Dear Colleagues,

USDA NIFA AFRI has announced the FY 20 Education and Workforce Development Program which addresses projected shortfalls of qualified graduates in the agricultural, food, and renewable natural resources sectors of the U.S. economy. This RFA seeks applications for education and training grants that focus on further enhancing the distinct components of the pipeline for developing the workforce in the food and agricultural sciences. 

For this funding cycle, the EWD program has introduced a new program area, “The Rapid Response to Novel Coronavirus (SARS-COV-2): Innovating Formal and Non-Formal Educational Experiences in Food and Agricultural Sciences During the Time of Social Distancing” with code A7701”.  The COVID-19 pandemic is impacting the nation's programs for youth development, education, and workforce development, including those in the food and agricultural sciences supporting the six Farm Bill Priority areas of AFRI. There is a need for the formal and non-formal education activities, particularly in the rural areas as the economy reopens, while social distancing to keep COVID-19 infection rates under control. This program area priority addresses the need to develop and deploy rapid, reliable, and readily-adoptable strategies in workforce preparation through formal K-14 education, as well as in youth development through non-formal (e.g., extension) education to cultivate interest and competencies in STEM and agriculture during this challenging time. Funded projects are expected to develop tools, techniques, and other practices that can be rapidly adopted at home or by various educators and extension specialists to ensure the effective formal and non-formal education of K-14 students and youth development. 

Projects should develop and deploy rapid, reliable, and readily-adoptable formal and non-formal extension educational resources and strategies for youth and students at K-14 levels in disciplines of food and agricultural science supporting the six AFRI Farm Bill priority areas.  Formal and non-formal education and workforce development projects may utilize technology and create new digital or non-digital learning resources that can be deployed during the COVID-19 pandemic and during the recovery from it. Non-formal education programs for youth development should take a “whole child” approach given the psychological stress and trauma that can be manifested as a result of physical isolation or other stressors. Projects should include strategies to ensure access to content by diverse participants and/or practitioners during periods of limited or no internet or technology access. Projects should create or update, innovative, interactive learning resources that align with National and/or State Standards and are not duplicative of other existing resources. 

Regional Scale Grants are limited to $1,000,000 total per project (including indirect costs) for project periods of up to 2 years and are not renewable.  National Scale Grants must not exceed $3,000,000 total for up to 2 years.

Before preparing an application, applicants must contact Dr Emma Moran by email at emma.moran@usda.gov to inquire about the suitability of their project for submission to this program. 

To learn more about this funding opportunity, please visit the program website: https://nifa.usda.gov/sites/default/files/rfa/FY-2020-AFRI-Education-Workforce-Development-Modification-%2007162020.pdf

Thank you.

Kathleen Nolan, Director, ANR Office of Contracts & Grants (OCG)

Dear Colleagues,

The California State Library has announced their launch of the California Grants Portal, a single website to find all state grant opportunities. 

The portal can be accessed at: grants.ca.gov 

Thank you.

Kathleen Nolan, Director, ANR Office of Contracts & Grants (OCG)

Dear Colleagues,

The California Natural Resources Agency will be accepting proposals for the Youth Community Access Grant Program from July 14th, 2020 to September 16th, 2020.

The program, funded by Proposition 64, seeks projects that support youth access to natural or cultural resources with a focus on low-income and disadvantaged communities including, but not limited to, community education and recreational amenities to support youth substance use prevention and early intervention.

Approximately $5.7 million in awards will be funded by this program. Applicants submitting the most competitive proposals will be invited to participate in the next level of the competitive process, estimated to begin Spring 2021.

If you are interested in the funding program, please consider attending a technical assistance workshop during the month of August. All workshops will be held via webcast. Each workshop will have a limited number of participants and RSVP is required. Workshop dates and times are available at the following registration link: https://forms.gle/aBMVUrYd7XKgf1t29.

For more information about the program, please visit: https://resources.ca.gov/grants/youth 

Thank you.

Kathleen Nolan, Director, ANR Office of Contracts & Grants (OCG)

Dear Colleagues,

The National Science Foundation (NSF), Directorate for Engineering requests applications for the Disaster Resilience Research Grants (DRRG) program with a letter of intent deadline of August 14, 2020.

