Luna Community College is implementing a Wildfire Resiliency Training Center to support recovery, mitigation, and planning for communities impacted by natural disasters. A $3 million USDA grant will provide support for training professionals to increase the workforce required to restore, rebuild, and re-invigorate forests, farm/range lands, and waterways catastrophically damaged during the worst wildfire in New Mexico history.
The project will provide support for students pursuing academic degrees or noncredit training programs in Agriculture and Natural Resource Development. This Luna Initiative for Food, Agriculture, Natural Resources and Human Sciences Training and Education Project, will address recruitment, enrollment, and retention. The project will be funded for a period of five years.
“We are thankful to the USDA for providing Luna this grant and we are excited about the opportunities it will create for students in our communities and beyond,” said Luna President Dr. Edward Martinez. “The wildfires and flooding in 2022 was devastating to our service area. We’re excited to implement this project.”
While the nation, the state, and the local communities in Luna’s service area are in need of professionals in the STEM fields, the predominantly minority and low-income population of northeastern New Mexico faces significant obstacles in pursuing both credit and non-credit STEM education and training. The recent wildfires and subsequent flooding have served to exacerbate the need for STEM professionals in areas of study that include natural resource improvement and conservation, wildland resiliency, forestry, fire protection, farm and range management, nutrition and food science, rural development, economic mobility, poverty, sociology and rural demography, and ecology studies.
“This grant will allow us to train future leaders who will work in northern New Mexico communities rehabilitating our land and forests,” said Dr. Martinez.
In order to ameliorate the barriers for minority and low-income students and to increase the numbers of STEM professionals, Luna will develop stackable credentials that will allow students multiple opportunities to enter and exit the education system, from short-term workshops that can lead directly to land recovery and/or a paying job, to transferable degrees that complete the first two years of a baccalaureate.
Recruitment and delivery will be informed by faculty training and wraparound, comprehensive, research-proven services for increasing student success. Additional student support will be available in the form of internships and financial aid. Luna’s project will engage, attract, enroll, retain, and graduate students in current and innovative areas of study appropriate for both local, immediate, and long-term disaster recovery needs and USDA mission-critical workforce needs.
As part of the objectives, Luna plans to use proven programs in community outreach, tutoring, and mentoring, academic and career advisement active learning pedagogy, and asynchronous online coursework.
Luna will also expand its training to increase the workforce required to restore, re-build and re-invigorate forests, farm/range lands, and waterways catastrophically damaged during the worst wildfire in New Mexico history, which occurred in Luna’s service area during the summer of 2022.
Luna’s grant comes from the recently announced U.S. Department of Agriculture’s $262.5 million investment in institutions of higher education to foster the next generation of diverse agricultural professionals across the nation. This program is funded by President Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, which aims to lower costs for American families, expand access to markets to producers from all backgrounds and communities, build a clean energy economy, and strengthen American supply chains.
“Each generation of agricultural professionals faces new challenges as we feed our world’s growing population, and the future generations give me hope that we will rise to the occasion to meet these challenges with opportunity,” said Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack. “We need to ensure our youth have the education and training they need to accelerate the development of an agricultural system that is climate-smart, sustainable, profitable, and equitable. This historic investment from the Biden-Harris Administration in our nation’s Minority-serving Institutions brings us closer to building a workforce that represents the richness and diversity of all the communities we serve.”
The National Institute of Food and Agriculture’s (NIFA) “From Learning to Leading: Cultivating the Next Generation of Diverse Food and Agriculture Professionals Program” (NextGen) will enable eligible institutions, from New York to the Northern Mariana Islands, to build and sustain the next generation of food, agriculture, natural resources, and human sciences workforce. This includes efforts to strengthen USDA’s workforce through enhanced educational support, experiential learning, and exposure to early career opportunities. Eligible institutions include 1890 Land-grant Universities, 1994 Tribal Colleges and Universities, Hispanic-serving Institutions (HSI), Alaska Native-serving and Native Hawaiian-serving Institutions and institutions of higher education located in the insular areas, as well as their partners. The $262.5 million investment will provide training and support to more than 20,000 future food and agricultural leaders through 33 project partners.
“The vision we have at NIFA is to feed and nourish all Americans and create economic opportunity for more American families. Equity and diversity are the two central elements in this vision. One goal of the NextGen program is to identify, inspire and prepare our youth, particularly in underrepresented communities, to be the next generation of hunger fighters and agricultural problem solvers. This is the right thing to do and the right time,” said NIFA Director Dr. Manjit Misra.
The NextGen program is part of USDA’s commitment to equity across the Department and steps it has taken under Secretary Vilsack’s direction to improve equity and access, eliminate barriers to its programs for underserved individuals and communities, and build a workforce more representative of America. Earlier in the year, the USDA Equity Commission, which is comprised of independent members from diverse backgrounds, released its interim recommendations to remove barriers to inclusion and access at USDA, including by strengthening research, extension, and teaching in the food and agricultural sciences at all minority-serving institutions.
The NextGen program is also an important component of the Department and President Biden’s vision to advance racial equity and support for underserved communities through the federal government. USDA touches the lives of all Americans each day in so many positive ways. In the Biden-Harris administration, USDA is transforming America’s food system with a greater focus on more resilient local and regional food production, fairer markets for all producers, ensuring access to healthy and nutritious food in all communities, building new markets and streams of income for farmers and producers using climate-smart food and forestry practices, making historic investments in infrastructure and clean energy capabilities in rural America, and committing to equity across the Department by removing systemic barriers and building a workforce more representative of America. To learn more, visit www.usda.gov.
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