremental change in action and condition and create significant opportunities for growing for the growing community. Commu

nity Action Duluth is collecting research and impact data that will measure community engagement, participation and changes in knowledge, action and condition. The results of this research will allow them to leverage their federal dollars to gain access to other state and federal programs and partners. Next slide please. In this last example, we see a project funded through the Community Food Projects program. This grant is a planning grant awarded to Chrysalis Center Incorporated to expand agri

cultural production and food distribution in a low income, low access food desert. The project was chosen to highlight the different sizes of awards that are available to non governmental organizations across NIFA's programs in the Community Food Projects Program. Community based organizations that are planning to establish a new program or reach out to a new target audience can start with a planning grant such as this one. Many programs, including the BFRDP, GusNIP and FSOP, all previously high

lighted offer opportunities for smaller grants like these planning grants. These planning grants allow the organization to provide some education or outreach and to collect data in preparation to submit applications for larger grants in the future. Next slide please. This community food project will develop effective, authentic participation in the Food Hub by community members and leaders to identify barriers and develop strategies to promote food security and increase outreach and engagement w

ithin their community. This project will create measurable benchmarks so they can track the impacts of the Food Hub on the people in their community. Developing an evaluation plan is an effective way to assess how well the project is meeting its objectives and identifying ways to improve. They will also create a five year business plan to increase local investments. Careful planning and evaluation are important factors to consider when assessing the strength of any grant application. Upon comple

tion of this project, Chrysalis Center will increase production and distribution of food, provide effective gardening and nutrition classes, and create effective community participation and engagement. As mentioned, this is a planning grant and it will likely not have a huge impact. But over time, they will be able to utilize the data collected from this grant to expand to other funding opportunities and partnerships. Next slide please. Here's a list of panelists for this presentation. Feel free

to reach out to us. We encourage you to please put your questions in the Q&A box and next slide please. I'd just like to briefly go over USDA's non discrimination statement. USDA is an equal opportunity provider, employer and lender. This slide shows USDA's non discrimination statement contact information for individual individuals with disabilities to request reasonable accommodations. Language access services will be provided to limited English proficient individuals upon request. Anyone wish

ing to file a complaint can utilize the phone number, fax number or postal mailing address listed on this slide. I'll go ahead and hand things back over to Dr. Shipley to facilitate our Q&A portion for today. Thank you. Thank you so much Jodi and Cassandra. That was an excellent presentation. As Cassandra mentioned, we are reserving the remainder.. remainder of the time today for Q&A session. So feel free to place some questions in the Q&A box if you haven't done so already and our panelists wil

l find or will answer or find an answer for you. Please know that the best source of information for all of your questions is the primary program staff for that respective program. Please feel free to contact and correspond with those program staff by e-mail. So what I'm going to do first is circle back to Dr. Mark Mirando and the questions that we received on new investigators in the AFRI program. Mark, are you available? I'm here. OK, wonderful. All right. So the first question is, can a new i

nvestigator apply to NI grant or if he or she does not have US citizenship? So the short answer is yes. Citizenship restrictions only apply in AFRI to pre and postdoctoral fellowships and anybody applying as an individual. So if they're applying through a US institution, they can apply even if they don't have aren't citizens, nationals, or permanent residents. Thank you. Does an SBIR award prior to the career track disqualify an applicant? Yes, that well would that depends. So if it was an SBIR

phase one, then that would disqualify them from a new investigator seed grant because that would be equivalent to a seed grant. It is that it is competitive federally funded research funding. So that would disqualify them if if it was just phase one, but they'd be allowed to, that would be considered because of the smaller size like the equivalent of a seed grant. So they could then submit for a new investigator standard grant if they got a Phase two. Now that's much larger and that's beyond a s

eed grant size. So that would completely disqualify them as a new investigator. All right. Thank you. So adding on to your mention of new investigator seed grants, is it preferred to have an experienced co-project director in the proposal? Sometimes the reviewers like to see that. My standard answer is do what makes the most sense for the project. So if that experienced Co- investigator adds value to the project, bring some specific expertise, then then the answer is yes. But if they don't, if i

t's just appears like an add on because they're senior or they're in a National Academy of Sciences and it's not clearly laid out what their role is, then the answer is no. Who's ever on the project, they need to have their roles clearly described for the project. Go ahead. Thank you. That is a very important consideration. So do the considerations for new investigators and or strengthening institutions also apply to education programs and if so, which ones? For example, AFRI or AFRI EWD. So we

do not have new investigator opportunities in those programs specifically and I would defer to the individuals in Peter Modavalli's division that run those programs as to whether they try to support early career educators, for example, we have new investigators because the authorization language is early career investigators. OK. So that's why we have new investigators. Great. Thank you. Peter, did you want to weigh in on that at all? No, I mean Mark is our our good local Guru and but we do not

