From Learning to Leading: Cultivating the Next Generation of Diverse Food and Agriculture Professionals

The NextGen Program seeks to raise awareness, recruit, retain, train students for careers in the food, agriculture, natural resources, and human sciencesin order to increase the availability of a well skilled workforce supportive of the food and agricultural sector.
NextGen Projects Support Three Main Activities:
1)Outreach and Engagement to raise awareness and exposing learners to possible food and agriculture careers.
2)Scholarships and Fellowships that reduce financial challenges for student recruitment, retention, and graduation from associate, bachelor's, master's and doctoral degree programs.
3)Experiential Learning Opportunities which support paid domestic or international internships and apprenticeships that provide job shadowing, hands-on learning, and peer-to-peer engagement for students to put academic knowledge into action and develop job-ready skills.

American Rescue Plan Act of 2021, Section 1006(b)(4)(A-E), as amended by Section 22007 of the Inflation Reduction Act (Pub.L 117-169), defines eligible applicants as 1890 land-grant institutions, 1994 land-grant institutions, Alaska Native serving institutions and Native Hawaiian serving institutions, Hispanic-serving institutions, and insular area institutions of higher education located in the U.S. territories.

Applications are subjected to a system of peer and merit review in accordance with section 103 of the Agricultural Research, Extension and Education Reform Act of 1998 (7 U.S.C. 7613) by a panel of qualified scientists and other appropriate persons who are specialists in the field covered by the proposal. Within the limit of funds available for such purpose, the NIFA Authorized Departmental Officer (ADO) shall make grants to those responsible, eligible applicants whose applications are judged most meritorious under the procedures set forth in the RFA.

Reviewers will be selected based upon training and experience in relevant scientific, extension, or education fields, taking into account the following factors:

(a) The level of relevant formal scientific, technical education, or extension experience of the individual, as well as the extent to which an individual is engaged in relevant research, education, or extension activities;

(b) the need to include as reviewers experts from various areas of specialization within relevant scientific, education, or extension fields;

(c) the need to include as reviewers other experts (e.g., producers, range or forest managers/operators, and consumers) who can assess relevance of the applications to targeted audiences and to program needs;

(d) the need to include as reviewers experts from a variety of organizational types (e.g., colleges, universities, industry, state and Federal agencies, private profit and non-profit organizations) and geographic locations;

(e) the need to maintain a balanced composition of reviewers with regard to minority and female representation and an equitable age distribution; and

(f) the need to include reviewers who can judge the effective usefulness to producers and the general public of each application.

Evaluation Criteria will be delineated in the Notice of Funding Opportunity (NOFO)