By Delaney Newhouse | Focus Editor
As a new presidential administration shakes up the flow of cash from the federal government, Baylor has felt the effect of cut-off research funding.
In her newsletter on April 14, Provost Nancy Brickhouse announced the cancellation of grants from the Environmental Protection Agency and National Endowment for the Humanities has affected two projects in which Baylor was partnering with other schools. Another research project being conducted by a Baylor faculty member also abruptly lost funding as a result of federal budget reallocation.
Kevin Chambliss, Baylor’s vice provost for research, said that while the university grieved for the researchers whose work was disrupted, Baylor still maintained a steady stream of research funding and many other projects, and even those with NEH funding would continue to move forward.
“We have institutionally been in a pretty good position to weather all this,” Chambliss said. “We don’t have the exposure of, say the large academic medical centers that are reliant on indirect cost and more reliant on federal dollars than Baylor … Their funding for research can be as much as 80% out of a federal portfolio; ours is only 50%.”
Chambliss explained that since World War II, universities and the government had a general agreement that funds would be provided so that universities could complete specialized research that fit the aims of governmental institutions. As research is conducted, the government pays back the costs of building and maintaining these facilities while the institutions also comply with a myriad of federal research requirements.
“Some of what we’re seeing, I think, is a signaling from the government that perhaps they want some changes in the terms of their contract with higher education,” Chambliss said.
Patrick Flavin, interim chair of political science, explained that while the executive branch can direct things within other executive agencies, it is Congress that ultimately holds the power to allocate a budget, a process that happens each year.
Flavin said that holding back already appropriated funds was a technique called impoundment, most famously used by the Nixon administration and resulting in a 1974 law providing that the president could only rescind funds with the approval of the House and the Senate.
“There you saw Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, joining together to assert the power of the institution of Congress,” he said. “If you compare that to what you see today, Republicans in Congress seem much more aligned with, or supportive of, Trump’s policies or their own party rather than the institution of Congress.”
Congress is expected to pass a series of appropriations bills regarding funding by October. Despite their role in allotting money, the president is still able to control grants from various federal agencies, Flavin said.
“NEH, that particular piece of this was really more related to the government making cost cuts across the federal government,” Chambliss said. “One of those happened at the National Endowment for the Humanities, and as a result of them not having as much funding, they’ve had to make some hard decisions.”
Unlike some other universities, Baylor has not been specifically targeted for cancellation of research funding, Flavin said. Still, the cancellation of grants can deeply affect the process of an individual research project or even halt it. Chambliss said Baylor would continue to look to a variety of funding sources so that research could be maintained through reliable funding.
“One of the things about working on really big problems is there’s typically broad interest in solving those problems, and while the federal government can be one source of support to solve some of those problems, industry is also interested in solving those problems,” Chambliss said. “There are people in the nonprofit sector that are interested in solving those problems. Our hope is that we’ve identified some foci for Baylor to target moving forward which makes us less susceptible, per se, to just what happens in the federal portfolio.”
