Changing data type in attribute table in QGIS?

I have county data in which the FIPs (actually State FIPS and County FIPS combined). I have data imported as CSV with the sames FIPS data titled STCounty. However, the shapefile FIPS is listed as a Real and the CSV came in as an Integer and the Join function does not seem to work. The drop boxes are greyed out/empty.

So the bigger questions is how do you change the attribute type in a table?

I tried to create a new column in the shapefile (county data) and set it to an integer and then multiply the FIPS*1, but got a column full of "NULL".

I am new to QGIS and have a lot of experience in MapInfo, so the join concept is not new to me, just the syntax in QGIS.