By Sara Bedi­gian
UConn Jour­nal­ism

Uni­ver­si­ty of Con­necti­cut Pro­fes­sor Jen­nifer McGar­ry has spent more than 20 years run­ning a fed­er­al­ly fund­ed pro­gram that pro­vides nutri­tion and phys­i­cal activ­i­ty sup­port to low-income fam­i­lies in the Greater Hart­ford area.   

UConn received $2 mil­lion per year from the Depart­ment of Agri­cul­ture for the effort, part of a larg­er $5 mil­lion statewide grant. 

In late Sep­tem­ber, McGar­ry received an email from the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment say­ing the grant had been cut — part of the almost $95 mil­lion that UConn has lost through reduced, slowed or ter­mi­nat­ed fed­er­al research awards over the past year.  

“You’re oper­at­ing with this lev­el of stress, anx­i­ety, respon­si­bil­i­ty for your­self and the peo­ple that you work with to do the work that you do,” McGar­ry said. “There’s all the peo­ple that would have been helped, sup­port­ed, kept alive, if that work con­tin­ued — so that’s pret­ty heavy to think about.” 

Since tak­ing office in Jan­u­ary 2025, the Trump admin­is­tra­tion has can­celed pre­vi­ous­ly approved research grants and with­held fund­ing at uni­ver­si­ties nation­wide. Many of the cuts have reflect­ed the admin­is­tra­tion’s oppo­si­tion to diver­si­ty, equi­ty and inclu­sion prac­tices as well as greater scruti­ny of spend­ing in areas such as cli­mate change and pub­lic health. 

While UConn has not been indi­vid­u­al­ly tar­get­ed by Trump or engaged in high-pro­file bat­tles with the pres­i­dent like oth­er uni­ver­si­ties such as Har­vard, Colum­bia and Brown, it has been impact­ed by the administration’s unprece­dent­ed research grant cuts and changes to fed­er­al fund­ing.  

UConn has lost $41 mil­lion from research grant ter­mi­na­tions and unex­pect­ed non-renewals, said Lind­say DiS­te­fano, inter­im vice pres­i­dent of research. New research awards were down $54 mil­lion in fis­cal year 2025 com­pared to fis­cal year 2024, bring­ing the loss to $95 mil­lion as of Oct. 15, 2025, she said. 

“The research being done at UConn is impor­tant — not just to our uni­ver­si­ty, but it makes actu­al impacts,” DiS­te­fano said. “It makes impacts across the state, across the coun­try, across the world, and mak­ing sure that peo­ple are sup­port­ed and con­tin­u­ing to do this incred­i­ble work is essen­tial.” 

New Research Awards
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The fed­er­al cuts have direct­ly impact­ed the more than 1,700 fac­ul­ty, staff or grad­u­ate assis­tants across UConn and UConn Health whose salaries are paid in part by fed­er­al grants and pro­grams, accord­ing to a Sep­tem­ber memo from UConn’s Inter­im Vice Pres­i­dent for Finance Reka Wrynn.

Jef­frey Dudas, a polit­i­cal sci­ence pro­fes­sor who serves as pres­i­dent of UConn’s chap­ter of Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion of Uni­ver­si­ty Pro­fes­sors, had a two-year $135,000 grant from the Nation­al Endow­ment of Human­i­ties can­celed in April after the first year. The grant fund­ed a writ­ing and pod­cast project that told sto­ries of how arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence appeared in pop­u­lar cul­ture over the years. 

“We got a one-sen­tence notice say­ing that the grant had been can­celed, and there was no expla­na­tion giv­en,” he said. “There was no rea­son­ing.”  

Dudas said although the grant was small­er than many fed­er­al grants, it was sig­nif­i­cant with­in the Depart­ment of Polit­i­cal Sci­ence. 

More than 1,400 endow­ment grants val­ued at $427 mil­lion have been ter­mi­nat­ed nation­wide as of April 8, 2025, accord­ing to a data­base cre­at­ed by the Asso­ci­a­tion for Com­put­ers and Human­i­ties.  

