As the United States Department of Education continues to shrink, shutting down programs could impact department research at the University of Rhode Island.
The indirect costs URI gets from federal funding from the National Institutes of Health dropped from 57% to 15%, according to Brian Krueger, the associate dean of political science. The federal grants not only fund research but the grants help with research infrastructure like electricity and building repair.
If the National Science Foundation and other programs experienced a cost decline, the research infrastructure would be challenged, according to Krueger.
URI receives most of its funding from the biggest federal agency, the NSF, according to Krueger. The political science department has had research grants from the NSF in the past, but there isn’t an active award so the political science department isn’t impacted by a possible defund. However, the department has equality concerns.
“We have strong values that we want to encourage justice, equity, diversity and inclusion in our research,” Kruger said. “We don’t believe we should completely sideline [opportunities] just because the federal government is no longer funding them.”
If a shutdown were to occur, an alternative way of study would be provided to the program, according to Krueger. One alternative would be to stop accepting new students, but continue classes for current majors and minors in the program. Fortunately, there is no threat to the program.
“It’s the colleges who do research that the federal government wants to spend their research dollars on,” Krueger said.
There’s a sense in the history department that the Trump administration’s orders are an effort to delegitimize higher education, work and research, according to Robert Widell, the chair of the history department. Whether it’s in history or another discipline, there has to be pushback to stop things to allow these actions to happen.
The department isn’t a grant-dependent program, according to Widell. It is impacted as a whole when the university budget is reduced. When the budget is reduced, it affects the faculty and students across the institution.
Widell was part of a team that received a grant from the Rhode Island Council for Humanities for an oral history project, according to Widell. If federal funding from the council goes away, the opportunities would no longer be available.
“It’s going to be this sort of indirect trickle-down kind of effect where funding for everything goes away,” Widell said. “Then it affects the kinds available [opportunities] for research.”
URI has a number of faculty who are either international or do international research, according to Widell. With a possible program defund, the faculty has to consider how to get back into the United States. It raises uncertainty about the ability to do research overseas or internationally, so URI has to keep an eye on the current situation.
For students majoring or minoring in history, it would have negative effects for them, according to Widell. There are countless ways to understand the history of society, the world and current institutions, according to Widell. They are crucial to be able to be good citizens to face any number of problems whether it’s regional or national.
“We are as much as a history department of what history is about and what history contributes to [our world],” Widell said.
Other departments are hurting for many reasons, according to Widell. Faculty across the university aren’t able to teach students, which is what they were hired for. This means there’s a sense of trepidation about whether or not faculty can teach openly, whether it’s race, gender or sexuality.
“This is not a moment to be timid, a collaborationist, or say ‘Oh things are going to work out,” Widell said. “It’s a moment to be very protective of everything we’ve built.”
