A spate of executive orders issued by the Trump administration in recent weeks have triggered a growing list of questions for Montana colleges and universities regarding future access to federal funding for campus-based research.
The atmosphere of uncertainty extends not just to activities related to diversity and climate change but to ongoing research centered on human health and medical intervention, the Montana Free Press reports.
Last month, President Donald Trump directed federal agencies to implement a spending freeze on trillions of dollars worth of grants and loans. The move was quickly halted by a federal court, but several other attempts since to reduce federal spending or bring it in line with the administration’s agenda have sowed additional confusion. The latest of those came on Feb. 7 when the National Institutes of Health announced a new 15% cap on overhead costs tied to grant-funded research. That includes equipment, facilities and support staff often critical to such initiatives.
Across Montana’s far-flung campuses, NIH grant funding has helped support research on opioid addiction, traumatic brain injury, cultural contributors to physical and mental health in Indigenous communities, and a host of other scientific inquiries. According to Galen Hollenbaugh, spokesperson for the Office of the Commissioner of Higher Education, financial support for the infrastructure underpinning those efforts is critical, and he estimates the 15% cap, which was also temporarily halted in federal court this week, could cost Montana-based health research roughly $5 million a year.
“Facilities and administrative costs are real and necessary to this cutting-edge science,” Hollenbaugh said. “They are how our universities support shared equipment, labs, research buildings, library services and safety infrastructure.”
The attempted cap on so-called “indirect costs” with NIH grants could touch the use of lab space and equipment, as well as the grad students involved in research and the staff who help with reporting, budgeting and grant writing. The health departments at UM where much of the research takes place have been one of the biggest drivers of enrollment growth on the campus in recent years. To illustrate the institutional impact those federal dollars have had, Whittenburg pointed to the UM-based Center for Translational Medicine’s high-profile work on adjuvants that enhance vaccine effectiveness as just one example.
At Montana State University, Vice President of Communications Tracy Ellig similarly noted that federal grant money for the indirect costs of research has helped MSU establish a dozen high-end “core facilities” with use far beyond a single project. One example, he said, is the Montana Microfabrication Facility, a campus-based lab space available to students, faculty and commercial clients for an array of uses including precision etching, photolithography and biomedical manufacturing. Ellig emphasized that while undergraduates and graduate students will be affected by any reductions in federal funding, so too will private companies that contract with MSU for access to those facilities.
“It is also a very important outlet for private industry to get research done that they would otherwise be utterly incapable of doing on their own,” Ellig said. “There are companies, they just need one test, but they need a test done in a facility that if they were to build it on their own, it would cost them $10 million.”
According to Angela Lueking, vice chancellor for research at Montana Technological University, the past three years have seen considerable growth in the Butte campus’ research program. Federal grants are a critical funding component for Montana Tech, she said, with more than 50% of the indirect costs associated with those grants benefiting not just research but the campus as a whole — through library subscriptions, graduate school staff and hazardous waste disposal.
“Reductions would have a cascading negative impact, with a likely reduction in ‘behind-the-scenes’ support of research, laboratories, equipment installation and access to journal subscriptions,” Lueking wrote in an email to Montana Free Press, adding research expenses at Montana Tech have grown to nearly $23 million a year. “This would greatly hinder the ability of our faculty and students to conduct meaningful research — a cornerstone of a high-quality, experiential STEM education.”
Montana campuses are currently waiting to see how the recent string of executive orders and court injunctions play out. The University of Montana has started to compile information on staff and community partnerships tied to indirect research costs to gauge the potential impact, but unlike other universities nationally that temporarily paused new grant activities, both UM and MSU said they’ve kept their operations proceeding apace. Ellig equated federal research grants to a contract between researchers and the government, and as long as the money continues to flow, the work continues.
Even so, the stakes are high — for faculty, for students and for private companies that depend on access to high-end facilities. Whittenburg characterized federal research funding as a critical component in driving innovation in America’s higher education system. He said that while UM does have enough reserves to weather a short-term funding reduction through NIH, a permanent 15% cap there or at other federal agencies would be “worrisome.” Ellig concurred, noting that with other revenue streams such as tuition, fees and legislative allocations already dedicated to MSU’s academic programs, the loss of funding for high-end research infrastructure would be significant.
“This is a very black-and-white example,” Ellig said, “but if [indirect costs] drop to zero, there will be no more core facilities.”
