 Good afternoon everyone. My name is Catherine Bohr as chair of the national academies of sciences engineering and medicine committee on enhancing coordination between land grant colleges and universities. I would like to welcome everyone to today's virtual workshop session entitled the role of capacity for collaboration in the land grant system. This is the final workshop session of the committee's study and serves as our capstone event. Earlier this year, the committee posted for stakeholder feedback, 17 preliminary observations about collaboration across the land grant system. Nowhere in our original document did the word capacity appear. However, in the responses that we received from stakeholders, the word capacity was mentioned 38 times in different contexts that ranged from the ability of a faculty member to have the skills to lead collaboration to the ability for faculty to carve out time from their teaching and other commitments to participate in collaborative activity to the ability of an institution to take on partnerships to expand its reach. The notion of capacity constraints was also raised in many other contexts, such as in the pros and cons of capacity funding and competitive grants. So the committee felt it was important to explore this topic and its dimensions a bit further. What happens, very recently, we discovered a report that was released from the board on higher education and workforce entitled defense research capacity at historically black colleges and universities, and other minority institutions, transitions from good intentions to measurable outcomes. When we looked at that report, we recognized very similar themes to those identified by our stakeholders, and to that end, we are delighted to have with us today the co chair of the committee that produced that report, and that's Dr Alicia McLean, and she will give us an overview of that reports findings. We are also pleased that we are joined today by Rolando Flores Galarza from New Mexico State University, which is designated as both an 1862 land grant institution, as well as an Hispanic serving university. We are also joined by Benita Litsyn from Denae College, which serves the Navajo tribe. We will hear what capacity means in terms of their institutions and their work, and particularly as it relates to collaborative efforts. Afterwards we'll have a discussion with the three of these presenters and members of the committee. The public can also ask questions, which I'll get to in a moment. We have two members of the study committee joining us online today. And in the interest of time, rather than have them introduce themselves individually. I'm going to ask the study staff to put up a slide with a list of the members, so that the public audience can see who is on the committee. This virtual workshop is intended to inform the final report of the committee, which we plan to complete and to release in September. The committee's report will make recommendations on how to encourage collaborations across the land grant system that will be successful and impactful. So we are looking forward to insight to insights from today's discussion that will inform those recommendations. Before we begin, I want to let you know that the meeting is being recorded, and the recording will be posted on our project website about a week after this meeting. If you have a question and answer period, I'd like to ask everyone online to be mindful of the fact that the committee has not yet completed its report. So please don't leave here today thinking that comments made by members of the committee are our formal positions of the committee. And in addition, please recognize that committee members sometimes ask probing questions in these information gathering sessions that might not be indicative of their own personal views. I'd like to note that there is a Q&A box that the public can use to ask questions of today's speakers. We will get some of those questions answered as time permits. Please type in your questions at any time during the presentations so that we can have the questions ready for the discussion period. And with that, I would like to move to the first presentation for this session. And that is Dr. Alicia McLean. Alicia McLean is an associate professor and chair of the Department of Chemistry, and she's director of the Doord Institute for Mathematics and Applied Sciences Scholarship Program at Norfolk State University in Norfolk, Virginia. The Institute provides a rigorous honor program for students majoring in science, engineering, and mathematics to help prepare them for success in their graduate or medical school pursuits. Dr. McLean is a member of the American Chemical Society, American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the National Organization for the Professional Advancement of Black Chemists and Chemical Engineers. He is also a diamond life member of the Delta Sigma Theta sorority Inc. Dr. McLean has a BS in chemistry from Benedict College, a master of science in inorganic polymer chemistry from Clark Atlanta University, and a PhD in agriculture and environmental chemistry from the University of California Davis. And with that, Dr. McLean. Thank you, Dr. Moore for that wonderful introduction. Good afternoon, everyone. I'm Dr. Alicia McLean and I serve as chair, as vice chair, sorry, of the Academy study. I want to thank you all for joining me today to help allow me to go but overview of the consensus study report from the committee on defense research at historically black colleges and universities, and other minority institutions. I want to share my slides. Can you guys see that. Sorry about that. Yes, we see. Okay, full screen. Yes. Okay. All right, so again this study is on the defense capacity at his HPC use and other minority service institution. So before I begin, I want to take this moment to thank Ms. Evelyn Kent and her colleagues of the Secretary of the Defense, actually for their in the basic research office and Department of Defense as a whole, for this invested interest and for this study and the committee's request. In terms of the charge. As some of you may know that this particular study originated in the language in the FYI 2020 NDA legislation and framework as a framework. And so the National Academy's task force was the overarching charge for this particular committed to examine the status of HPC use research at the Department of Defense and minority institutions and the methods and means to advance this research capacity at these particular institutions. So before we get into the report conclusions and recommendations. It is important that I first note that the NDA language call for this particular studies, specify the focus on minority institutions with the NDA defining HPC use institutions of higher education with at least 50% underrepresented minority enrollment. Within this particular report, the committee flagged the points that minority institutions which are MIs are defined differently as MSI than the MSI, which are more likely known as minority serving institutions. The MSI that we may know is institutions that are either historically defined or enrollment defined and have varying thresholds requirements for minority enrollment and institutional expenditures. For example, Hispanic serving institutions are designated, which are HSIs can be designated as MSIs, but certain HSIs may not reach the student enrollment threshold criteria to be categorized as MIs. So it's very important that for this particular report and implementing policies, MIs are a subset with the larger group of MSIs and the research on MSIs cannot necessarily be applied with focusing on MIs institutions. To actually address the core tenets of the study, the committee developed two frameworks that it believed would be useful in moving for good intentions towards expressing the stakeholders to measurable outcomes. In particular, two frameworks were used to actually examine the capacity of HPC use and MIs. The committee determined the conclusions were based on the research findings for a range of topics to the methods and means and necessary for advancements for HPC use and MIs. On several slides, the committee research framework conclusion kind of talks about the full scope. There were a framework that we would like for you to look at in terms of the purpose of the report to determine the institutional capacity of that was conducted in the committee related research for these three mutually exclusive