January and February will likely bring two of the highest submissions of research grant proposals ever at Kent State. Right now, research departments are being forced to act as if there is a government shutdown.
Funders are still rolling grants back out after the Office of Management and Budget called for a federal funding freeze on Jan. 28, which lasted two days until it was stalled, then rescinded and blocked by federal judges.
Vice President for Research and Economic Development Douglas Delahanty said ripple effects on campus are still being felt after the freeze. As Kent State is an R1 research institution, the university receives significant federal funding, pushing $19 million this year, he said.
“We have a handful of grants on this campus that we’ve received stop suspend notices [for],” Delahanty said.
The three biggest target areas of the executive orders are anything to do with climate change research, diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility, or anytime money is leaving the United States to go to another country.
With about $9 million of current stalled reimbursements, Delahanty said many researchers on campus are in distress. Study sections were cancelled, which will prolong the entire funding process for three to six months at least, and professors who planned on attending conferences no longer have the funding to go.
Those who will be hugely impacted have already been contacted, and in most cases, students have an agreement that their department will cover them anyway, he said. This situation is not atypical.
“You can look in the past — each time there’s been a change in president, there’s typically a pause in funding to make sure that the funding is in line with that group’s missions and philosophy,” Delahanty said.
Most of the Trump Administration’s executive orders have called for more government efficiency and less spending by the federal government thus far.
Elias Nader, an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Criminology, said the grant freezing was counterproductive.
“It’s such a blanket statement in terms of this kind of pullback without any specificity that doesn’t target some of the things they claim they want to target,” Nader said. “A lot of the things that they are cutting funding to were things that helped make the government run more efficiently.”
A researcher himself, Nader is currently working on a project federally funded through the U.S. Department of Justice. He said he is not currently affected by the freezes since his work centers around a public safety initiative in the city of Baltimore, and it does not include any DEIA terminology.
Delahanty said in some cases, funders are simply looking to eliminate certain terms from proposals and then continue funding them.
In other cases, if research is stalled, Nader said there could be serious impacts on the lives of those involved. For example, many medical research participants give up all of their treatments to take an experimental drug.
“If they can’t get access to that medication, or if they can’t come in for their visits, then all of a sudden they are impeding progress they might be making in terms of their recovery or in terms of fighting that illness,” Nader said.
Even so, the executive branch is not the only decision maker on what research can be done, he said.
The top three grant funders at Kent State include the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the Department of Education. Nader said the fact that these agencies exist within a system of a separation of power gives him hope.
“They are long-standing institutions whose budgets are not necessarily determined directly by the executive branch,” he said. “Congress is making a lot of these determinations in terms of what priorities are for research … it’s built purposefully for this kind of separation of power.”
The rescinded freeze is not only affecting researchers, Nader said. Many students apply for grants to fund their doctorate or master’s degree schooling, and if they cannot receive the money, they will not be able to get that education.
Nicholas Baird, a current master’s student studying mechatronics engineering, hopes to be able to receive his Ph.D. through a federally funded fellowship that would cover the costs.
“If I do get these fellowships, then it’s not certain that the funding will last long enough to complete the Ph.D.,” he said.
On top of this, many undergraduate research assistants who get paid to work in a lab while they attend school may have to find a different job to earn money, even though they have an interest in research, Nader said.
Baird said it is mostly the Ph.D. and master’s students who perform research in labs, think through ideas and put everything together.
“If there’s less funding for students to get their Ph.D.s or master’s through grants, instead of paying it out of pocket, which is very expensive … without these additional students, there will be a lot less research being done,” he said.
As agencies begin their processes again, Nader said they are not all accepting new proposals yet. If he were to spend his federal grant money bill for his research, he doesn’t know if he would get reimbursed.
Currently, the NSF has started the process of reviewing previously submitted grants and peer review panels are being rescheduled, which decide whether or not a grant is awarded.
“I think most people are pretty buried in their research, so we kind of just push it out of our heads, keep working on things and hope it figures itself out,” Baird said. “Having to think about whether or not stuff is going to be funded is distracting from the work.”
Delahanty said right now, the Division of Research & Economic Development is doing its best to serve as a calming influence.
“We don’t know what this means,” Delahanty said. “We just have to kind of wait, and there’s nothing we can do right now other than wait and see how funders are interpreting this.”
Lauren Cohen is a general assignment editor. Contact her at [email protected].