Jason Chang, a pro­fes­sor of his­to­ry and Asian Amer­i­can Stud­ies who is the depart­ment head of social and crit­i­cal inquiry, had a five-year minor­i­ty-serv­ing grant from the U.S. Depart­ment of Edu­ca­tion cut in Sep­tem­ber. The grant, which Chang had for two years, fund­ed pro­gram­ming at UConn Hart­ford to increase per­se­ver­ance, reten­tion and grad­u­a­tion rates for stu­dents.

“We know how impact­ful these pro­grams are, and we’re work­ing to try to recon­fig­ure and recon­nect them and rescale the project that’s sus­tain­able with what we have right now, so that we can con­tin­ue serv­ing stu­dents,” he said. 

McGar­ry said she has wit­nessed a sen­ti­ment of fear spread across UConn as fac­ul­ty wor­ry that years ded­i­cat­ed to fed­er­al­ly fund­ed research could come to an end, too.  

“There’s just this aura of awful­ness,” McGar­ry said. “It’s just delib­er­ate because it inter­rupts your abil­i­ty to focus and have a path or a series of goals for the work that you’re doing.” 

Break­down of fed­er­al fund­ing cri­sis 

In addi­tion to ter­mi­nat­ed grants, there has also been a gen­er­al dete­ri­o­ra­tion of fed­er­al fund­ing dol­lars and sup­port for indi­rect costs, such as infra­struc­ture and build­ing main­te­nance, that dri­ves the research appa­ra­tus at large, said Nathan Alder, pro­fes­sor of mol­e­c­u­lar and cel­lu­lar biol­o­gy and co-chair of the fed­er­al funds com­mit­tee for UConn AAUP. 

Alder research­es chron­ic dis­eases to devel­op drugs. His lab is pri­mar­i­ly fund­ed through the Nation­al Sci­ence Foun­da­tion or through the Nation­al Insti­tutes of Health, he said.  

In the first six months of Trump’s sec­ond term, NIH ter­mi­nat­ed 2,100 research grants total­ing $9.5 bil­lion, accord­ing to a June let­ter from NIH staff mem­bers. In a sep­a­rate man­date from the Trump admin­is­tra­tion in April, an addi­tion­al $2.6 bil­lion in con­tracts were elim­i­nat­ed, accord­ing to Amer­i­can Asso­ci­a­tion for the Advance­ment of Sci­ence. 

A Boston-based fed­er­al appeals court ruled on Jan. 5 that the Trump admin­is­tra­tion can­not cut bil­lions of dol­lars pro­vid­ed by the NIH to uni­ver­si­ties for med­ical and sci­en­tif­ic research, accord­ing to a press release from Mass­a­chu­setts Attor­ney Gen­er­al Andrea Joy Camp­bell. Camp­bell spear­head­ed the legal chal­lenge last April, joined by sev­er­al oth­er states, includ­ing Con­necti­cut.

NSF had ter­mi­nat­ed more than 1,600 active grants, val­ued at rough­ly $1.5 bil­lion, as of May, accord­ing to the New York Times. 

Although Alder has so far been able to renew his grants as nor­mal, he said the com­pe­ti­tion has great­ly increased. While typ­i­cal­ly about one in 10 projects were fund­ed, that has fall­en to about one in 50, he said.  With the decrease in avail­able fed­er­al funds, Alder said he is look­ing to pri­va­tize his research by explor­ing alter­na­tive fund­ing with indus­try part­ners to sup­port his lab. He said oth­er researchers are look­ing to do the same. 

“This is not what we are used to,” he said. “We’re all hav­ing to fig­ure out how to repo­si­tion our­selves and keep our research pro­grams afloat in a sys­tem that has been almost 100% reliant on fed­er­al dol­lars.” 

In addi­tion to fund­ing avail­abil­i­ty, the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment has lim­it­ed the abil­i­ty of researchers to receive reim­burse­ment for indi­rect costs that pay for things like build­ing main­te­nance, elec­tric­i­ty and oth­er costs required for research. UConn is pro­ject­ing an addi­tion­al $34 mil­lion annu­al loss across all cam­pus­es if the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment lim­its reim­burse­ment rates for indi­rect costs to 15% as it has pro­posed, DiS­te­fano said in an announce­ment to fac­ul­ty in Octo­ber.  

