The Agricultural Research, Education, and Extension Reform Act (AREERA) requires that states submit a Plan of Work (POW), including yearly accomplishments and results, in order to receive federal funding. As part of the POW and REEport integration initiative, changes to the Plan of Work and reporting requirements began in FY 2020 POW reporting.
Science Emphasis Areas (SEAs) are used by NIFA to develop, deliver and evaluate the agency's science objectives. SEAs help to ensure user-inspired research, education, and extension priorities remain the focus. The new state-defined critical issues are associated with NIFA SEAs to help organize and correlate state defined issues with NIFA's science priorities. At least one SEA will be associated to each critical issue in Plan of Work reports.
The nine Science Emphasis Areas are:
- Agroclimate Science
- Bioeconomy, Bioenergy, and Bioproducts
- Education and Multicultural Alliances
- Environmental Systems
- Family & Consumer Sciences
- Food Safety
- Human Nutrition
- Sustainable Agricultural Production Systems
- Youth Development
Knowledge Areas (KAs) are used to classify research projects today in REEport and the NIFA Reporting System (NRS). NIFA has already mapped KAs to a specific Science Emphasis Area (SEA). NIFA currently uses this mapping to identify which NIFA research projects support each agency strategic goal and objective. It is important to become familiar with what Knowledge Areas within NIFA's Manual of Classification are associated to each SEA to describe your research project or extension program during the initiation process.
This resource provides you with the Science Emphasis Area and Knowledge Area crosswalk.
Please visit the NIFA Reporting System (NRS) webpage and the REEport webpage for more information about each reporting system.