forces. So as you can see, we have the strong institutional research and contract based work, then you have your research faculty followed by your ancillary services. I wanted to note that although there are other factors that can be used as actual indicators to each program announcement or solicitation that could be considered for assessing research capacity. The committee framework kind of focus on these three overarching groups that we thought were necessary and effectively to compete for DOD funding. That shows the framework, how the committed developer framework to fully comprehend the and describe the research relevant to the different variations of HPC use and MIs as they are in a spectrum of research activity across the US of higher education landscape. So while we know that HPC use and MIs share commitment to supporting students success, especially students of color, they generally greatly vary in terms of the size or the affiliation, the location resources as such. So in order to provide you with a kind of scope in terms of the chronic classification system, the committee wanted you to note that the established framework categorize US colleges and universities in seven different groups, and those groups are doctoral, granting institution, master's colleges and universities, baccalaureate colleges, baccalaureate associate colleges, associate colleges, special focus institution and tribal colleges and universities. But most notably for this particular study with doctoral granting universities, institutions are designated as R1, which are very high research active and R2, which are high research active. So this particular slide gives you an idea and the variations in mind that the committed developer spectrum on the research activity for undergraduate centric research engage research active where they're more active involved in securing grants are either highly research active meaning that they have less teaching loads and things that need so this just gives you an actual scale on how we broke down the the actual categories for each one. So we wanted to highlight that for this event that the final chapter of this report the committee represent two overarching conclusions of the report that actually captures the committee's highest priority findings. In the first, in terms of strategic commitments. The goal is that we hope that the Department of Defense and the undersecretary to increase the research capacity of HBCUs and MIs to a more successfully compete for and execute DoD awards. So long term and additional investments are needed in research infrastructure, programmatic support as well as personnel. And also you find that there was some insufficient data collection that involves interdepartmental program coordination, long term record recordings, as well as a lack of evaluation of to appropriate access DoD total investment. So these are some of the measurable impacts on the advancement of the research capacity for HBCUs and MIs. Here we will present an overview of the 2022 final report recommendations, methods and means and to increase defense research capacity of HBCUs and MIs. For the sake of time we have abbreviated some of the language so we urge all of you to visit the summary of chapter six of the report to review all of the recommendations in much more greater detail. This first slide talks about how the committee analyzed, first the committee analysis for the funding data was from FYI 2010 through 2020, and it indicated there's not been much significant like expansion in the funding of research projects or research capacity awarded to a vast majority of HBCUs and MIs. So the data shows significant decrease in actual length and type of DoD funding awarded to HBCUs and MIs. And so HBCUs actually receive a disproportionate amount smaller share of the DoD and research development related funding that compared to non-HBCUs and MIs. So the committee found that there was significant difference in the research support between the HBCUs and MIs as well as the non-HBCUs and MIs. And they also looked at the HBCUs and MIs would not be able to compete or become competitive as the other institution for DoD funding without these areas that are listed and shown here. So actually to address these disparities, DoD existing discrete targeted HBCU funding and equipment funds should be redirected or significantly enhanced or a new program should be initiated to actually focus on long term capacity for institutional work. So this just shows recommendation A, which lists this in terms of the physical infrastructure, the institutional support, programmatic support, and the business venture. This next slide shows Part C where the committee states that some additional funding requests and appropriated for HBCU MIs and capacity building should be deployed to put military departments and T program offices in more direct contact with HBCUs. So it's just hope that these additional funds with more discretionary authority can allow institutional costs would be generally aimed at long term capacity building not discrete short term research capacity. Now, earlier in the discussion, the study process data collection phase we requested data from the Office of the Secretary of Defense and the military departments related DoD levels of investment and measurable impacts on the advancement of HBCUs and MIs. However, the data was insufficient to actually meet our needs specifically in terms of the organization, the details and the types, the completeness of data submission. So it kind of made it difficult for the committee to actually formulate research questions. So the committee offered recommendations to address these deficiencies in data collection, including relate to proposal submission, as well as research capacity. So 3A, 3B and 3C are shown here where 3A focuses on data collection and evaluation. We felt that the data collection and analysis should be continual and consistent across all of the military department of agencies in terms of proposal data collection for recommendation 3B. We hope that the data collection and coordination of USD and R&E in collaboration with the military department of defense and the other defense agencies that they should develop guidelines for data collection on defense research and institutional capacity of HBCUs and MIs. In addition, we made a recommendation that the USD and R&E should be issued to ensure coordination data collection and an existing database should be developed in order to provide DoD proposal data so that the funding trends across the board for HBCUs and MIs can be compared with other institutions in a systematic and organized manner. And then the last recommendation, which is 3C, we're looking at the research capacity collection of evaluation of data. Specifically, the USD, R&E engineers should work with the military department of defense agencies and institutions of higher education to do the following that's listed in one through four. And as you can see, determine the areas of data collection on institutional capacity, define the components of the research capacity for institution and higher education, as well as support future data analysis and access of the impact. So the data collection and the analysis should be performed on a continuous basis for all DoD grants and contract across the IGs. And should result in a formal and annual report to offices of the Secretary of Defense and Congress early in the calendar year to inform the development of future National Defense Acts and appropriate affiliations. In terms of fostering true partnership, this was one of the themes of the partnership resonated throughout the committee's discussion in terms of defining what a true partnership should be. In terms of true partnerships, we define that they should be one that are grounded on mutual respect, meaningful engagement, equity and funding and resources can present good opportunities for joint research and collaboration workforce development and technology transition and commercialization. And this is in order to help HBCUs and MI build and advance their own capacity to actually conduct DoD funded research. So the committee agreed upon three recommendation related to fostering two true partnerships, recommendation for A, discuss how USDA R&E should move past encouraging partnerships to incentivizing mutually beneficial true partnerships by adding those elements through an awarding evaluation criteria status. So that the HBCUs and MIs can actually develop