Blumenthal, Murphy, DeLauro Announce Over $260,000 in USDA Funding to Provide Scientific Research Opportunities at Southern Connecticut State University
HARTFORD, CT (March 23, 2017) — Today, U.S. Senators Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Chris Murphy (D-CT) and U.S. Representative Rosa DeLauro (CT-03) announced $261,436 in U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) funding to Southern Connecticut State University. The funding will support Southern Connecticut State University's Summer Undergraduate Fellows in Plant Health and Protection program, which will provide research opportunities in the field of plant science to students with no prior research experience.
"This funding will provide an exciting opportunity for students looking to gain critically important agriculture research experience. The hard-working and motivated students of Southern Connecticut State University will have a leg up in securing good-paying, high-skilled agricultural and scientific jobs. The USDA grant is a wise investment in Connecticut students," said Blumenthal, Murphy, and DeLauro.
"Every year the field of agriculture and natural resources has about 60,000 high-skilled job openings, but only 35,000 graduates trained to fill them. This program is designed to expose students to some of the opportunities out there and the skills that are in strong demand. I am very excited to offer this opportunity in Connecticut. When it comes to applying for science jobs or graduate programs, research experience is prized even more than grades or test scores. But this experience can be hard to get at undergraduate colleges. We have really sought to recruit students who have never had a research internship before, to help them get their foot in the door. We hope to help them use this experience to compete for slots in the top national internship programs later in their college careers, which will really be a ticket to wherever they want to go," said Dr. Lindsay Triplett, Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, New Haven.
"This is a great opportunity for students to get real world experience in agricultural research. We are excited to be encouraging more students to get involved in plant science research. This program brings together students from multiple Universities from across Connecticut to work in both the lab and the field to participate in crop research to improve plant health. Agricultural lab and field research often require a different skill set than students learn in the classroom and we are excited to give our students the opportunity to master these skills this summer in partnership with the CT Agricultural Experimental Station," said Dr. Rebecca Silady, Southern Connecticut State University.
The Summer Undergraduate Fellows in Plant Health and Protection program, in a new collaboration between Southern Connecticut State University and the Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, will target first-time researchers who are members of underrepresented minorities or first-generation college students for recruitment.
Today, USDA announced more than $5 million in grants for fellowship opportunities for undergraduate students at colleges and universities. These awards are made through NIFA's Research and Extension Experiences for Undergraduate (REEU) Fellowships program, part of the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative's (AFRI) Education and Literacy Initiative.