FY 1998 SuperNOFA Guidebook

Universities and Colleges

Community Outreach Partnership Centers (COPC). COPC is designed to help colleges and universities apply their human, intellectual, and institutional resources to the challenge of revitalizing distressed communities. COPC provides funding to accredited 2- or 4-year degree-granting nonprofit institutions of higher learning to address at least three of the following issues in a targeted urban community:

• Local housing.
• Infrastructure.
• Economic development.
• Neighborhood revitalization.
• Health care.
• Job training.
• Crime prevention.
• Education.
• Planning.
• Community organizing.

Grantees may address these issues by conducting and applying relevant research, coordinating outreach efforts with neighborhood groups and residents, acting as a local information exchange, galvanizing support for neighborhood revitalization, developing public service projects and instructional programs, and collaborating with other partnership centers. Multiple institutions of higher learning in a particular region may also apply jointly as a consortium.

Historically Black Colleges and Universities. HBCUs is designed to help historically black colleges and universities expand their role and effectiveness in addressing community development needs�neighborhood revitalization, housing, and economic development�in their localities. Under this program, HBCUs (as determined by the U.S. Department of Education) are awarded funding for projects designed primarily to benefit low- and moderate-income residents, help prevent or eliminate slums or blight, or meet an urgent community development need in the community in which the HBCU is located. The types of activities that are eligible under this program are the same as those that are eligible under the CDBG program. These include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Real property acquisition.
• Clearance and demolition.
• Rehabilitation of residential and/or commercial structures.
• Direct homeownership assistance to low- and moderate-income persons.
• Public facilities improvements.
• Special economic development activities.
• Eligible public services.
• Facilitation of the establishment/expansion of microenterprises.
• Assistance to community-based development organizations.
• Establishment of a Community Development Corporation to undertake eligible activities.
• Planning and administrative costs related to grant-funded activities.

Community Development Work Study Program. CDWS is designed to attract economically disadvantaged and minority graduate students to careers in community and economic development. It accomplishes this by providing funding to institutions of higher learning offering graduate degrees in community development, areawide planning organizations (applying on behalf of two or more institutions of higher learning), and States (applying on behalf of two or more institutions of higher learning in the State). The grantees provide work stipends, tuition support, and additional forms of support to economically disadvantaged and minority graduate students. The students must be enrolled full-time in graduate programs in community and economic development, community planning or management, or other related fields of study. Related fields include public administration, urban management, and urban planning but exclude sociology and such fields as law, economics, education, and history.

Hispanic-Serving Institutions Work Study Program. The purpose of the HSI-WSP program is to ensure that students from disadvantaged and minority backgrounds have the opportunity to gain the training and experience needed to work in a field that contributes to revitalizing communities. HSI-WSP accomplishes this by providing funding to 2-year Hispanic-serving Institutions of Higher Education to be used to finance tuition, stipends, and other support to full-time students from economically disadvantaged and minority backgrounds who seek pre-professional careers in an approved community building field. Participating students must devote 12 to 20 hours each week during the regular school year and 35 to 40 hours each week during the summer to the work-study program.

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