and strategize on working on true partnership with these particular agencies. Recommendation for three, in terms of having contracts with true partnerships, it should include increased funding support for the partners and longer performance periods to allow for the capacity to be willing to occur at your HBCUs and MIs. Recommendation for C, we're trying to encourage the use of independent research and development to support HBCU MI research, capacity building, additional funding directed to small business technology transfer research as incentives for actually partnership with HBCU MIs. And then recommendation for D, it is hoped that this particular recommendation in terms of establishing data or descriptive tools as a resource, we hope that it can help aid in research and educational tools for collaboration between DoD funded entities as well as HBCUs, URs, FFRD industries as well as other facilities. So these, the recommendation five and six in terms of true partnerships, we looked at other recommendations in regards to USD and R&E should examine and highlight HBCUs that are in kind of pro proximity to DoD research centers and other DoD entities. And we thought that that would kind of help build the relationship between the faculty and those centers that are in close proximity and help to incentivize relationships in that capacity of those that are in the areas. And also we want to look at defense, the depth score and your F score programs to kind of help serve as models to expand the research capacities areas with low participation, such as your tribal colleges and university. And then lastly, recommendation six, we was thinking that the USD and R&E should compile a list of the HBCUs and MI institutions that receive STEM funding from other federal government agencies. And this list should be included data for the graduate programs, the majors that are office, as well as their research capabilities at those particular institutions. And lastly, in terms of incorporating a promising practices and programs, the committee expanded its programs related to the HBCUs and MI's and other federal government agencies. DoD has a number of programs that are actually designed to actually retain students, specializing in areas of STEM, and this includes their SMART programs that provide scholarships and fellowships to students in specific areas as it relates to DoD. This particular funding has demonstrated a long term success in the workforce development and help to increase the capabilities of HBCUs and MI's. And it also offers practices for other government agencies may be suitable for adoptions and by the DoD. And I was thinking that some of the practice that involved with the NIH and NSF in terms of trying to help establish these particular type of roles that these are some practices that DoD may want to try to implement and try to share with Congress as well as the House Office of Science and Technology policies and policies in order for them to actually be able to identify the opportunities and thus strengthen collaboration with those agencies to seek and leverage opportunities for building capacities at HBCUs and MI's. So, in conclusion, I'd like to show this slide includes the committee recommendation. These are our committee representatives. And again, I encourage you to visit the project page as well as our final report for any additional details on the program. Thank you for your time. Thank you so much, Dr. McLean, not only for your service on this important committee, but for summarizing these really critical points for us today and then for participating in the conversation that is yet to come in this session. And now I would like to turn to Dr. Rolando Flores de Larza. He is the Dean and the Chief Administrative Officer of the College of Agricultural, Consumer and Environmental Sciences, a position that he has held since 2016. In his current role, Dr. Flores demonstrates how technologies including big data, artificial intelligence and green energy can improve everything from water usage efficiency to soil health and carbon management. Far from being an ivory tower technocrat Dr. Flores connects directly with the people in rural communities who benefit the most from his research. And he is particularly with farmers and ranchers from rural communities and Native American land across New Mexico, as well as the Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sonora to help improve food production, and in the process, their livelihoods. Born and raised in Costa Rica, Rolando joined his country's National Production Bureau, Bureau after earning his mechanical engineering degree in 1974. With overseeing food processing investment projects, Dr. Flores implemented a series of technical innovations that sparked an economic revolution in Costa Rica, a revolution that continues to reverberate. Today, the country exports nearly 80 agricultural products in contrast to the four or five when he first joined the Bureau. In the 1980s, Dr. Flores came to the United States, earned a master's degree from Iowa State University, followed by a PhD from Kansas State University. After several years as a US Department of Agriculture researcher and later as an educator and administrator at the University of Nebraska. He joined New Mexico State University. And with that, Dr. Flores, please. Thank you, Dr. Moore. That was pretty generous in production. Thank you very much to all of you that I have the wanted to, I want to share some of the experiences that we have in New Mexico. And by means of this, I'm going to be a little bit into the parochial side by looking at the college, basically, and, and I wanted to, to share some, some, some data with the college of the college here so let's see how we can get these done. Okay. So the, the, the College of Agriculture, Consumer Environmental Sciences encompasses 12 departments, academic department, but it is, is the major driven driving force for the mission of the land grant university. And this is a teaching research and attention as the land grant university closes to a border, and specifically to the busiest animal crossing border in the world is here in New Mexico. And we are four minutes from the border, it really creates a lot of very interesting conditions. However, the, the college and a college of basis as defined by, by the, the main letters is around four major pillars and in which we guide our strategic plan and our activities, food and fiber, production and marketing, water use and conservation, family development, health of New Mexicans and environmental stewardship. Okay, this is a summary of, and I don't want, I'm not going to go into too much more details of what the college is and because what I want to do is, is, is take advantage of this opportunity as it was mentioned about what, what capacity is. We go, we have about 40 degrees. We have 1500 undergraduate students. We have about 200, close to 250 graduate students. Over, we have 33 offices in the state, one in each county by the cooperative extension, we have 12 science centers in very distinctive geological and on climatological areas of New Mexico that allow us for doing extensive extensive work within the college. We have eight academic departments, we have nine departments in extension that are all of those that are in the, under the same subject matter are under one leadership. So independently of the, so basically only four are independent and departments of extension. The college has the, you see the budgets of 27 million of the cooperative extension. And then we have in 34 million in agricultural experiment station during the last six years, the college has had the, the privilege of being the number one college of submitting funding proposals for funding and the largest amount that has in grants. We last year we made around 248 proposals we received in the order of, we submit about $80 million for requesting for funding, and we get close to to 30 million. This is, is quite impressive for, for the college at least for us. So the demographics of the college of New Mexico and specifically the college. I have them here on the screen, which is very, very interesting we have is the, the females is predominantly in the college is about 62% on the average but animal and rain science is 67% compared to the other ones in terms of Native American presence we have an in the college as 3.3 versus the 1.1.9% in the, in at the, at the university. We noted that we are located in Las Cruces, which