The Center of Excellence is a partnership between Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College and the United States Department of Agriculture-Natural Resources Conservation Service (NRCS). Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College was the first American Indian land grant institution selected to establish a NRCS Center of Excellence.

The federal Center of Excellence program supports partnerships and working relationships between USDA agencies and tribes. The development of the Center signifies the commitment between NRCS, an agency of the federal government, and Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College, a tribally-based land grant institution, to enhance educational and employment opportunities for students.

The mission of the Center is to introduce students to scientific careers by providing an on-campus employment opportunity in a real-world work application. The students are employees of the NRCS. The work includes scanning and interpretation of historic aerial slides. The goal is to scan and geo-reference USDA historical legacy maps. Geo-referencing is a time-consuming task and requires a high level of geographic information systems (GIS) skills. After quality checks are completed, the information is saved to a DVD. The information is available to NRCS field office employees for compliance reviews and conservation planning purposes. The Center gives student employees a wide variety of skills including ArcGIS, database, and soil identification and surveying.

NRCS has federal responsibility for the National Cooperative Soil Survey and provides federal leadership for collecting, storing, maintaining, and distributing soil information on privately owned lands in the United States. These activities include preparing compilation bases for map finishing and digitizing, performing the quality assurance of soil survey maps, and preparing map material for publication. Fond du Lac Tribal and Community College students, through the Center of Excellence on campus, perform an important role in this soil science map compilation process.