Moravian University

Moravian University, doing business as Moravian College & Moravian Theological Seminary, is a private, non-profit educational institution located in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, that has established itself as an active recipient of federal funding for research, education, and preservation initiatives. As a primarily undergraduate institution committed to integrating liberal education, professional programs, and civic engagement, Moravian University serves the federal government primarily through grant awards rather than federal contracts, focusing its efforts on STEM education, scientific research, cultural heritage preservation, and teacher preparation programs.

Moravian University has maintained a limited federal contracting presence, participating in federal contract work primarily as a subcontractor rather than as a prime awardee. The institution served as a subcontractor to the University of Oklahoma on a research project, with Dr. Lei He from Moravian University directing efforts related to variable and feature selection, network formation, data pattern understanding, and firms' survival rate prediction and counterfactual analysis. This subcontract work demonstrates the university's capacity to engage in research support activities and data analysis in collaboration with larger research institutions.

Moravian University has been substantially more active in securing federal grant awards, receiving multiple prime grant awards from the National Science Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the National Park Service. The institution has received significant funding for STEM education initiatives, including a $1,999,925 grant over six years from the NSF's Division of Undergraduate Education to support retention and graduation of high-achieving, low-income students pursuing bachelor's degrees in STEM fields through scholarships, enhanced general education curriculum, and summer research experiences. Additional NSF awards have funded undergraduate research experiences in areas such as microplastics' biological effects on amphibians ($502,950 from the Division of Environmental Biology), biogeographic diversification in Neotropical harvestmen ($662,000 CAREER award from the Division of Emerging Frontiers), barrier island ecosystem ecology ($502,950 from the Division of Environmental Biology), discrete computational mathematics research ($364,440 for a Research Experiences for Undergraduates Site in collaboration with Cedar Crest College and Kutztown University), and STEM teacher preparation and professional development ($3,200,000 for a project emphasizing culturally responsive education in high-need school districts). The National Park Service awarded Moravian University $926,619 through the Historic Preservation Fund Grants-in-Aid program as part of the Semiquincentennial Grant Program to support physical preservation of historic buildings on campus through window replacement. The National Endowment for the Humanities funded interpretive education planning for the recently designated UNESCO World Heritage Site of Moravian Church Settlements in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Additionally, Moravian University served as a subawardee to Lehigh University on an NSF National Research Traineeship award, with Dr. Diane Husic serving as the external evaluator for the Stakeholder Engaged Equitable Decarbonized (SEED) Energy Futures program, and as a subawardee to the University of Virginia on VCR LTER research examining shrub seedling recruitment and survival in barrier island ecosystems.