This is an exciting time to be an FAU Owl. Our students, faculty and staff continue to make me proud with their many achievements, and our highlight reel grows longer every day. Recently, FAU was awarded two significant grants – totaling $10 million – to better prepare our students for the workplace.

FAU’s College of Education received a $5.6 million grant from the Wallace Foundation to improve school principal preparation programs. FAU will partner with Broward County Public Schools, the School District of Palm Beach County and St. Lucie Public Schools to create professional development programs that lead to state certification for principals and assistant principals, and will serve as a model for other universities and policymakers across the country. This is not only an important and much-needed initiative, but exactly the type of program in which we believe FAU is ideally equipped to participate.

FAU also received a $4.4 million grant from the U.S. Department of Education to increase the number of degrees awarded to Hispanic and low-income students. Despite their growing numbers in Broward and Palm Beach County, Hispanics are underrepresented in the bachelor’s degree level computer-related workforce within the region. With this grant, our College of Engineering and Computer Science will help to fill the gap between computer occupations and workers with enough skills to fill these positions. We are very proud of our designation as a Hispanic-serving institution, and we truly appreciate this important grant, which will help us better prepare these students for key sectors of our workforce.