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Higher Education Challenge (HEC) Grants Program

Higher Education Challenge Program provides funding to eligible applicants to help ensure a competent, qualified, and diverse workforce will exist to serve the food and agricultural sciences system.

The purpose of the Higher Education Challenge Grants Program, under assistance listing 10.217, is to strengthen institutional capacities, including curriculum, faculty, scientific instrumentation, instruction delivery systems, and student recruitment and retention, to respond to identified state, regional, national, or international educational needs in the food and agricultural sciences, or in rural economic, community, and business development. 

Funding Opportunity 

Who Is Eligible to Apply 

  • 1862 Land-Grant Institutions
  • 1890 Land-Grant Institutions
  • 1994 Land-Grant Institutions
  • Hispanic-Serving Institutions
  • State Controlled Institutions of Higher Ed
  • Non-Land-Grant Colleges of Agriculture (NLGCA)
  • Other or Additional Information (See below)

More Information on Eligibility

a) U.S. public or private nonprofit colleges and universities offering a baccalaureate or first professional degree in at least one discipline or area of the food and agricultural sciences;

b) land-grant colleges and universities, (including land-grant institutions in the Insular Areas);

c) colleges and universities having significant minority enrollments and a demonstrable capacity to carry out the teaching of food and agricultural sciences; and

d) other colleges and universities having a demonstrable capacity to carry out the teaching of food and agricultural sciences.

Program type
Grant Program

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