The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) on behalf of the National Institute on Mental Health (NIMH) intends to negotiate, and award a purchase order on a sole source basis to Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU) to provide sponsorship of a HACU Intern for the Fall 2011 session. The internship assignment will be a professional development experience that will enable students to make more educated career choices. The program will allow NIDA will increase diversity in its workforce by providing these internships to high-achieving Hispanic students as well as creating a pipeline of future employees who have had positive and meaningful work experience.

The Office of Science Policy and Communication within NIDA will sponsor a Hispanic student from the HACU National Internship Program for 15 weeks.
The Following services will be provided:
Recruitment-attract a qualified pool of applicants through visits to Hispanic Serving Institutions (HSI's), a targeted direct mail campaign, attendance at conferences, responses to inquiries, and an informational HNIP webpage.
Employment Administration-Receive, screen, process, and match student applications with internship assignments provided by supervisors; Process payroll, manage housing deductions, and conduct intern and program performance evaluation over the course of the session.
Housing-HACU works with supervisors and interns to arrange safe, furnished, affordable housing near public transportation.
Travel-Roundtrip airfare is arranged and provided at no charge to interns.
Orientation-HACU conducts a two-day orientation in Washington, DC before interns report for their internship assignments.
Extra Curricular Activities-HACU enhances interns' professionalism and personal growth through monthly meetings, cultural events, networking opportunities, and skill development workshops, brown bag lunches, and special tours.
Student and Supervisor Support Services-HACU provides program handbooks and maintains frequent communications with field interns and supervisors by phone and email.
Evaluation-Through mid-term and final program evaluations, HACU compiles and submits to each participating agency a final report. The report includes and intern profile and feedback from interns and supervisors.
Academic Credit-HACU works with students and their academic.

The period of performance is 15 weeks.

The acquisition is being conducted under simplified acquisition using FAR 13 procedures and is exempt from the requirements of FAR Part 6, Competition Requirement. This notice of intent is not a request for competitive proposals. Interested parties may identify their interest and capabilities in response to this synopsis. The determination by the Government not to compete the proposed contract based upon responses to this notice is solely with the discretion of the Government. Comments to this announcement, referencing synopsis number NOI2190103 may be submitted to the NIDA, Station Support Simplified Acquisitions Branch, 31 Center Drive, Bldg 31, Room 1B59, Bethesda, MD 20892-2080 and attention Idella Simpson, Contract Specialist, [email protected], on or before September 16, 2011 12:00pm.