Scientific and engineering research can contribute significantly to disaster resilience by revealing fundamental principles with implications for actions that can improve the nation's disaster resilience. With this joint solicitation, the NSF and the U.S Department of Commerce (DOC) National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) call for proposals for research to advance fundamental understanding of disaster resilience in support of improved, science-based planning, policy, decisions, design, codes, and standards. Advances in scientific and engineering methods and tools relevant to resilience are also of interest.

Natural hazards that are of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Windstorm events, including hurricanes and tornadoes;
• Water events, including hurricanes, sustained rain, both coastal and inland flood, and tsunamis;
• Wildland-urban interface fires;
• Earthquakes.

Terrorism, industrial accidents, and pandemics are not covered by this competition.  Projects that aim to address multi-hazard resilience phenomena are welcome.

Processes associated with disaster resilience that are of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Destructive forces associated with hazards, such as wind forces, seismic forces, water forces, and wildland-urban interface fire-related radiative, convective, or branding forces;
• Performance of structures and infrastructure in natural hazard events;
• Assessment of potential community-level disaster consequences, including characterization of risks, potential failures, and anticipated losses in support of planning and decision making;
• Development or assessment of alternatives for improving resilience that address prevention, preparedness, response, mitigation, or recovery;
• Diffusion, adoption and implementation of measures for resilience of households, organizations, or jurisdictions.

Entities associated with disaster resilience that are of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Structures;
• Infrastructures/Lifelines;
• Communities/National, State, Local, Tribal Territorial Jurisdictions;
• Households.

Disaster resilience-related policies and practices that are of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Building design practices, codes, and standards;
• Infrastructure design practices, codes, and standards;
• Community planning and decision making;
• Household planning and decision making;
• Land-use planning and decision making.

Two congressionally mandated interagency coordination programs — the National Earthquake Hazards Reduction Program (NEHRP) and the National Windstorm Impacts Reduction Program (NWIRP) — make NSF and NIST responsible to promote the nation's resilience to earthquake and windstorm hazards respectively. The Director of NSF and the Director of NIST serve as the senior leadership for both NEHRP and NWIRP, along with the FEMA Administrator and the Director of the USGS (for NEHRP) and the NOAA Administrator (for NWIRP).

For both NEHRP and NWIRP, NSF is responsible to advance fundamental understanding that can be used to achieve those goals and NIST is responsible to ensure that fundamental new insights are translated to practice, as well as to conduct applied research directly. The laws also direct the agencies to coordinate to achieve those goals. This solicitation is designed to help both agencies better meet their NEHRP and NWIRP responsibilities, as well as their overall missions, via collaboration.

In addition, for several years, the OSTP-OMB priority memos have encouraged all science and technology agencies to pursue work relevant to the resilience of the nation, particularly its critical infrastructure, to natural hazards. The memos have also strongly encouraged agencies to coordinate, collaborate, and partner in order to maximize the probability of achieving national priorities. This solicitation adheres to the spirit of those priorities.

Toward the goals and responsibilities listed above, this joint solicitation is designed to enable both NSF and NIST to collaborate and partner to, among other things:

• Encourage the nations' university-based research communities to pursue resilience-relevant research across the spectrum from fundamental to applied, in support of NEHRP and NWIRP;
• Enable agency staff (as well as the reviewing community) to better understand the range of research ideas and capabilities across the nation, across the fundamental to applied spectrum. Improved understanding will enable more effective policy design and coordination across agencies going forward;
• Convene all the awardees in a jointly designed annual PI meeting, that will (a) enable investigators to share research approaches and results; (b) ensure that findings are shared with Federal scientists and engineers with responsibility to improve resilience policies and standards; and (c) encourage discussion of potential new collaborations, including translational opportunities.

Program funding is $3,100,000 for FY20.  It is anticipated that 8 to 12 awards will be made, with an award size of $200,000 up to a maximum of $400,000.

For additional information, please review the program's website: https://www.nsf.gov/pubs/2020/nsf20581/nsf20581.htm

The letter of intent deadline is 8/14/2020.

Thank you.

Kathleen Nolan, Director, ANR Office of Contracts & Grants (OCG)