FAMU received a $2.5 million grant over five years (2009-2014) to establish a Center of Academic Excellence from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence Community. FAMU is now the 22nd U.S. institution of higher learning to earn such a distinction.Lenora Peters Gant, director of the Intelligence Community Center Academic Excellence and Program Office, presented a check to FAMU President James H. Ammons during halftime of FAMU’s homecoming football game.
Gant, a 1978 graduate of FAMU’s School of Business and Industry, said it felt great to come back to make the presentation.
“We are not responsible for how we find this world when we are born; however, we are responsible for how we leave the world.”
The principal goal of the Center is to encourage faculty-led student research on national security issues. The Center will be a multidisciplinary research, instructional and pre-college school outreach unit aimed at increasing the pool of talented young men and women. It will focus primarily, though not exclusively, on minorities and women from which Intelligence Community agencies (consisting of 16 federal executive departments and agencies) may recruit new employees.
Some examples of U.S. Intelligence Community departments and agencies include: the State Department, Department of Defense, Department of Energy, and the Central Intelligence Agency. The Center will conduct a number of programs and activities whose aim will be to enhance research spearheaded by faculty, but with FAMU students and precollege students substantively engaged with faculty. Ultimately, research enhancement efforts will broaden the pool of available researchers and provide an important window of exposure to students and faculty who will desire to become a part of the intelligence community in some capacity or other, yet consistent with the needs of the National Intelligence Community.
Keith Simmonds, assistant dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and professor of public administration and political science, will serve as principal investigator.
Larry Robinson, professor and vice president for research, said, “This award shows the tremendous breadth of the talents of faculty and students at FAMU.”