is way south of New Mexico, and most of all the 18 tribes, pueblos and the Triapache tribes are more in the northern part but we have quite a strong presence with the, with Native American community. So this is a program in the college that is called and is independently funded by the legislature that is called India resource program and so on. So this is a, give you an idea of what is the work that the, the, the activities of the size of the college for some of you now having said that when we look at them, it's okay. And these are the, the eight academic departments. And I wanted to stop here because I want you to see how for example in in the college we call it the college of agriculture consumer and environmental sciences so we go all the way in the food chain from the soil all the way to the to the god we are being very blessed in the last couple of years by the fortunate by the voters of New Mexico that approve a couple of geo bonds, a general obligation bonds that allow us to have three major buildings for the college of agriculture one of those is the food safety and security pilot plan that it will be a meat processing facility, along with food processing and so on feed meal that and and then another one is the my biomedical facility these three components are going to be changing the physiology of the college of agriculture and consumer and environmental sciences. Okay, I want to mention is top of this point I mentioned that the, when we talk about capacity, I really was trying to figure out exactly what what you were meaning on that with the current capacity but I just wanted to mention that in terms of capacity funds that the college received from federal funds, it has been the amount has been very steady over the last 10 years. That means that over the last 10 years, 70% of the funds for a yes our culture is permanent stations and 10% for extension have come from federal funds. And now the last five years is 6% of a yes and 10% for C years. So, this basically it tells you in the funding the capacity funding by coming directly from the federal funds are being pretty much very, very steady. A couple of comments that I want to mention here because as after listening to the previous presentation and the opportunities. I want to be a little bit more anecdotal in some of of the cases that we see here. If you look at at the structure of the colleges or the cultural culture and also happens in the other colleges. We are one person deep across the board. Now, by being the only the flagship land grant or the land grant University in New Mexico, we are needed to address all the components that we mentioned I mentioned before here under the before the pillars of the college. And then pretty much is is is a lot that we need to cover and we are one person deep. The major disadvantage with one person deep is that when you have to submit for proposals. The pool is limited. However, what we have found that is extremely important, and it gives us some leverage in the way how we have been working lately is that by being one person deep. We cannot too deep in certain areas, it gives the capacity to build interdisciplinary teams. And I'm going to refer to two one one is the artificial intelligence team at about three years ago. We started looking at how the different departments were working in engineering and art and sciences, and the need to move the college into digital agriculture. And how do we go beyond I just, instead of following identifying me clearly what are those big demands that New Mexico give us that are quite different. And the demands that you've seen in in in the Midwest, for example, so we are in an arid and semi arid environment in which the the environments are quite sensible and they they have a lot of limitations that we have had other issues to be so as we look at our agriculture. And this is a important to look at that by having done all my work and started in the Midwest is quite different. For example, here in New Mexico, we don't have feedlots, and we do actually have a research center in Clay Center one of those science centers that is dedicated to the impact study of the impact of cattle movement, transportation, and so on and so forth. So it creates a lot of different challenges for us and how do we get deep into resolving some of these problems. And also, the state of New Mexico is very generous with with the higher education in terms of the, we are close to 4547% of the funding that the university received from the state, but look at from the point of view that is all of this is 90% is faculty salaries. And this has created a big issues in terms of our science centers, the fair maintenance which is the general norm all around the the nation. So, when we look at being just one person deep. And that creates the opportunity to build up teams. I was mentioning about the three years ago, we build up a team with the College of Art and Sciences, the College of Engineering and the College of Agriculture and some elements of the business college of business into putting a team. Of course, we were able to have a couple of faculty members that they were champion this. Well, by at that time we did we had elements of artificial intelligence, but not a strong team or core activity into that at this moment. We just got a grant of three million, and we are going to be moving into that direction, it has been challenging and with a lot of persistence to do that. The other component that we have that we have seen in this when we look at this approach of creating capacity in our limitations is in the area of carbon management. Carbon management in the air arid and semi arid lands is extremely different that if it is managed in other areas so we are able to build some of these, some of these partnerships, and some of this work. And also, there is cultural issues that need to be broken. In many cases when there is some traditions of, of just only keeping terms, identify breaking silos and so on but I think we are making inroads into into that direction. And those new initiatives in which we are working very strongly is in the incorporation of energy management within farms and our ranches we actually have one of our ranches in Corona that have 38 wind turbines and this wind energy is exported to the city of Los Angeles. So, and this facility is 28,000 acres. So there is area is something that we have a lot here. In terms of, of holdings of land holdings enemies you, if it is not the largest is one of the largest in terms of land management. I want to, I want to stop here. And I hope I have addressed some of the major, major elements that were respected here and I will continue here for the further questions. Thank you. Thank you so much Dr flores that that you are spot on with regard to the interests of the work of this committee so we very much appreciate your participation today and look forward to the discussion that will follow. We turn to Benita Litson and Benita Litson has served in the capacity of the DNA College land grant director, since 2006. She is of the Navajo tribe, and has been using her experience and farming and ranching alongside her family, as a means to develop much needed programs for Navajo farmers and ranchers on the Navajo nation. She has spent many years strengthening the DNA College land grant programs and initiatives. Collaborating with 1862 institutions and other higher educational institutions has been a real strength, leading to many long lasting programs that were created for students for farmers and for ranchers. So overarching goal to the programs created is to develop much needed infrastructure to move farmers and ranchers to the next level, whether it is increasing provision of local foods, improving range health, or bridging the gap of future farmers and ranchers. And with that, I would like to turn the floor over to Benita Litson. Good afternoon. Thank you so much for inviting me to be a panelist today. I hope you all can hear me well. First I'll do an introduction in Navajo. I'm here at DNA College. I have been here for the past, actually 18 years, actually really trying to understand land grant opportunities and programs at a tribal college. The DNA College is the oldest tribal college across the nation. It was formed in 1968. And since then, you know, there's have been several tribal colleges that have established along the way. We are over 30 tribal colleges across the nation. And in 1994 we were privileged to become a part of the land grant