NGS recipients are selected from a panel of 8 top graduate students provided by various professors in the animal and veterinary sciences departments at each university. A panel of Novus judges picks 4 outstanding students to receive the scholarship which is a monetary award that partially funds the monetary needs of the graduate student. The individual awards are provided annually by Novus at each university just prior to a Novus sponsored seminar. These awards include research efforts where Novus was involved, topics presented by professors from U.S. universities that were sponsored by Novus, and faculty members from cooperating universities or other technical professionals from Chinese companies.

Novus's purpose for developing this program is to:

• Encourage students in animal agriculture to develop strong research programs and to help them develop an international perspective of agriculture
• Learn more about the agriculture system in China
• Learn more about the university system, the professors and the students
• Develop a network of technical collaborators to work with Novus in developing solutions for
  the challenges associated with animal agriculture in China.

In addition to the NGS award, one student from each university is selected to participate in a summer internship outside of China at Novus's direction and cost. Many of these students will intern at Novus's Research Center in St. Charles, MO and will participate with other collaborators of Novus in the US and other countries. The office of Asian Affairs at UM-Columbia played an integral role in assisting Novus in obtaining the necessary Visiting Scientist visas for the interns as well as providing a cultural orientation for the interns. Furthermore, faculty representatives of UM-Columbia provided an introduction to various agricultural divisions within UM-Columbia and provided some of the interns with research experiences at a sow commercial research facility. We found that Purdue University also had an internship program with some Chinese universities so as part of the Novus program, we collaborated with Purdue in providing an industry tour of the Midwest as well as a tour and introduction to Purdue University Animal Sciences department.

The first group of NGS interns “graduated” in the August 2007. The interns had a wide variety of experiences from cultural to research and development in animal agriculture. The internship involved participation in the joint American Society of Dairy Science, American Society of Animal Science and Poultry science meetings in San Antonio, Texas; visits to a variety of industrial farming sites in the Midwest including a 30,000 cow dairy, a beef feedlot, commercial feed mills, commercial sow and swine grow-finish operations. They also visited two universities (University of Missouri, Columbia and Purdue University) and met faculty, other Chinese interns and graduate students. Novus recently completed the award process for the NGS class of 2008 and we are looking forward to their research and their visit to St. Louis!