The Excellence in Higher Education for Liberian Development (EHELD) project works to develop the capacity of faculty and staff at the University of Liberia's Engineering Department and Cutting University's Agricultural Sciences Department. The goal is to equip top-performing young Liberian women and men for professional careers as researchers, teachers, managers, extension agents, and small business owners in the two most critical current development sectors in the country: agriculture and engineering. After almost two decades of conflict that nearly destroyed the education system, company managers, farmers, government officials, and donor representatives point to Liberia's critical need for improved education, skills, and labor force capacity as the principal challenge to sustaining the momentum of development. The EHELD team, working with U.S. university partners from the University of Michigan, Rutgers, and North Carolina State University, have completed revisions to the engineering and agriculture curricula and are working on urgent institutional needs such as intensive faculty development, as well as better university-employer connections resulting in more practical and relevant training, employment readiness, and job placement.