family as a 1994 land grant institution. We actually do have quite a bit of 1994 tribal college land grant institution. So there's us here at DNA College. We have three in New Mexico, which is the Crown Point Institute of Technology, or now known as Navajo Technical University. We also have SIPI Southwest Indian Polytechnic Institute. And we have the, there's another one, I just drew a blank on them, but they're based out of San Jose IA Institute for American Indian Arts, and we have another Tejana Autumn Community College down south near the Mexico border in Arizona. So we have four, and I believe one other tribal college that's starting up is San Carlos Community College, and in my understanding they will be seeking land grant status in the years to come as they strengthen their capacity also. So alongside that, you know, we totally heard Mr. Flores talk about New Mexico State University as, you know, as a large program, and it was just in awe and understanding that just in the Agriculture Department he has 12, that I see 12,000 or went out, you know, there was quite a bit of enrollment. As at our college, we have anywhere from 1300 to 1500 enrollment and we have been, you know, fluctuating back and forth. And so in that regards, you know, we think about how smaller institution is and the different types of degree programs that we do offer here at DNA. So as we began, we, you know, we started more as a certificate granting institution moved into an associate program. And the past few, I want to say six years we have moved into offering bachelor's degree programs here at Deni College and just this year, we're going to be offering our first master's degree program in biology. So that's a huge stepping stone for us. But if you're not familiar with tribal colleges and how things operate. Many of our colleges are tribal chartered. So we do have to also operate under the tribal government structure, in addition to the chartering institution that charters us to to be able to, you know, educate students. So there's multi levels, I feel like there's multi levels of things that we need to to think about in terms of capacity building. I can use myself and as an example, you know, as I came into the college and not knowing what land grant met or means, and really trying to figure out what that means for the institution, and having the institution also that we are a land grant institution and being able to support the initiatives under, you know, the land grant opportunities. I had to really reach out to our 1862 institution that was privileged to work with New Mexico State University, so much closer than our own here in Arizona, which is University of Arizona. And it was, you know, just the right time in where I was able to meet with Dr. Paul Gutierrez, who was extension director at the time. And I felt like that mentoring role at that time was what was much needed, you know, to really understand what an 1862 institution land grant capacity is, and what we had to build here at a tribal college. So think about tribal colleges. Denae College is one of the largest tribal colleges on the, you know, across the nation, you have smaller tribal colleges that might have 300 students. But our capacity, need for capacity building is as much needed at multi levels, I want to say, whether it's going to be faculty building research partnerships or research opportunities for students, or to staffing to be able to understand what it means to run a program or a department that's effective and efficient, and also just seeking additional funding to support those opportunities that you may want to create. So another, another, another piece to this is, because we're so close to our tribal charter, we also have a lot of turnover in our, in our tribal colleges. So as things shift, and new people come in, it's a continuous, you know, capacity building opportunity for that next person to either understand your program, learn about your program, improve upon what's established, and being able to kind of run with what's already going and be a part of the growth to an institution. So that, that's very, very important. On many levels, you know, as we have strengthened the land grant opportunities here at Denae College. We're finding that our staffing, you know, needs continuous capacity building, because there's, you know, when we talk about extension there's so many different subsets of, of, of need across the nation. And just with the pandemic and identifying, you know, our communities struggling with access to food or access to clean water was definitely a huge, huge eye opener. You know, you thought about these things and we kind of felt like we were already were in it, but when you have to drive two hours away for your food, you know, to purchase your food and you see that there's no food on the shelves. And you drove there a long ways and you're coming home without, you know, the amount of groceries that you need for the time that you're going to be at home. So those were huge, huge eye openers for not just us as a institution but our nation. So, we have started really pushing food security food sovereignty as as one of our initiatives in addition to agriculture you can't you can't have food understanding agriculture concepts. So, in that capacity it feels like things are moving pretty fast for us and trying to, you know, train as many people to be food safety certified and being able to grow healthy foods. And on the other hand also training professionals to accept the food that's being grown and putting it into, you know, our food system. And so there's a lots of level of multi, I want to say multi level capacity building that needs to happen. And what has helped us to to continue to move forward is really listening to our stakeholders listening to our producers. An example yesterday we were able to meet with over 50, 50 farmers and producers along with local chapter delegations and we talked about their challenges as we move out of the pandemic. And so that's a whole new set of needs that we need to start developing and creating and what is that training program going to look like. And also the need to ensure that we're training in our own language, it adds an additional I want to say barrier because as our new professionals are coming in, they're not fluent Navajo speakers. So we're having to, you know, look for fluent Navajo speakers who also have educational background to be able to explain the concepts that are being taught. And there's a lot of that and that's where I mean, there's so much, so much need. And, and as we listen to our stakeholders, we start to begin to think about what's important to them. And what do we need to create, and what do we need to do to, you know, for ourselves to prepare ourselves to be able to be efficient and effective as we become the instructors. Whether it's to through informal education system, meaning going out to the chapters going out to the corrals or the farm farm lands and being able to do that kind of work. Myself here we have a staff of six, and we're fortunate to have several furtep agents is what they're called federally tribal recognize extension programs through University of Arizona. I believe they have four so across the way we only have 10 extension agents over the Navajo nation, which is the size of West Virginia. And so, one of our ways of trying to work effectively is having us meet together and pull our strengths together and be able to regionally conduct programming together, or making sure that we're not duplicating programs in certain areas. And so that's been something that we have have been, I want to say, good at doing, and also something that we have struggled with doing. As I mentioned, you know, with turnover, it's, it's hard to kind of build continue to build that momentum as we have to, you know, continuously train another person to to act and and respond the same way as we have. So, for tribal colleges it's been very, very challenging here at the institution, you know, we're really moving toward a research base setting. So we're tying research to the land grant or the community needs. An example is, you know, our scarcity in water, what are our alternative water sources and building research around that capacity and teaching local leaders to have a voice at the level, you know, at our nation Navajo Nation table to be able to advocate for certain findings for different regions of the Navajo Nation. And so it's as much as we feel like, you