Fund­ing Loss
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UConn has paused the dis­tri­b­u­tion of fis­cal year 2025 indi­rect cost reim­burse­ments sched­uled for Decem­ber 2025. DiS­te­fano said the deci­sion on whether to dis­trib­ute these funds will be assessed in ear­ly 2026 based on the fed­er­al fund­ing cli­mate. 

Nation­al impact  

Alder said that cuts to aca­d­e­m­ic research will have dras­tic con­se­quences in the country’s future. 

“We’re real­ly see­ing an intel­lec­tu­al drain in this coun­try,” Alder said. 

He said he has seen a dras­tic decrease in pro­fes­sor and research jobs that are avail­able now com­pared to this time last year, and he is con­cerned with his grad­u­ate stu­dents’ job prospects due to the increased com­pe­ti­tion.  

“The rip­pling effect…is going to affect the research appa­ra­tus down­stream for years and years, even if things got bet­ter today,” he said.  

The Trump admin­is­tra­tion has offered some uni­ver­si­ties pri­or­i­tized access to fed­er­al fund­ing if they agree to a set of con­di­tions pro­posed in a com­pact let­ter.  These include lim­it­ing inter­na­tion­al stu­dents, elim­i­nat­ing DEI ini­tia­tives, restrict­ing employ­ees from express­ing polit­i­cal views on behalf of the insti­tu­tion, and shut­ting down depart­ments that “pun­ish, belit­tle” or “spark vio­lence against con­ser­v­a­tive ideas.”

UConn has not received the com­pact let­ter, and offi­cials have said they would not accept the deal if it were offered to the uni­ver­si­ty. 

“What­ev­er is stat­ed there must be ille­gal,” Inter­im Provost and Exec­u­tive Vice Pres­i­dent Pamir Alpay told the Uni­ver­si­ty Sen­ate in Octo­ber. “Obvi­ous­ly that is not in agree­ment with our phi­los­o­phy at UConn.” 

UConn’s response 

UConn has been work­ing to sup­ple­ment some lost fed­er­al fund­ing through its Emer­gency Research Grant Expen­di­ture Fund.  

The fund was cre­at­ed in spring 2025 to pro­vide short-term sup­port for less than a year to researchers whose grants were ter­mi­nat­ed, DiS­te­fano said. As of Oct. 20, 12 awards had been grant­ed, total­ing $1.6 mil­lion. 

She said the pri­or­i­ty was to pre­vent or min­i­mize lay­offs and pro­tect grad­u­ate stu­dents receiv­ing research funds so they would still be on sched­ule to com­plete their degrees.  

“At this point, it has been pro­duc­tive, and we are doing every­thing that we can,” DiS­te­fano said. 

DiS­te­fano said although the past year has been chal­leng­ing, she has worked to ensure open lines of com­mu­ni­ca­tion by con­duct­ing week­ly meet­ings with research teams, insti­tute direc­tors and lead­er­ship of the Office of the Vice Pres­i­dent for Research. 

After the elec­tion, she said the office opened up a triage inbox for their email that start­ed being mon­i­tored around the clock so any­one with ques­tions could be met with a fast response.  

Ad hoc task forces were cre­at­ed across the uni­ver­si­ty to facil­i­tate com­mu­ni­ca­tion and help inves­ti­ga­tors pur­sue oth­er sources of fund­ing if their pro­grams were changed. DiS­te­fano said the office start­ed hold­ing work­shops for fac­ul­ty to talk about their research and strength­en rela­tion­ships with indus­try part­ners.  

UConn’s AAUP cre­at­ed an ad hoc fed­er­al funds com­mit­tee, led by Alder and McGar­ry, to work with Office of Vice Pres­i­dent for Research to get infor­ma­tion and share facts with fac­ul­ty.  

“Infor­ma­tion has just been flow­ing like a fire hose; it changes day to day,” Alder said. “The role of our com­mit­tee has been to just sort of try­ing to make sense of every­thing.” 

While McGar­ry has lost near­ly $2 mil­lion from the fed­er­al gov­ern­ment, she was grant­ed some fund­ing from the emer­gency fund to con­tin­ue research and keep staff and pro­gram­ming through the fall semes­ter.  

But the fund­ing did not pro­vide her with the reduced teach­ing load she had with the can­celed grant. This has meant less time for research. 

“There are not enough hours in the day,” she said. “All the rip­ples are there.”