Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University

One of the reasons behind FAMU's success is the quality and enthusiasm of its teaching faculty. The institution's teaching staff are a team of highly qualified and experienced professional educators, who work with the success of their students as a top priority.

They are superb communicators who benefit from being able to have more contact time with their students than is typical for a top university. FAMU's student-staff ratio is 14:1, improving on the national and state average. Additionally, 41.6 per cent of the university's classes have fewer than 20 students, which means more individual attention and a more personalised learning experience.

FAMU is continually looking for areas to improve, and pushing for excellence. The school has an ongoing quality enhancement plan which aims to help students become better at academic writing through investments in classroom technologies and campus resources.

The university's works to prepare students for graduate school, ensuring they are better suited to the demands of their future employers. In order to accomplish this, the QEP will create opportunities for students to enhance their writing proficiency, reflect on their own writing, and provide meaningful feedback to their peers.

FAMU has a comprehensive offering of high-quality academic fine programs, spanning many subject areas and levels of study.

There are 54 bachelor's degrees, 29 master's degrees, three professional degrees, and 12 doctoral degrees to choose from. Across its courses, the school works to create opportunities for achievement and experience, making a FAMU education more than just a qualification. Courses are distributed between the university's 14 schools and colleges:

• College of Agriculture and Food Sciences
• College of Education
• College of Law
• College of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences Institute of Public Health
• College of Science and Technology
• College of Social Sciences, Arts, and Humanities
• FAMU-FSU College of Engineering
• School of Allied Health Sciences
• School of Architecture & Engineering Technology
• School of Business & Industry
• School of Graduate Studies and Research
• School of Journalism & Graphic Communication
• School of Nursing
• School of the Environment

Popular fine programs include courses in the health sciences, psychology, business administration and management, criminal justice, biology and social work.

There are many routes into a FAMU education, and many different types of qualification from undergraduate all the way up to doctoral level.

Entry requirements vary for these differing options, and the FAMU website has lots of information for prospective applicants to find out which admission criteria is relevant to them. The website includes information for:

• Freshmen
• Transfer
• International
• Returning
• Graduate
• Law
• FAMU Online

Freshmen students represent the largest group of incoming students by intake volume, and FAMU operates a system of three intake points throughout the academic year, in Spring, Summer and Fall semesters. Academic admission for spring and summer entry requires a 2.85 GPA, and fall entry requires a 3.00 GPA. The reason for this is that the fall intake is generally the most subscribed and therefore slightly more competitive.

Regardless of intake point, FAMU applicant must submit the following material:

• Official high school transcripts from high school, if available
• Official home school transcript or GED transcript, if applicable
• Official SAT or ACT score
• 500-word essay
• Two letters of recommendations
• USD 35.00 application fee
• Official AICE, AP, CLEP, IB, and TOEFL/IELTS scores, if applicable

Applicants who do not speak English as their native language must demonstrate a minimum level of proficiency. These correspond to a TOEFL score of 80 online/550 paper-based, or an IELTS score of 6, which must be achieved within the two years prior to making an application.

Simply put, students at FAMU benefit from some of the best facilities in Florida. The university's Tallahassee campus is a self-contained learning environment which includes all the amenities and resources students need for academic success and personal growth. It's all within convenient walking distance of student accommodation and dining facilities, which are also located on-site.

FAMU has eight halls of residence buildings on campus, offering a selection of single and double rooms, as well as entire studio apartments. These are a safe, comfortable, convenient and highly social way to live while studying for a degree, and virtual tours of housing facilities are available online which allow prospective students to check out their options before applying.

In total, FAMU has six libraries which together hold nearly 2 million volumes, more than 150,000 digital books and journals, and a host of audio-visual resources. They contain study spaces for individual and group use, as well as state-of-the-art IT services on-site. In addition to the main Coleman library, there are several specialised facilities for subjects such as architecture, journalism and engineering.

FAMU understands getting a degree can be an investment and works hard to be as inclusive as possible, providing opportunities for all students with the desire to attend.

On top of tuition fees, which vary based on a number of factors including level and mode of study, each student much factor in the cost of accommodation, travel, food, books and course material, as well as general cost-of-living expenses. The FAMU website has an entire section dedicated to understanding the cost of attendance, broken down into useful pages for undergraduate, postgraduate and law students.

The university makes sure that all students have access to the financial resources needed to complete their studies in confidence. The FAMU Office of Student Financial Aid runs a program of needs-based grants and bursaries, which do not have to be repaid and can help struggling students to meet their basic monthly costs. There are eight different types of award, and prospective applicants can apply by completing their Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) form.

The Office of Student Financial Aid can also help students find and secure funding from external scholarship schemes and grant opportunities. Many are listed online, and the financial aid team can assist any student in making an application.

FAMU is a future-focused institution which is continually breaking new ground and proving its commitment to enhancing the opportunities available to its students.

The university has recently secured a USD 1.5 million grant through NASA's new Data Science Equity, Access, and Priority in Research and Education (DEAP) opportunity. The DEAP scheme is designed to provide new opportunities for students at HBCUs to get involved with live NASA research projects by conducting data science research which can be used in future agency missions.

Associate FAMU Professor Beni Dangi, Ph.D. has developed an exciting new three-year research proposal, which combines artificial intelligence and machine learning to better understand the formation of interplanetary salt crystals.

The project is titled ''Effects of Gravity on Creeping Salts and Salt Mixtures: Developing Image-based and AI-enhanced Diagnostics for Determining Chemical Compositions.'', and aims to give new insights into identifying where water may have existed in our solar system and beyond. The project hopes to contribute work that will give a better understanding of the surface geology of other planets, and inform the future of lunar and Martian exploration.

This three-year initiative is expected to positively impact the research and education potential of minority students in the field of science and space exploration.