know, we're at the bottom of the of the table when it comes to those decision making the things that we're able to teach is the foundation that brings. That those programings or opportunities to a greater part of the Navajo Nation so we feel like we're a huge part of nation building in an example. And as in the introduction I was saying infrastructure is very, very important and that's something the Navajo Nation lacks. As we start training our producers to grow, you know, foods locally and start training them to abide by FISMA foods, you know, food safety standards. We don't have proper facilities for them to utilize our access so that they can continue to make those sales or those connections. That you know some a lot of my time has been really looking for funding to support long term infrastructure that's going to support the Navajo Nation and the college at the same time to be able to bridge those gaps together. We're happy to say that in our northern Navajo, which is also in New Mexico will be having a horticulture center that will now be able to, you know, house 100 farmers and ranchers for conferences and programs that will have a commercial kitchen. You know things like that is very, very important, but along those concepts as we build infrastructure, the need to build capacity to fill those positions and understand, you know, the ability and the importance of and the value of these part these programs to to make those connections happen and just continue to support our farmers and ranchers throughout the Navajo Nation and connecting them to the next generation. Yesterday we we talked about water security and I don't know if you guys are familiar with the dam in page Arizona, but it is one of the main electrical forming. There's two big dams that does a lot of electrical support to a lot of the Southwest, but they're going dry. And so what you know what's going to happen next. So there's so much things going on here and, and we're having to have to reach out and find local local and regional residents to come in and train our staff work with our staff so that we're able to get back out to the communities and and re educate our communities on these various capacity that's needed across the nation so that's what what we do at a tribal college I feel like we have a close knit relationship with our our producers, our ranchers. And that's important, you know, having to make sure that we have that trust established and that that creates. I think it also creates some strengthens our program. One thing I want to make sure I end with is, you know, this wouldn't be possible with continuous collaboration with great partners like New York State University, University of Arizona, Utah State University, Colorado State University, because they have those labs they have those infrastructure already in place so you know we're constantly finding their state specialists to come out and guide us in different areas, or you know partnering for funding to be able to access different pots of money that tribal colleges are not able to. So, in that in that way, capacity building is very very important to tribal colleges tribal nations, in addition to just strengthening, you know who we are as a tribal college. I think I said a lot right here. So I'll stop right there. Thank you so much, Benita for that very thought provoking presentation greatly appreciated. And so now I'd like to turn to an opportunity. I'd like to remind people of the q amp a box where they can add questions for our group, but I'd like to ask a series of questions to our panelists and I'd like to hear from from each of our panelists as I go through these questions and the first one that I'd like to start with is thanks to our stakeholders. As we've gone through the committee has gone through this process. It's been pointed out to us that capacity can be defined in many different ways and many different dimensions. What my first question for each of you is, is if, is if you could magically have complete capacity in one particular area, whether that would be personnel, whether that would be infrastructure, whether that would be something what do you perceive as as the greatest area of need for capacity in your institution. I'll start with Benita and then Alicia and then Rolando so Benita if you would start please. I think it's going to be personnel, you know, you know, it's, you have to have a person that's passionate about their work and being able to to learn and educate. And if you're not passionate about your work and you just you know show up there and kind of do the minimal, you know you're not going to be able to have a successful program. So I think the building capacity with our personnel that that's our foundation and then infrastructure starts because that's when planning happens you know if you're passionate about it you're going to move, move things forward. And that's when it happens. Thank you, Alicia. I would say at my particular institution, it will probably be in the research infrastructure in terms of the physical research facilities and equipment. We have faculty who are here working in research lab and we have a center, you know, here on campus but in order to move forward in getting the collaboration and research capacity. You're going to need to beef up the infrastructure because you're bringing in good faculty members but you don't have any place to place them. And so that that infrastructure in terms of the research facilities and the equipment that's needed, you know, followed by in the opposite is the personnel, you know, making sure that, you know, you're able to provide them with the resources that need to move the research forward and be able to collaborate with others in departments and across the US. Thank you, Rolando. I think it is obvious that we need to have the capacity for having good startups, attract good faculty, we have become a training place. The best faculty get the tenure and then after that it's very hard to compete with larger universities. So we do need, as Alicia say, we need good labs, we need the facilities, and I think that is important. But also, in order to build up all these things, I think that is one of the, you cannot always ask for money from the federal government or state, you can ask, you know, I'm not going to get all the money that you need. So we need to look at an adjustment. I would say an alignment of the operational systems with what is what we want to do, and how do we want to move. In many cases you will imply a cultural change. So it is not just only something that you solve with money, you need renovated views. And I want to take the opportunity to thank Benita for all the work that we do together. We actually have a science center in Farminto, which is in Navajolan. So I think those are examples of how we can connect more. Is it easy to build up liaisons, teamwork. No, is the hardest of all. Especially internally. Now when you go externally, you need to break through those bureaucracies. And that's what I was saying the operational system systems alignment is needed to get this done. That's a perfect segue to my next question so so so Rolando and actually Alicia's report as well identifies the fact that that effective collaborations take more effort they take a capacity in a different way whether it's more time, more time spent relationships, more resources, very often time being a really critical one and true commitment. And so my next question. To each of you and I'm going to start and go around the other way so starting, you're still in the middle Alicia but I'm going to start with Rolando Alicia and then up to Benita. I'm going to ask how important is collaboration to you and how high a priority do you do you put on collaboration and I'm going to ask you to speak on behalf of your institution in that question so Rolando I'll start with you on that one. Number one, I think with the how hard is to get funding. And we cannot allow the work on silence is something that is the hardest to break so collaboration into the departmental within the college within the colleges. We have had some success with a center of excellence in sustainable food agricultural systems that got funded by the governor, a couple of years ago, and we're working on that you but that is for me that is the most important thing, and that's how I can say we have successes. One of our programs the Indian resource program has had a lot of success with the neatest team in and in bringing second