University Of North Alabama

University Of North Alabama, a state-controlled non-profit institution of higher learning based in Florence, Alabama, operates as a federal grant recipient and educational-services contractor, delivering tuition support, nursing education programs, STEM workforce development, and first-responder training to civilian and defense agencies. The institution competes predominantly under full-and-open procurement; its federal footprint carries no set-aside designations across recent contract or grant work.

UNA's federal customer base is diffuse and modest in dollar volume. The top five funding agencies by award count—the Department of Health and Human Services Health Resources and Services Administration, the National Science Foundation, the Department of Education Office of Postsecondary Education, the Department of Education Office of Elementary and Secondary Education, and the Department of the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery—account for 45 percent of recent awards. Dollar concentration skews toward a single Department of Justice award of $65 thousand, with BUMED's six tuition-support contracts carrying $27 thousand in combined potential value. The combined potential value across all 69 awards (prime and sub) stands at $98 thousand, though obligated dollars total $62.6 million, reflecting the structure of federal grants with front-loaded funding and multi-year performance periods.

UNA holds a single-award Basic Ordering Agreement with the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, issued September 6, 2024, and extending through September 5, 2034, under which five recurring tuition and fees delivery orders have been placed (combined potential value $27 thousand). Recent tuition contracts include $6,000 (January 2026), $5,995 (January 2025), $6,000 (August 2025), and $4,565 (September 2025)—small-dollar, recurring firm fixed-price awards supporting Navy-affiliated students.

On the grant side, UNA acts as prime recipient for ten named federal grants spanning STEM education, nursing, cultural heritage preservation, and law enforcement training. Representative awards include a $192.796 thousand National Science Foundation S-STEM research hub (CFDA 47.076, October 2024–September 2029) investigating rural low-income student retention in STEM; a $500 thousand Department of Education FIPSE award (CFDA 84.116, September 2024–August 2027) for simulation-based nursing education; a $108.660 thousand National Park Service American Battlefield Protection Program grant (CFDA 15.926, September 2024–September 2026) for Civil War interpretive trail development in the Muscle Shoals National Heritage Area; and a Department of Justice Office of Community Oriented Policing Services cooperative agreement (October 2023–September 2026) supporting the North Alabama Public Service Training Center's de-escalation training program for approximately 4,500 law enforcement officers. UNA leads the Tennessee Valley Tri-State Louis Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation Implementation-Only Alliance as prime recipient (October 2023–September 2028), coordinating STEM pathway initiatives across the University of Tennessee Martin, Mississippi University for Women, and Northwest-Shoals Community College.

UNA also acts as sub-recipient on six federal grant awards flowing from the University of Alabama, the University of Alabama in Huntsville, and the Alabama State Department of Education, including LETRS stipend programs, AMSTI teacher training, and space physiology research cost-share work. Activity has remained modest and variable—two awards in 2022, six in 2023, nine in 2024, five in 2025, and one in early 2026—with five awards reaching completion within the next twenty-four months.