Several weeks of whiplash from the federal government on research funding have left Western Washington University faculty and students uncertain about their academic future.
In February, the National Institutes of Health announced that it planned to cap the percentage of indirect costs paid to universities at 15% of the grant money awarded. If this goes through, it would mean a drop in funding that pays for equipment, facilities and support staff at the grant-receiving institution. A federal judge ordered a pause on this change shortly after, and then extended it on March 5, blocking the funding cap from going into effect.
NIH also canceled its Summer Internship Program, while the National Science Foundation had downsized its summer research program for undergraduates. Some universities have cut incoming PhD students and downsized graduate programs. And the status of many grants, and broader federal funding, is uncertain, as agencies comb through active grants to make sure they abide by executive orders from the president regarding diversity, equity and inclusion and other issues.
“I don’t know if I’m even going to have a future if [the administration] cuts funding,” said Lauren Frick, a junior studying marine biology. “I’m a scientist. I need a reason to do science, and if nobody wants it, then what am I going to do for a job?”
Halle Bauer, a junior in biology, said she wants to pursue jobs in ecology or work in a national park. “Will there be jobs for me when I graduate?” Bauer said.
For professors, the unclear status of grants limits their ability to pursue scientific research, and to provide students with opportunities to work in labs.
Lina Dahlberg, a professor of biology at Western, got a three-year NIH grant funded on Jan. 1. She was expecting to be able to apply for an additional grant to hire a student to support her with the research. But that supplement was taken off the NIH website, due to it having “diversity” in the title.
“My choice now is I can pay this really promising student out of the grant money that I had earmarked for other things, or I can just tell her that she can go find a job somewhere else in Bellingham, which does not further her career goals of going to graduate school and becoming a professional scientist,” Dahlberg said.
Some Western grants under review
Direct impacts on Western have been “a lot of smoke, but not a tremendous amount of fire” so far, said David Patrick, the university’s vice-provost for research. After a brief pause, federal grant reimbursements are back up and running for Western. But the university would be impacted by the heavily criticized proposal to cap indirect costs for grants at 15%.
Like most universities, Western doesn’t get all of its indirect costs covered by grants: Patrick said the university spends about $500,000 annually covering those. If the cap is put in place, Western would have to cover more of those costs from its own budget.
The university also expects some adjustments to active grants. Western has around 100 federal research grants right now, Patrick said, and so far, the institution has been contacted about two or three, the result of federal government agencies combing through active grants to bring them into compliance with a range of executive orders from President Donald Trump. Several Western grants appeared on Sen. Ted Cruz’s database of 3,400 National Science Foundation grants.
Patrick said the university is “just beginning” conversations with the agencies about what their concerns are and how to respond.
“What I’m looking at now, is what’s coming next around indirect costs and the funding of federal science. Is the United States going to remain as committed to that as we have been, or is there a change in direction pending?” Patrick said. He expressed concern about the impact of NIH and NSF cuts on “science and biomedical advances at Western,” the student experience, and the pipeline of future scientists.
Students, faculty rally for science
A Stand Up for Science rally last week brought out around 200 students, faculty, staff and community members.
Annelise Snyder, an assistant professor in biology who attended the rally, applied for an NSF grant and an NIH grant in the last few months. She said there’s uncertainty about whether they’ll even get reviewed.
“If current grants are cut or submitted grants don’t get reviewed, this severely limits both our contributions to scientific knowledge and our ability to train students at this critical early stage in their careers,” Snyder said.
Ben Miner, a professor in the biology department and the associate dean of the College of Science and Engineering, said at the rally that the recent federal actions have been “demoralizing.”
Emily Roland, an assistant professor of geology, said layoffs of colleagues in federal science-related organizations affect Western professors, given they “rely” on those colleagues for collaborative efforts and data sets, for example.
For Rae Lynn Schwartz-DuPre, a lot of the new federal administration’s rhetoric around gender and race is a direct attack on what the Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies department does. Schwartz-DuPre, the chair, describes the discipline as an “intellectually rigorous discipline that interrogates identity and power and the intersections of equality.”
“My students are nervous, they’re scared, but they’re also motivated,” Schwartz-DuPre said. “They’re motivated because they know that this discipline is one that has historically faced challenges … They’re learning in their classes about that history, so that they are prepared to organize, support one another, to take on inequalities. If ever our department was necessary, it is today.”
Charlotte Alden is CDN’s general assignment/enterprise reporter; reach her at charlottealden@cascadiadaily.com; 360-922-3090 ext. 123.