highest high school students to visit universities and look at that. Thank you, Alicia. Yeah, I think collaboration is very key based on the fact that we do all have limited resources. And as a result of the limited resources we have to find out all of the best practices that everyone has been doing well and and bring those pieces together to benefit at your particular institution and share those things across the board so that we all benefit together, because the number one goal is to increase the number of you know underrepresented scientists in the field, and you know have a more diverse community, you know when you're in the area. So, I encourage that collaboration as he, as Rolando stated to build like a culture helps with building infrastructure, where the government agencies can have do better alignment of how resources are actually generated to tribal colleges to use so that we can have build these types of relationships among one another. And only thing that could do is actually grow so we do have centers here in material science and research here, and the biotechnology center here at Norfolk State University, but through collaboration across a vast degree area is what makes it success because the resources and the infrastructure isn't here. So everybody has to work together so I think collaboration is very very important. When it comes to advancing science. Thank you, Benita. And with both collaboration is definitely important for tribal colleges, especially in the terms of infrastructure and research because most of our tribal colleges are small, we don't have the same equipment as a larger university so an example, you know sequencing and outsource or sequencing for DNA to another institution, and being able to partner so that our students are able to go there and assist in learning how to do so. And also there's, I don't want to see barriers but there's also, there's a negative side to collaboration to sometimes that's taken tribal colleges for granted also. Sometimes you have folks reaching out to you saying they want to collaborate and they've already written a proposal. And in the proposal has you visiting their institution, one or two times, and that's not very, you know conducive for us. We'd like to be at the table equally and and be able to have some, you know impact to our students to so you have to be careful both ways. So building trust is going to be very, very important for us. As we move forward in selecting what types of funding we want to apply for what types of partnering, how far we have to travel, you know, to get down to New Mexico State University is about six hours. So with all the other 1862 institutions for us but being able to partner in selective collaboration I think is very, very important. So, so Benita you just beautifully opened the door for my next question, which is from the perspective of your institution what what do you perceive to be the greatest barrier to collaborations at this time. Again, Benita, Alicia and then Rolanda. Wow. Right now. I want to say that administrative side of things, you know, I feel like we can easily collaborate and work together but here at our institution the challenges are. How do we do cost share matches how do we do sub award payments how do we, what does a sub award sheet look like. And if we have turnover in our business office it's you know, we feel like it shouldn't be our PIs, you know they're those different types of roles. And so here at the institution, we don't have incident institutional grants office where we have a person kind of doing budgets for us or submitting the grants on our behalf we as PIs have to do all of that. And so it's, it's an added duty on top of everything else that we're, we're doing. And so that, I think that's our barrier is sometimes we don't get our sub award pay, you know pay paid out in time. We're constantly having to make sure that we're on top of that and keeping our partners, like I said trust is important so making sure that we're going to do diligence. Thank you. That's very helpful. Alicia. Yeah, I think I agree with Anita in terms of the most difficult thing here on campus is the administrative support as well as the sponsor programs office. We, I think we have a is we have a small group for when you have the number of faculty that we have that are trying to get these grants written up and trying to get it out. It can become pretty difficult for that three individuals to take care, a massive group of, you know, faculty who tried to bring in the support to help advance the university and stem, and you know and do well and be successful at it. The university supports, you know, research efforts but it can become very difficult to actually advance that if you don't have, you know the proper resources for that so I would say, you know the administrative support as well as the sponsor program, and I think that they're there. They wanted to happen but without the lack of resources and building the infrastructure for it takes longer for all of that to come together. So it's like, we got to figure out a way how to get a better alignment from the government agencies to help us build the capacity. You know, give us that extra level time to build the capacity at the university so that we can do those things building those offices up to provide those resources for us. Terrific thank you and Rolando. Yeah well I think Benita and Alicia made it easy for me I totally agree with them. The university I can say that the upper level administration there is a clear concept that the importance of collaborative work internally and externally and we realize that that is something of the need but the issue of internal administrative procedures. And I don't know if this is because all universities have this structure system that they forget who are they working for. But the fact is that when we are moving from a university I was running on on silos to something that is more interdisciplinary. In which things needs to be managed if we are going to do an agreement with with all the university with all the college, even within New Mexico is the responsiveness is way way slow. So I, and I think this is for me I think is the most critical issue that is facing New Mexico this time is, is how do we bring up the administrative processes to be more responsive and respond and answering the times. It is amazing what you find sometimes and I probably my colleagues are in the same boat. Very much that that's all very helpful. So I think I might be able to guess your responses to the next one and this time I'm going to start with Alicia and then Rolando and then canita. And that is, if you could pick one entity, whether that's your institutional leaders, whether that's your faculty, whether it's funding agencies, whether it's Congress or you can pick an entity. And you had the opportunity to make one high level recommendation that would be implemented. And that could include funding so so, but, you know, if you could pick one entity and one recommendation that that could go in place to help with supporting collaborations what would be your top choice and I'll start with you Alicia. All right, I think I will go with the institutional. I'm going back for the funding agencies, I'll go with the funding agencies. I would think that one of the things that the funding agencies should do is try to come up with a way of better aligning the true partnerships that they have with tribal communities and HBCUs and MIs in order to have a more balanced equity in terms of the research funding. I think that the partnerships are, I don't want to call it lukewarm, but it's not fruitful and faculty development in order for us to advance our research areas, as well as helping us to have partnership with students coming across the board from both sides. I think if there was a better incentive besides providing internships and graduate students opportunities students to attend graduate schools at their in their programs that what would that partnership look like, and how it would advance at the HBCUs in terms of the infrastructure or the personnel in sponsored programs or just providing the support that is needed. So right now I think it's a little bit one sided because we're on a contractual, we don't get the big dollars, but we're being, we're partnering but it's not a true partnership. So I would say with the funding agencies, coming up with a better method of aligning that partnership, so that the HBCUs will advance in