University of Arizona faculty expressed frustrations over uncertainty amid funding cuts and stalls by President Donald Trump’s administration during a faculty senate meeting Monday.
Tomás Díaz de la Rubia, the university’s senior vice president for research and innovation, spoke before the group regarding the state of grant funding.
“There isn’t really a lot to update. You all see the news every day,” he told the group.
He said currently there are nine stop-work orders affecting $3 million in federal grants, and seven grant terminations, primarily from USAID and state department cuts.
But the lack of updates amid the rapidly changing funding landscape under the new presidential administration threw some faculty off.
“What I’m hearing is you don’t even have a single plan yet. And we are not just panicking, we are on the verge of shutting down our ability to do research and to support graduate students, which is the main aspect of an R1 university,” said Suzanne Eckert, a member of the faculty senate and curator for the Arizona State Museum.
De la Rubia said some faculty members expecting NIH grant funding are experiencing delays, impacting funding for graduate students, but efforts are underway to create financial “bridges” to support these students.
Lucy Ziurys, a member of the faculty senate and professor in chemistry and biochemistry, said they should follow in the footsteps of Yale and other universities by implementing a bridge funding program.
Faculty urged Research Innovation and Impact, RII, to step in as departments struggle to fund graduate students and employees while grants are in limbo.
“Our department is in the red because it is covering us through bridge funding. The vice president for research or RII is not doing anything as far as we can tell,” Keith Maggert, a faculty senate member and cancer researcher at the university, said at the meeting.
The urgency was palpable as faculty detailed the reality of their situations.
“If I don’t get bridge funding, I will have to shut my lab in about two or three months,” Maggert said.
He asked de la Rubia if he could provide a date for the release of a “bridge funding mechanism.”
“No, I cannot. Not right now,” he responded.
Eckert urged de la Rubia to act proactively.
“Your office and the president’s office should be creating multiple simultaneous working models to kind of plan ahead for what the possible federal and state level changes are going to be,” Eckert said.
Left scrambling
On Feb. 7, the National Institutes of Health announced drastic cuts to NIH funds used by public research universities, effective the following business day, Feb. 10. The cuts target “indirect costs” such as building maintenance and administrative support, capping grant funds for these expenses at 15%.
The University of Arizona was left scrambling after the announcement and de la Rubia wrote to the UA community the day after the cuts were set to go into effect.
“The U of A conducts about $165 million in NIH research, and research-support funds cover expenses like labs, specialized core facilities, technical personnel, cybersecurity protections, compliance, and other operational costs,” he wrote.
The UA’s Research Innovation and Impact department created a page to inform the university community about funding updates and directives, telling researchers “to continue budgeting NIH applications at the applicable federally negotiated rate. New and existing NIH awards will continue to be administered with the applicable federally negotiated rate.”
But during the faculty senate meeting Maggert said that information is stale.
“The web page that you set up was informative and now it just repeats the same advice,” Maggert said.
In response to the NIH’s announcement, Arizona Attorney General Kris Mayes filed a lawsuit in Massachusetts, along with 21 other states, calling for an injunction on the “unlawful” mandate.
De La Rubia stood by his advice, telling the audience, “Stay calm. We continue operating.”
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