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The Land-Grant Institutions in the Insular Areas of the Caribbean and the Pacific, CariPac, have as mission "To provide excellent higher education in Agriculture and Food Science, within the Insular Areas, to meet the evolving needs of a global society." This supports the RIIA program goals: (1) To increase the number and diversity of students who will pursue and complete a 2- or 4-year postsecondary degree in the food and agricultural sciences, or other STEM fields closely related to the food and agricultural sciences, and encourage study in areas that contribute to any of the five NIFA Priority Areas. (2) To enhance the quality of postsecondary instruction to help meet current and future national food and agricultural sciences workplace needs. Each participating institution will focuses its objectives primarily on NIFA priority area of Global Food Security and Hunger. Through this proposal, we will continue to work together as a consortium to address the technological needs of each CariPac member institution as well as outreach activities to prospective students, acquisition of state of the art equipment, providing for faculty development trainings, activities and salary support, reviewing and updating curricular offerings, providing scholarships to agriculture and related science students, and offering hands-on research and study opportunities for undergraduates. We intend to help students achieve their professional goals by upgrading the quality of undergraduate instruction through modern instructional technologies and methodologies, updating disciplinary content, and by developing students analytical, interpersonal, leadership, communications, problem-solving, computational, decision-making, and entrepreneurship skills and global competencies. |