addition to continuing with the other institutions who we're partnering with, and then it's via a beneficial role for both sides. Thank you. Rolando. Yeah, I totally agree and I'm following on the on that line of thought, I think it would be great if, if the funding organizations to start organizing ahead of the RPA, the RPF workshops to partner. For example, what does the, the, the different colleges, Hispanic or minority serving institutions have to offer because we don't have everything. And the other thing is, we don't get the chance to compete for those huge amounts of money. Those things that eventually are going to is a cash 22 because it will be creating more, more capacity, more capacity in the ones that already have the capacity. But also, I think my colleagues already mentioned that many times you get asked to participate in a proposal, and everything is already, everything is already done, we just need you to sign here. We made it easy for you. Well, we don't want the thing easy, because we do have is tremendous responsibility with our stakeholders. I'm tasked with, with creating an environment in which we are an economic engine for a community and economic development of New Mexico. I cannot just jumping anything all over there I need to put my efforts in something that's going to have an impact in New Mexico so I will suggest. One thing is that ahead of time, all of the proposals, the, the, the funding organization say, Okay, we're inviting to a workshop here. Come here, and see, let's make a poster session what do you have to offer as a college as a as a university and build a partnership, because they have to be two ways partners. Super idea. I love that. Benita. I agree with both. I think with us at tribal colleges, many of our faculty are stretched way too thin, meaning they are already overloaded, and one of our challenges here at DNA is actually, it's hard for our faculty to receive grants because they are overloaded. So then it's, you know, let's find another person either Benita or another person in that capacity to, you know, search for a grant on behalf of the institution because they have a little bit more time and they're not allotted to faculty overload. And so that becomes challenging for us and trying to make sure that research engages our faculty and our students, because they're already overstretched too thin, and we have to be careful as we go into those collaborations and make sure that our deans are on board, allowing the faculty to participate. Thank you, that's very helpful. I see from Diane Bailey, an interesting suggestion that I'll read and then see if there's a reaction from any of you. And, and Diane suggests or asks would it be helpful for their federal government to set up a centralized function for colleges that helps support some of the business aspects of running these grants or would it be helpful for partnering universities to provide that sort of administrative support when seeking collaborations. I guess the question is really could you see opportunities, whether through a centralized governmental agency or through partnering agency partnering universities. Let me jump into that. I do really see that I think we do need help. We are trying to look at how we fix these things but in the meantime we cannot wait and say, oh, we will apply next year because we still have to fix things internally. We can't do that. So anything that can come from support and the federal government if it sees, honestly, that they want to support the institutions and bring them up to a higher level of delivery. That is one weakness that we need. I think those two, the one that developing links and develop partnerships and to provide assistance in how, okay, how do we help or what we can do that. I couldn't even tell you what are the things that we need to fix internally because they are nine. Okay. Any other comments from Benita or Alicia on this point. Not a comment but I don't know just going through a lot of the challenges as a tribal college. As we try to, you know, work with our business offices or at our administration they think some sort of, you know, like, what are the alternative financial softwares that are available so that we're able to document, you know, how expenditures are made. An example, I know I saw the program leader on there. We were late with submitting SF4254s. And, you know, as PI you think it's not your responsibility, you think it's the finance, you know, grants and accounting that does that. But it's both of your responsibilities and somewhere you put real you rely on another, but I think there's softwares out there that would be able to help both the PI and the grant grant or but what is available and what is like the next best thing that we could use so that our institutions to know about them and have access to I think those those type of things are important because I think we're still using some old system that we were on since I came on so you know we need to really upgrade. Great that Rolanda did you want to respond to that. That's such an important point is help letting technology actually help us. Absolutely. It is amazing the impact of a spreadsheet because most of this stuff is managed with the spreadsheets, instead of actually looking at software that I can allow and have the information closer to our hands. When I have to wait for three weeks for a report that requires immediate actions, for example, legislation asked me, why do you still have that science center open, what is the impact of that science center by the time I start getting all the information put together. The the is gone and and so I think is the administrative procedures didn't move as fast as all universities had the capability to do that. And I think the mentality in many cases and this is part of the culture is, oh, we have the state cuts funding so then what do you do cut cut cut in administrative and cutting programs and so on. But he just don't look at okay we can cut here but how do we move this and make it more, more ready for the future and I think that's the challenge right now. Very well said, all of these points very well said. So, so we're coming to the end of the, the set of questions that I had I'd like to make sure that those who are participating in this, this session, have a moment to ask any lingering questions that they might have while they're thinking about that. I would like to thank sincerely Benita Alicia and Rolando for spending time with us this afternoon to discuss these really important questions about the role of collaboration current and future in addressing some of these really large challenges that we face not only as a region but as a state as a nation as a society as a globe. And the fact that was pointed out by all three of our panelists today that we can do a lot more acting together than we can. That's why acting as individuals and so the importance of thinking about how to better support collaboration, not only from the point and Rolando such an important idea that you gave which is to create the opportunities for finding partnerships before and Benita you pointed this out to, before the proposal gets written. And then the, at the point of thinking through how to approach these, these types of questions and who to partner with and who can bring what to the table. It's such important ideas that you raised here today. So from from that to the administrative challenges that we face in our institutions to the challenges that we face with regard to personnel and the time that our personnel have to devote to efforts that go beyond their immediate teaching responsibilities and research and outreach responsibilities in the university. These are, these are all issues that have capacity related needs associated with them. And, and again, I have tremendous appreciation for the three of you for spending time with us this afternoon for this discussion I don't see a new question that's come in but this has stayed with us throughout this entire conversation. So that gives you a sense of how important and how committed we all are to coming up with better ways to collaborate as we look to the future. So thank you to three of you, I thank the committee that has been working on addressing collaboration and the land grant university. I thank Robin Schoen and her team at the National Academy of Sciences for supporting us in these efforts. And I wish you all a pleasant rest of the day. So thank you all. And goodbye. Thank you very much.