Fostering Undergraduate Talent By Unlocking Resources for Education Act

Floor Speech

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Mr. COONS. Madam President, today is about a moment of hope. Today is about a moment of genuine bipartisanship made possible by the discipline and determined leadership of Senators Alexander of Tennessee and Murray of Washington State.

I rise to join my friend and colleague, the Senator from Alabama, who has just given remarks following the Senator from South Carolina. At a moment when what most Americans see on their televisions is partisan division and dysfunction in the Senate and the House, I just want to remind all of us that we can get good, important, and significant things done together, as just happened on the floor a few moments ago.

For generations, American families have worked and saved and strived to send their children to college, but for a long time, our Nation's original sin--the sin of slavery and racism--has left a long shadow and a stain on access to the critical opportunity of higher education. In much of our Nation, for decades, African Americans were denied entry to most of our colleges and universities and still today face unreasonably high barriers to higher education. The establishment of historically Black colleges and universities, HBCUs, and other minority-serving institutions of higher learning has been a critical answer to that tragic history of discrimination.

Men and women who founded HBCUs refused to accept a system of higher education that denied opportunity to African Americans, and over decades, HBCUs have risen to become some of our Nation's finest academic institutions. They have educated hundreds of thousands of young men and women who have gone on to do incredible things and to be some of our Nation's greatest leaders.

That is why all of us who have come on the floor today, Republicans and Democrats, have acted to make a permanent commitment to supporting HBCUs and minority-serving institutions with Federal funding. We have agreed to make permanent $255 million in annual funding for HBCUs.

I am particularly excited about this legislation because my home State of Delaware is home to one of the finest public HBCUs in the country, Delaware State University. Founded in 1891, it is one of the country's premier land grant universities. Over the last 125 years, it has emerged as one of our Nation's premier HBCUs, graduating some of my State's best accountants, business leaders, researchers, scientists, teachers, social workers, and much more.

My friend Dr. Wilma Mishoe, the University's first female president, will end her impressive tenure this month and be succeeded by Provost Dr. Tony Allen, who will continue the upwardly rising trajectory of the Hornets of Delaware State University.

Their research programs are important drivers for innovation in a State with a long history of invention. It is home to the Delaware Center for Neuroscience Research, a partnership of institutions working to advance our understanding of our brains and how we form thoughts, memories, and feelings that may help unlock the key to addiction and other challenges our country faces. It is also home to OSCAR, the Optical Science Center for Applied Research, which is helping speed the detection of disease, supporting our soldiers in detecting threats, and even equipping the NASA Mars rovers with improved sensors. Delaware State has been the lead institution on grants from NASA, NSF, and NIH in just the last few years.

We are very proud of Delaware State. The funding stream last year provided $880,000 in critically needed funding for STEM, faculty, research, and students.

Let me last reference something that my colleagues have also spoken to: the streamlining of the free application for Federal student aid, or FAFSA, which impacts 20 million American families.

I spent a long time--roughly 20 years of my life--actively involved in the national ``I Have a Dream'' Foundation, which provides college- access opportunities for young people from families with no means or experience of attending higher education. I myself sat with dozens of young Delawareans and struggled as we finished the FAFSA form for them. This long-worked-for solution that Senators Alexander and Murray have advanced streamlining this form from 108 questions to 22 is a critical first step that will make a lasting difference for access to education all over our Nation.

I am so grateful for the opportunity to join this bipartisan coalition and look forward to even more progress in the months and years ahead.

Thank you.

Recognition of the Minority Leader

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