Press Release

U.S. Department of Commerce Invests $7.8 Million in CARES Act Funding to Boost Capacity of Universities Across Nation to Help Communities and Businesses Respond to and Recover from Economic Impact of Coronavirus Pandemic

WASHINGTON – Today, the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration (EDA) is awarding $7.8 million in EDA CARES Act Recovery Assistance grants to universities across the nation to boost their capacity to support regional economic development strategies in response to the coronavirus pandemic.

“The Trump Administration is eager to allocate these essential CARES Act funds and deliver on our promise to help American communities recover from the impact of COVID-19,” said Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross. “I am proud of the perseverance and strength shown by our communities coast to coast throughout this pandemic, and these funds will help provide them with the necessary resources to make a swift and lasting economic comeback.”

“These investments come at a crucial time to help our nation’s economy come roaring back and provide hard-working Americans with new opportunities,” said Dana Gartzke, Performing the Delegated Duties of the Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development. “We are pleased to make these investments in EDA University Centers across the nation to deliver university-based resources to communities and businesses that have been impacted by the coronavirus pandemic.”

The EDA investments announced today are:

• Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama, will receive a $300,000 EDA CARES Act Recovery Assistance grant to assist the Auburn Technical Assistance Center in implementing a program to provide technical assistance and business support to facilitate the economic recovery and growth of minority owned and rural small businesses in Alabama.
• Arkansas State University, Jonesboro, Arkansas, will receive a $300,000 EDA CARES Act Recovery Assistance grant to support the Delta Center for Economic Development in working with regional stakeholders across the state to develop an Arkansas Blueprint for Recovery and Resiliency and strategies to respond to immediate needs.
• The University of Arkansas Little Rock, Little Rock, Arkansas, will receive a $300,000 EDA CARES Act Recovery Assistance grant to assist the Arkansas Economic Development Institute in creating an Arkansas Recovery and Resiliency Plan in partnership with Arkansas State University’s Delta Center for Economic Development and the eight planning and economic development districts in Arkansas by providing training, resources, and planning assistance for local governments, schools, small businesses, the healthcare community, manufacturing and other entities affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
• California State University, Chico, California will receive a $300,000 EDA CARES Act Recovery Assistance grant to advance efforts of the Center for Economic Development and its partners in providing technical assistance to entrepreneurs, businesses, educational partners, and communities on business modeling, marketing resources, fiscal management and diversification, and workforce guidance to enable business viability through the coronavirus pandemic and future business disruptions.
• Florida A&M University, Tallahassee, Florida, will receive a $299,987 EDA CARES Act Recovery Assistance grant to support the FAMU Innovation Center’s efforts to create new services to enable minority owned businesses to grow and to expand talent and technology engagements in aerospace and agriculture.
• The University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, will receive a $300,000 EDA CARES Act Recovery Assistance grant to assist the Collaboratory for Women Innovators in creating a Women’s Farm to Food Virtual Accelerator to help equip Florida women farmers to become more economically resilient through value-added production.
• The University of Hawaii, Honolulu, Hawaii, will receive a $300,000 EDA CARES Act Recovery Assistance grant for its Pacific Business Center Program work with the State of Hawaii and the American Affiliated Pacific Islands (AAPI) to diversify the region’s heavily tourism-focused economy, develop resiliency plans, assist businesses in developing new strategies, and provide training.
• Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana, will receive a $300,000 EDA CARES Act Recovery Assistance grant to assist the Purdue Center for Regional Development in driving initiatives that seek to address the resiliency needs of Indiana regions, local governments, and businesses.
• Kansas State University, Manhattan, Kansas, will receive a $300,000 EDA CARES Act Recovery Assistance grant to boost its Technology Development Institute efforts to implement services to support and grow the region’s critical manufacturing sector and ensuring workforce retention.
• Southern University and A&M College, Baton Rouge, Louisiana, will receive a $300,000 EDA CARES Act Recovery Assistance grant to aid its EDA University Center at Southern University’s efforts to support entrepreneurship development for poverty reduction, enhance e-commerce training, conduct applied research on regional economies, and promote workforce and leadership development.
• The University of Louisiana at Lafayette, Lafayette, Louisiana, will receive a $300,000 EDA CARES Act Recovery Assistance grant to help its Louisiana Entrepreneurship & Economic Development Center (LEED) provide start-up and small business guidance and strategic planning in low-income and rural areas of Louisiana.
• Becker College, Worchester, Massachusetts, will receive a $300,000 EDA CARES Act Recovery Assistance grant to assist the Massachusetts Digital Games Institute in establishing a cutting-edge internship program for young people who have had their professional trajectory dramatically altered by the coronavirus pandemic.
• The Regents of the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, will receive a $300,000 EDA CARES Act Recovery Assistance grant to support the University of Michigan-Flint’s University Center for Community and Economic Development in implementing community workforce development programs in cyber security; providing GIS data collection and analysis for local governments, virtualizing entrepreneurship training and technical support for small businesses, non-profits, and communities; developing a product commercialization pipeline; holding competitions to develop more effective Personal Protective Equipment (PPE); updating regional resource navigation tools; and developing a business climate survey measuring economic and social impacts related to the coronavirus pandemic.
