The U.S. Department of Agriculture provides competitive grants to higher education institutions to support students from diverse backgrounds through scholarships, mentorship, and experiential learning opportunities. The Food and Resource Economics Department (FRE) at the University of Florida was recently awarded one of these grants. In this article, we discuss the theories utilized to develop the multidimensional mentoring and experiential learning programming aspects of FRE’s Multicultural Scholar Program. Programmatic aspects were designed to ease the transition of multicultural scholarship recipients transferring from Associate of Arts (A.A.) programs at state and community colleges to a large research institution. We also highlight challenges and successes we faced in implementing the program. We share our experiences such that other agricultural economics programs seeking funding to support multicultural students and developing mentoring programs for multicultural transfer students aimed at increasing diversity and inclusion can learn from our successes and challenges.

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