HANOI -- The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) today announced a $2.4 million grant to Arizona State University (ASU) to support the expansion of the Higher Education Engineering Alliance Program (HEEAP) that leverages public and private sector funding to improve the quality of higher education in the country.

The grant will provide funding for a new component of the HEEAP activity, the Vocational and University Leadership and Innovation Institute (VULII) that will contribute directly to the national goal of increasing the quality of higher education while strengthening the human and institutional capacity to contribute to Vietnam's economic growth.

"This program will help further strengthen the collaboration between academia and industry, and ultimately will accelerate economic development in Vietnam," said USAID Mission Director Francis Donovan.

Under the auspices of HEEAP, VULII will provide capacity-building and training programs ranging from government officials and university rectors to mid-level administrators and engineering professors. HEEAP is a partnership set up in 2010 between USAID, ASU and Intel Corporation, which now includes a growing list of industry partners. To date, the program has trained more than 100 faculty members from Vietnam's universities and colleges in advanced methods for teaching engineering at ASU.

HEEAP works with Vietnam's Ministry of Education and Training (MOET) and Ministry of Labor, Invalids, and Social Affairs (MOLISA). HEEAP's participating institutions are Ho Chi Minh City University of Technology, Hanoi University of Science and Technology, Ho Chi Minh City University of Technical Education, Can Tho University, Danang University of Technology, Cao Thang Technical College, Hanoi Vocational College of High Technology, and Ho Chi Minh Vocational College of Technology.

The HEEAP expansion announced by partners in Hanoi this week will also have other funding partners, including MOLISA and Intel Corp., and other industry partners. The estimated target investment from current and future partners for the HEEAP expansion is $40 million.

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See photos from the HEEAP expansion.