Negotiations to end the government shutdown on Capitol Hill are underway, but Ohio University’s researchers might feel the effects anyway.
The shutdown prevented OU from applying for two of its largest sources of federal research grants.
“We are awaiting news from these agencies about how they will handle the funding program deadlines that fell during the government shutdown,” said Andrea Gibson, director of OU’s Research Communications. “We will have more information at that time.”
Most of OU’s research is supported by the National Science Foundation and the the National Institutes of Health, according to OU’s Office of Research and Sponsored Programs annual awards report — two deadlines that passed in the last 16 days since the government shutdown began.
In 2012, OU received $21,240,973 from federal sources, of which more than 35 percent was from the National Science Foundation; more than 18 percent was received from the National Institutes of Health.
The department had seven proposals for the National Institutes of Health, and six for the National Science Foundation.
“We’re not losing funding as in they’ll take away money from us,” said Shane Gilkey, OU’s assistant vice president for research. “Rather, we’re missing future opportunities for applying for (grants).”
It is not known if the federal government will extend deadlines for research grant proposals, Gilkey said.
Other state universities, such as Kent State University, are submitting proposals electronically to federal funding portals that are still online.
But the National Science Foundation site, grants.gov, doesn’t guarantee it will be reviewed until the government is up and running.
“Continuing to submit proposals during the shutdown will help us avoid having to make an unusually large number of submissions in a short period of time,” said Grant McGimpsey, Kent’s vice president for research and sponsored programs, in a statement.
Miami University officials said it’s struggling with this potential “threat” to the shutdown’s impact on research. If the government doesn’t act quickly, they said they believe the situation will worsen.
“The delay or postponement of proposal submissions, reviews, and subsequent awards further erodes our capacity to conduct meaningful research with our students,” Jim Oris, Miami’s associate provost for research and scholarship and dean of the graduate school, said in a statement. “The longer the shutdown stretches on, the greater the risk for significant impact to Miami’s research and education programs.”
Oris said the university has not experienced significant financial backlash from the shutdown; however, it is still monitoring the situation.
Other state colleges are more concerned with other federal funding such as that allocated for student veterans not receiving military benefits.
“We’re currently monitoring how the shutdown affects our students who are military veterans,” said Bowling Green State University spokesman Dave Kielmeyer. “So far, they’re hanging in. That’s more of a concern than research funding.”
Hotlines to the research agencies referred individuals to a voicemail describing the government shutdown as a reason why their websites remained offline.
“We sometimes forget how much the federal government trickles down even to places such as Southeast Ohio,” Gilkey said.
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