DOE/HACU connections: The Hispanic Serving Institutions FEDIX/MOLIS program. Final report

The Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) was funded by the Department of Energy (DOE) to strengthen and expand the participation of Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSIs) in the FEDIX and MOLIS database systems begun in February of 1994. The project was a collaborative effort with Federal Information, Inc. (now named RAMS-FIE, Inc.), which maintains the FEDIX/MOLIS databases. The original purpose of the DOE/HACU Connections project was to expand the participation of HSIs in the MOLIS database, to train HSI faculty and staff on FEDIX and MOLIS, and to increase the use of the FEDIX database by HSIs. The expanded participation of HSIs provided their faculty, administrators, and students the opportunity to learn about the wide variety of DOE and other participating federal agencies research, contract, grant, and educational programs information available on FEDIX. Similarly, the expanded participation of HSIs provided DOE and other participating federal agencies with greater information regarding HSI research and training capabilities and interests. A key outcome of this DOE/HACU effort was the impact of the training provided to the HSI faculty and administrators. Recent studies, including one by HACU, Improving Utilization of the Information Highway by Hispanic Serving Institutions, indicate that the Hispanic community as a whole and the HSIs have significantly less access to the Internet and computers than the majority of other institutions of Higher Education (IHEs). Thus the training offered by the project at HSIs served both to introduce the opportunities on FEDIX/MOLIS and to highlight the opportunities on the Internet as well as highlight the lack of telecommunication technology resources