MIDDLEBURY — Executive orders by President Trump have cast a shadow over millions of dollars in federal research money that comes to Middlebury College.

Scientists at the college say the orders, if fully implemented, could result in less money for salaries and stipends for college staff and students, less spending at local businesses, and poorer education in the sciences that would ripple through the community.

In one case, the money has already dried up.

And that’s aside from the potential loss in life-changing scientific advances.

“If our grant funding is frozen I won’t be able to pay my rent, my research students won’t have a salary to spend in the coffee shops downtown, I won’t be able to buy supplies from the local hardware store, I won’t be able to bring colleagues to visit and they won’t stay in Middlebury hotels or spend money at local restaurants,” said Allison Jacobel, an assistant professor of Earth and Climate Sciences at Middlebury. “Last week I considered rescinding a job offer for a new research assistant because I wasn’t sure it was fair to offer him a job that might not exist next week.”

In his first week in office, President Trump issued a series of executive orders that aimed to dismantle a half-century of efforts to make America a place where people of diverse backgrounds are more included in society and receive equitable treatment.

The orders sought to undo requirements that federal contractors hire more women and people of color, ended requirements that promote environmental justice for low-income communities, and laid the groundwork for federal agencies to investigate private institutions, organizations and businesses based on their efforts in “DEI,” or diversity, equity and inclusion.

As a result, scientists around the country, including at Middlebury College, got emails from the director of the U.S. Office of Management and Budget saying the agency was pausing payment of grants and funding from agencies like the National Science Foundation (NSF), National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other bulwarks of scientific research in this country.

“In particular, this may include, but is not limited to conferences, trainings, workshops, considerations for staffing and participant selection, and any other grant activity that uses or promotes the use of DEIA principles,” wrote Sethuraman Panchanathan, director of the OMB.

Scientists around the country were rattled.

“This is chilling,” said Middlebury Astrophysics Professor Eilat Glikman.

She was relieved that federal courts temporarily blocked the government from withholding already allocated grants, but still worried about the implications of what might have, and could still, happen. Glikman, like other Middlebury faculty, pointed out that she is only paid by the college for nine months of work, and she has to secure grants to pay herself a salary for any research she does over the summer — research that she is expected to do.

But the grants don’t only pay for her summer salary and materials she needs for her research, they also pay students for the work they do in her lab as part of their professional training.

“A huge component of my job is giving students a chance to do research,” Glikman said.

And it is not just undergraduate students feeling the pressure. A couple professors said their students are questioning the value of applying for federal grants to help them go to graduate school because the panels that review such applications are apparently suspended. Another said a student was considering graduate school in Europe as a result of the executive order.

PROFESSOR
EILAT GLIKMAN

IMPACT FELT ALREADY

Although the attempt to withhold payment of approved grants was delayed by courts, the executive order has already produced worldwide impacts.

In an effort to root out DEI language, some federal databases have gone dark in the past month. Joe Holler, associate professor of Geography, found that out when he was teaching a J-term course and couldn’t direct his students to databases where in the past they could gather information.

“The landscape of information and data available from federal websites is changing rapidly,” Holler said.

Although loss of access to some databases was temporary, access to others is still ongoing.

“The CDC Social Vulnerability Index commonly used in disaster recovery and risk reduction is gone,” he said, “as is the EPA EJSCREEN (Environmental Justice Screening Tool) and the Climate and Environmental Justice Screening Tool.

“Notice a theme?” he added. “Data and map dashboards that help visualize and research inequity are going offline.”

Researchers at Middlebury appear to be receiving promised grants. A search of the NSF website shows that Middlebury College has been awarded $5,437,633 for 18 projects since 2019.

Julia Ferrante, the college’s associate vice president for public affairs, said Middlebury is working with other institutions to understand the impact of the executive orders.

“We are committed to our educational mission and continue to work to understand how we may continue these essential efforts at Middlebury while abiding by the law,” she said.

But there is no doubt that the president’s orders have rattled scientists here, as they have around the country.

Biology Professor Mark Spitzer, who receives an NIH grant, said his actual funding has not been disrupted yet, and he is hopeful that this will be just a brief period of uncertainty. But he also said that “in my 18 years at Middlebury College and many years in academia before that, I have never seen this type of disruption in our federal granting agencies … It has become unclear to what degree NSF and NIH will remain functional as sources of funding for research, and if they do remain functional the specific types of research that will be funded is also uncertain.”

While science funding from government agencies remains intact, thanks to court orders, one private national funding institution has turned off its funding spigot.

The Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the nation’s largest private funder of biomedical research, last week canceled $60 million in funding that aimed to make the sciences more open to all people through its Inclusive Excellence Program. Middlebury was among the 104 institutions that would have received some of that money.

Although Howard Hughes is a private entity, observers say it is likely a target if federal officials do go after institutions that fund DEI programs, as the executive order mandated.

Rick Bunt, Middlebury’s associate dean of sciences and a professor of chemistry and biochemistry, is Middlebury’s point person on this Inclusive Excellence Program grant.

“That’s a pretty big loss for us — about $260K funding over the next three years that we won’t get to use to improve our introductory STEM curricula,” he said.

The money would have been used to support early student research experiences in faculty labs, additional teaching assistant support for STEM courses for students who struggle, professional development for faculty to improve inclusive teaching practices.

“That’s all going to come to a close now,” Bunt said.

SHRINKING OPPORTUNITIES

And as private grant funding has already been hit, access to future public funding is uncertain.

Alexis Mychajliw, an assistant professor of biology and environmental studies, was working with colleagues around Vermont to apply for an NSF grant in the past month when, a day before they submitted their application, the federal website “archived” the program.

The grant proposal, led by the University of Vermont, included staff at UVM, Middlebury, Norwich University, Bennington College, the Fairbanks Museum and the Vermont Center for Ecostudies. It would have digitized natural history collections among the institutions so they could be shared, as well as create teaching modules to improve science education in Vermont.

“It was designed to bring together educators and students in Vermont,” Mychajliw said.

Not only will there be fewer tools for educators, but also there will be less mentorship for early career professionals like Mychajliw. She was perplexed by the vanishing of the grant application webpage, and sorry to see the loss of a potential teaching tool.

“I love using natural history collections for outreach,” Mychajliw said.

The latest setback came last week. Historically, colleges and universities get a cut of federal science grants to pay for things like electricity and heating in the lab where the research is conducted; it’s referred to as “overhead.” The NIH announced it was lowering the amount of overhead that institutions could collect, though the courts have temporarily halted that move.

Scientists like Bunt are concerned that politics has seeped into important, life-saving research.

“Personally, I don’t think this barrage of executive orders has anything to do with reining in wasteful spending on science programs,” he said. “It’s part of a campaign against higher education (among other targets) in general (like taxing endowments and cutting NIH indirect cost reimbursements) because they’re seen as political opponents.”

Professor Jacobel hopes this is a wakeup call.

“I don’t think most people understand the scale or potential impact of the threat,” she said. “It’s not just people in lab coats whose livelihoods and careers have been threatened, the Trump administration is holding hostage the people and things that actually make America great.”