For researchers at IU, cuts at the National Science Foundation means not only the end of their projects but sometimes the end of their jobs. (Devan Ridgway / WTIU)
PhD candidate Selim Yavuz came from Turkey to the U.S. to study math education. He was part of a team of 12 researchers finishing an eight-year-long project on improving learning outcomes for kids, focusing on equity between diverse groups. He was also supporting his family on a modest stipend from the National Science Foundation.
His wife gave birth to their second child in January.
While his research is on equity and differential treatment between groups of students, Yavuz said diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) isn’t something that came up much during research in his home country.
“Since I'm an international, I didn't see any political vision,” he said. “I'm far away from my country. It's not my job for here, I'm just here for education.”
But the NSF cancelled the grant funding his work this spring, alongside hundreds of others flagged under new guidelines to eliminate anything mentioning DEI.
For researchers at IU, that means not only the end of their projects but sometimes the end of their jobs.
The NSF declined an interview for this story. Spokesperson Cassandra Eichner wrote in a statement: “It is our priority to ensure all NSF awards aim to create opportunities for all Americans everywhere, without exclusion of any groups.”
“It is difficult to understand, because it says, ‘Don't focus on only one specific race.’ But our findings and project shows that we are focusing all races,” Yavuz said.
Yavuz was blindsided. His family lost its sole source of income.
“I tried to find another option for summer, but it's too late to find because already positions are filled,” he said. “And, since I'm an international, I don't have a permit to work outside of the university.”
Yavuz’s story has become common. As of May 7, the NSF has cancelled almost 1,400 grants, erasing one billion dollars in funding.
Associate professor Erik Jacobson is the principal investigator on the project.
“The goal of the grant was to build a survey for math teachers that would help us understand how they explain differences in different groups of students outcomes,” he said.
Since the 1980s, the NSF’s mission, as mandated by congress, has been to fund projects that improve society. Jacobson wrote the 2017 grant proposal to meet those priorities.
“One of the explicit ways they said work funded by the NSF should improve society is by broadening the participation of underrepresented groups in the STEM fields,” he said.
More than half of the grants cancelled are for STEM education.
Former post-doctoral fellow Elizabeth Roan said she sees a contradiction between the goals and actions of the federal government.
“It's confusing for me, especially when we keep hearing rhetoric about how we need a well-educated STEM workforce,” she said.
Roan was excited when she scored a coveted post-doctoral fellowship, what could have been a stepping stone for her research career. She was at a conference in Denver when she learned her fellowship had disappeared.
“There was a malaise in that conference,” she said. “I think I didn't attend a session where at least one person had lost funding.”
Roan and her husband were one day from signing a lease in Bloomington when she learned her fellowship had disappeared. She managed to find a teaching position in Texas, which will pay the bills but leave little time for research.
Roan said the dip in salary means it will take them years longer to save for a house, and they had to reconsider their plans to have a second child.
“We’ll probably be one-and-done, considering how much of a dent this is going to put into our career trajectories,” she said.
Jacobson’s team was notified the grant was canceled in a brief email, ending the project a year before completion with over two-million-dollars already invested.
He said he’s received little information why his grant was cancelled, and even the NSF officials he’s talked to seem confused.
“My program officer was really surprised,” Jacobson said. “Grants have never been canceled for this reason before in the history of NSF.”
Without funding, there’s no guarantee the final phase of the project, actually testing the survey, will ever happen.
As a tenured professor, Jacobson’s job is safe. But he said losing that support was a punch to the gut. He described the worst parts of the experience.
“There's just a waste. That's been squandered, that investment,” Jacobson said. “And then just being really unsure about how these people that I work with, that I care about, what's going to happen with them, and not being able to help them in any way.”
Tracking NSF cuts relies on researchers sharing their data, since the government doesn’t provide information on which grants have been cut. More than $7.5 billion dollars in research funding from the National Institutes of Health has been cut as well.
The NSF has canceled at least seven grants at Indiana University, according to Grant Watch.