• Mississippi State University, Starkville, Mississippi, will receive a $299,712 EDA CARES Act Recovery Assistance grant to boost the capacity of the Mississippi State University Center for Entrepreneurship and Outreach to apply proven business accelerator strategies to reinvigorate existing businesses adversely affected by the coronavirus pandemic.
• The University of Missouri-Kansas City will receive a $300,000 EDA CARES Act Recovery Assistance grant to increase the capacity of the University of Missouri-Kansas City Innovation Center to improve equitable access to resources, funding and technical assistance for entrepreneurs.
• The University of Nebraska-Omaha will receive a $300,000 EDA CARES Act Recovery Assistance grant to advance efforts of its NU Connections EDA University Center to link businesses to resources across four University of Nebraska campuses.
• The University of Nevada-Reno will receive a $300,000 EDA CARES Act Recovery Assistance grant to advance its University Center for Economic Development efforts to boost economic resiliency in Nevada’s state and county economies.
• San Juan College, Farmington, New Mexico, will receive a $300,000 EDA CARES Act Recovery Assistance grant to assist its Harvest Food Hub in developing a commercial kitchen incubator program to support regional producers and food entrepreneurs, and to grow the agricultural economy and regional food system.
• The University of Rochester, Rochester, New York, will receive a $265,000 EDA CARES Act Recovery Assistance grant to cultivate innovation, expand business in the Finger Lakes Region’s innovation cluster, and develop a high-skilled regional workforce via the Ain Center for Entrepreneurship.
• The Research Foundation for the State University of New York (SUNY), Albany, New York, will receive a $300,000 EDA CARES Act Recovery Assistance grant to accelerate innovation in the economy, provide research and development support to businesses, support workforce development, and accelerate commercialization of technologies through the Cybersecurity Innovation and Research Center for University-Industry Technologies.
• Bowling Green State University, Bowling Green, Ohio, will receive a $300,000 EDA CARES Act grant to support efforts by the Center for Regional Development to increase staff capacity to support economic and workforce development recovery strategies and grant applications by local governments and other governmental partners to address the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic in Northwest and Appalachian Ohio.
• The University of Oregon, Eugene, Oregon, will receive a $299,983 EDA CARES Act Recovery Assistance grant to boost the capacity of its Economic Development Administration University Center to provide strategic support, capacity building, applied research, and technical assistance to EDA-supported Economic Development Districts, local governments, and nonprofit organizations throughout Oregon.
• South Dakota State University, Brookings, South Dakota will receive a $298,378 EDA CARES Act Recovery Assistance grant to advance efforts of its University Center for Commercialization of Sustainable Energies and Precision Agriculture Sensors Technologies to provide holistic technical consulting services for business involved in food supply chain to determine how they may retrofit their HVAC systems to reduce the likelihood of person-to-person infection within their facilities.
• Southern Utah University and Dixie State University, St. George, Utah, will receive a $300,000 EDA CARES Act Recovery Assistance grant to support efforts of the Southern Utah Entrepreneurship Hub to help businesses in southern Utah pivot to the new digital economy through its partnership with Dixie State University.
• Washington State University, Pullman, Washington, will receive a $299,939 EDA CARES Act Recovery Assistance grant to assist its University Center for Innovation in helping Eastern Washington and Northern Idaho by activating a diverse entrepreneurial ecosystem to develop, manufacture, and test innovative Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) to respond to new and recurring pandemics.
• The University of Washington, Seattle, Washington, will receive a $300,000 EDA CARES Act Recovery Assistance grant to provide businesses and communities with technical assistance to respond to the coronavirus pandemic.

These universities, all current EDA University Center grantee, are some of the more than 850 existing, high-performing EDA Economic Development District, University Center, Tribal, and Revolving Loan Fund (RLF) grant recipients invited to apply for supplemental funding under the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security (CARES) Act.

The CARES Act, signed into law by President Donald J. Trump, provides EDA with $1.5 billion for economic development assistance programs to help communities prevent, prepare for, and respond to the coronavirus pandemic.

On May 7, Secretary Ross announced that EDA is accepting applications for CARES Act Recovery Assistance funding opportunities.

EDA CARES Act Recovery Assistance, which is being administered under the authority of the bureau’s flexible Economic Adjustment Assistance (EAA) (PDF) program, provides a wide-range of financial assistance to eligible communities and regions as they respond to and recover from the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic. For complete information, please visit our recently updated EDA CARES Act Recovery Assistance page.

About the U.S. Economic Development Administration (www.eda.gov)
The mission of the U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA) is to lead the federal economic development agenda by promoting competitiveness and preparing the nation's regions for growth and success in the worldwide economy. An agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce, EDA makes investments in economically distressed communities in order to create jobs for U.S. workers, promote American innovation, and accelerate long-term sustainable economic growth.