Southern Utah University

Southern Utah University, doing business as S U U, a state-controlled institution of higher learning based in Cedar City, Utah, operates as a federal grant recipient and prime contractor delivering youth internship programs, applied research, museum collections management, and educational support services to the Department of the Interior, Department of Education, National Science Foundation, and other civilian agencies. The university competes in full-and-open federal grant competitions and holds no SBA set-aside designations.

S U U's federal footprint is heavily concentrated in cooperative agreements and project grants tied to land management and youth workforce development. The university hosts the Intergovernmental Internship Cooperative (IIC), which recruits and places high school, college, and graduate students in paid internships across National Park Service units, Bureau of Land Management field offices, and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service refuges throughout the Southwest. Representative cooperative agreements include a $105,741.91 award from the National Park Service (May 2025) to support youth internships at Zion National Park across interpretation, education, visitor services, and resource management; a $273,087.78 award (April 2024) to recruit at least 18 full-time summer interns and part-time academic-year interns for Zion; and a $166,716 award (May 2024) supporting interns at Pipe Spring National Monument. The university also holds a $944,249 NSF Integrative Activities grant (September 2024 to August 2028) to implement the PROSPER PUIS project, integrating Sponsored Project Managers and Graduate Assistants into the research infrastructure to increase faculty participation in sponsored research at primarily undergraduate institutions, with curriculum development and training for dissemination nationwide. In contract work, S U U earned a $165,088 firm fixed-price delivery order from the Bureau of Land Management (September 2023) for collections care and management support at Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument in Kanab, Utah.

Customer concentration is dispersed across multiple Interior and Education components. The Department of Agriculture Food and Nutrition Service leads by award count at 48 awards, while the Department of the Interior Bureau of Land Management National Office anchors the potential-value ranking with 10 awards totaling $31.2 million. The Department of the Interior's park and BLM field offices dominate recent volume: the Bureau of Land Management Utah Region accounts for 26 awards ($38 thousand combined potential value), and the National Park Service Intermountain Region 24 awards. The Department of Education Office of Postsecondary Education holds 22 awards. Across 297 total awards (prime and sub), the top five customer agencies cover 45% of award count but the potential-value ranking reveals concentration in a smaller set of high-dollar BLM agreements. The university has worked with 50 distinct federal agencies.

The award portfolio spans 228 prime awards (77%) and 69 sub-awards (23%), with activity growing sharply from 15 awards annually in 2022 and 2023 to 51 in 2024, then moderating to 27 in 2025 and 14 year-to-date in 2026. Twelve awards are scheduled to complete within the next twenty-four months, exposing the university to recompete activity in that window. S U U holds no named parent vehicles such as GWACs or agency-wide IDIQs; instead, it receives direct cooperative agreements and delivery orders against BPA vehicles including Indefinite Delivery Contract 140L0618D0061 (3 task orders, $123 thousand combined potential value) and Blanket Purchase Agreements INL15PA00057 and INL17PA00014.

Beyond internship and land-stewardship work, S U U demonstrates capability in research administration, collections management, and student support services. The university manages the Garth and Jerri Frehner Museum of Natural History and the Southern Utah Museum of Art, holding multiple NEH grants for collections preservation and exhibition ($187,868 from October 2024 for the "Voices of the Ancients" archaeology and oral history professional development program; prior awards for textile and three-dimensional artwork storage and display improvements). S U U is a recipient of a TRIO Student Support Services grant ($352,531 from September 2025) serving low-income, first-generation, and disabled students, and holds grants in STEM education research including NSF awards on organic chemistry education, glioblastoma therapy through nanotechnology, and aquifer dynamics modeling. The university operates the Utah Center for Rural Health, holding a Rural Health Network Development Planning grant ($2025 award from the Department of Health and Human Services) supporting rural health clinic networks across Utah. Sub-recipient work includes pass-through grants from the Utah State Board of Education for school nutrition and special education programs, and sub-awards from the University of Utah on research training, rural opioid response, and NASA Space Grant Consortium activities.