have those specific formal incentives with the AFRI education, workforce development priority areas. Fantastic. And you might you please keep Peter on the screen right now for pre or post doc fellowship awards. Is the project director awarded this and do they have the flexibility to hire appropriate candidates or is the candidate directly applying with the project director as their mentor. The The candidate is the the post doc and and they're applying and they can have you know some association

with their mentor for example and that's that's the the normal arrangement. Yes, they are the fellow and the applicant, but they're normally applying through their institution. So technically speaking, the institution is the applicant. The project director is the postdoctoral or pre doctoral fellow and then they would have a mentor. They need to have a mentor because mentoring is an important component of the evaluation process. And I would like to say that you know in all of our programs now ar

e education based programs. We are requesting a mentoring plan. So it's very important part of the application when you're putting in a proposal. So don't forget that along with all the 99-100 other requirements that we have, but it is very important to us because we realize that's a key to success is is a is a well thought out mentoring plan. Thank you so much. Can I just, can I just mention Ahlishia, which was something that I think came up with some of the questions when we were presenting, w

e were really presenting a a component of the education program and that we have at NIFA. There are many other education programs at NIFA and so don't just look at these programs that we put put out but also many others that are there. There's some integrated programs programming that these even focused on research has some component of education cause usually they're graduate students involved. There was a a question about community based education which you know in many are the cases which was

addressed today was you know the extension programming and there are opportunities there through both competitive and capacity programs. So in, in, in, in one of those areas is in food and nutrition area, food safety and nutrition area. Thank you, Peter. So do you have another question about new investigators? Can a research specialist from an 1890s university Research Center apply for a new Investigator SEED grant? So that would not be restricted by NIFA. So if they are, if their institution w

ill allow them to apply for that as a project director and they meet all the other requirements of a of a new investigator, then they would be allowed to apply, you know, under those circumstances. All right. Thank you so much. So I'm going to kind of expand to the rest of the panelists. Are there any unanswered questions in the chat that you want to answer? And if so, please raise your hand so I can hand over the floor to you, Nurun. Thank you, Ahlishia. There was one question regarding SBIR/ST

TR program. What are the educational degree or publication requirements? So I want to clarify on that Small Business Innovation program or STTR program does not require anyone to have a formal educational degree. So we really do not require any formal education or master's PhD or graduation. We do not look at that. We look at the overall if if the team has right people for innovation and putting those innovation into the market. So list of publication or formal education is not a requirement any

one can apply for SBIR/STTR approves. Thanks. Thank you, Narun. Are there any other questions that need to be answered? All right, I'm going to ask Neerja, Lynn, Danielle, Susan, do you see any questions that have not been answered? There's one about a research specialist from an 1890 Research Center can apply for an NI grant. And it's a it's they're asking, I suppose. Yeah. And we did. Mark did respond to that question. I thought so, but I didn't know if he'd just come in. So I'll I'll just dec

line that one. Thank you. Thank you so much. All righty. So I want to thank you for all of your questions and from the attendees and all of the questions that were answered by our panelists. Tomorrow we're going to start at the same time and the theme is going to be learning moments from grants management. The NIFA's Office of Grants and Financial Management and the Policy Units will present on topics including RFA and policy guidance, grants, management best practices for NIFA awards, accessing

and utilizing grant funds, including using ASAP and also facilitating their return of funds and oversight and compliance visits. I would like to thank all of the panelists and NIFA staff who worked hard behind the scenes to make this workshop a reality. NIFA staff are dedicated public servants and are here to help and I know this to be absolutely true. Feel free to send an e-mail with additional questions or feedback on today's presentations. We thank you and look forward to seeing you tomorrow

. Ahlishia, real quickly. We have one more question in the chat. Sure. Could you read it? I can't see it. Yeah, it says In case an applicant failed to apply for the right program but his or her submission qualified for another program, do you relocate the application to the right program, or is application just a disqualified? This depends on whether or not the application was submitted at the deadline for the other program. So there's a little bit of, you know, it kind of depends. We do general

ly try to get projects into the right program. If for some reason you feel like your application should have been considered into a different program, you definitely want to contact the program leaders and discuss it with them. But it doesn't necessarily disqualify you. Mark, do you want to add anything on to that? Yeah. And AFRI you know we have about 52 different program area priority. So we have a lot of that and we try to move them at around as Susan said they still have to meet the deadline

s and the restrictions for the for the other program of better fit. So if they don't fit in one and they can fit in another and they meet the deadline, we will move them. We we try not to disqualify applications for that reason. But you can submit a proposal two months late and submit it to the wrong program and hope we'll move it to the program that had the deadline two months earlier that that doesn't work. Thank you so much. That's a very important question. Are there any more questions? OK,

no open questions I see. So thank you times 2 and we appreciate you spending time with us today. We'll see you tomorrow.