Research Foundation Of The City University Of New York

Research Foundation Of The City University Of New York, doing business as RFCUNY - Bronx Community College, is a non-profit fiscal administrator for the City University of New York system that acts as a federal grant recipient (prime on 93% of recent awards) to fund STEM education, workforce development, and research initiatives at Bronx Community College. The organization is a state-controlled institution of higher learning and a child entity of The City University Of New York parent.

RFCUNY's federal footprint concentrates on higher-education grant programs rather than federal contracts. The Department of Education Office of Postsecondary Education leads by award count (10 awards across the National Science Foundation suite—including seven NSF awards and four from the Division of Undergraduate Education—and four from the National Aeronautics and Space Administration account for 68% of recent award volume. The top three funders align closely across both volume and dollars: NSF dominates through multiple tracks (general science education, STEM enrichment, international research partnerships), DOE through student support and workforce programs, and NASA through science program funding. A $9.1 million Department of Labor grant under the WIOA National Dislocated Worker Grants program is the single largest award on record, supporting the CUNY Construction Skills Consortium to build construction training pathways from high school through CUNY colleges to employers, with work-based learning and NCCER credentialing; RFCUNY subawarded $880 thousand to Building Skills NY for worker placement and retention. A $500 thousand NSF Division of Undergraduate Education Track 1 Innovation in Two-Year College (ITYC) grant (CFDA 47.076) awarded October 1, 2026, funds design and implementation of interdisciplinary project-based learning modules in foundational mathematics and biology courses through September 30, 2029, serving both STEM and non-STEM majors. A $269.962 thousand NSF Office of International Science and Engineering award funds the CUNY India Pollution Study, which engages 33 undergraduate students from Bronx Community College and other CUNY colleges in collaborative air-quality research with Indian Institutes of Technology.

Recent activity shows a decline from seven awards in 2022 to two in both 2024 and 2025, with four awards arriving in 2026. Five awards (combined potential value $150 thousand) face ultimate completion within the next twenty-four months. RFCUNY acts as a sub-recipient on three federal grants: a biophotonics curriculum module project under a State University of New York research foundation prime (awarded February 2026), a study-abroad program capacity-building award under World Learning Inc. (December 2025), and an adult literacy program (November 2023). Performance occurs at Bronx Community College in Bronx, New York, with mission emphasis on serving underrepresented, low-income, and first-generation student populations; 96% of Bronx Community College's student body is students of color.