This year, federal agencies have canceled research grants at many colleges and universities across the country, but what about here in northern Illinois and southern Wisconsin?
Scroll for information about each terminated grant, the awarding agencies, when the grants start and end, the total expected award amounts and how much of that award amount is impacted by termination.
Earlier this summer, a judge ordered the National Institutes of Health to stop new grant terminations on “politically sensitive topics.” Another federal judge, in late July, ruled that National Endowment for the Arts cuts were "unlawful" and that further lawsuits can continue.
This page will be updated as more grants are targeted for termination, legal challenges reinstate awards, or as WNIJ receives additional information.
Northern Illinois University
Grants targeted for termination so far: 8
Total amount of awarded grants: $6,992,387
Total amount subject to termination: $3,023,383
- Increasing Employer Inclusivity by Investigating Motivation to Participate in Geoscience Disability Communities of Transformation
- "This project addresses the need for increased inclusion of persons with disabilities in STEM, specifically in the geosciences. This pilot project will use the model of communities of transformation, a type of community of practice, to better understand the organizations that promote access and inclusion in geoscience for people with disabilities. Research will also address the motivation of geoscience employers regarding access and inclusion in the workplace.”
- Click here to read full grant description.
- Awarding agency: National Science Foundation (NSF)
- Start date: 10/1/2023 - End date: 9/30/2026
- Expected total award amount: $259,579
- Amount subject to termination: $216,047.04
- USAID/Burma Diversity and Inclusion Scholarship Program Activity
- “NIU’s Center for Burma Studies is an international leader in the study of Burmese Culture and life. The center holds the largest collection of Burmese artifacts in the US and supports undergraduate and graduate teaching concerning Burma. The purpose of the USAID/Burma Diversity and Inclusion Scholarship Program Activity is to support current and future community leaders of Burma, particularly those from vulnerable groups, to gain access to quality higher education learning opportunities by offering regional and local Higher Ed scholarships and a variety of higher education opportunities via multimodalities that strengthen the Higher Ed landscape.”
- Awarding agency: USAID
- Start date: 10/1/2024 - End date: 8/14/2025
- Expected total award amount: $36,948
- Amount subject to termination: $16,948
- Preparing Educators as School Psychologists in Northern Illinois (PESP-NI)
- "This five year project will prepare 30 current educators to meet significant needs in the Rockford and DeKalb, Illinois public schools, through a 3-year training program resulting in Illinois licensure and national eligibility as School Psychologists."
- Awarding agency: Department of Education
- Start date: 10/1/2023 - End date: 12/31/2025
- Expected total award amount: $5,565,229
- Amount subject to termination: $2,411,166
- Dubiously Donne: Attribution and Literary Reputation in Early Modern England
- "'Dubiously Donne: Attribution and Literary Reputation in Early Modern England' explores early attitudes toward authorial identification through analyzing texts misattributed to writers such as John Donne in seventeenth-century handwritten manuscripts."
- Awarding agency: National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)
- Start date: 8/1/2024 - End date: 7/31/2025
- Expected total award amount: $60,000
- Amount subject to termination: $10,002
- The Tousey Project
- "The Tousey Project seeks to digitize the dime novels of Frank Tousey, the most sensational and prolific publisher of the format. Best known for his series marketed to children, Tousey made an indelible mark on American culture through the introduction of the first American science fiction hero, Frank Reade, and the popularization of stories about the outlaw Jesse James."
- Awarding agency: National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)
- Start date: 7/1/2022 - End date: 6/30/2025
- Expected total award amount: $348,900
- Amount subject to termination: $17,586.59
- Digital POWRR Professional Development Institutes for Digital Preservation
- "Five Preserving digital Objects With Restricted Resources (POWRR) Program training sessions on the standards, processes, and tools used to curate and preserve digital objects using open-source software. The 150 participants would largely come from grassroots cultural heritage organizations responsible for curation and preservation of materials of historically marginalized groups, including Native Americans, African Americans, and members of the Latinx community."
- Awarding agency: National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)
- Start date: 3/1/2022 - End date: 9/30/2025
- Expected total award amount: $348,920
- Amount subject to termination: $88,261
- Midwest Latinx Oral History Digital Library
- "The indexing, describing, and digitization of approximately 300 audiovisual oral history interviews with Latinx populations in the Midwest that document their experiences and life histories in the region. The project would complete 33 full text bilingual transcriptions and make them available through an open-access online database."
- Awarding agency: National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)
- Start date: 7/1/2024 - End date: 6/30/2026
- Expected total award amount: $348,811
- Amount subject to termination: $259,372.59
- Testing of Knee-Saver Devices in Deep Squatting Tasks
- "The work includes conducting human subject tests, performing preliminary data analysis, developing data processing software, and summarizing results in a final report for the service 'Testing of Knee-Saver Devices in Deep Squatting Tasks.' The vendor must be recognized as a pioneer in evaluating assistive devices for occupational activities, possess highly specialized equipment and facility for occupation-related kinematic and kinetic analysis, and have a strong research team with expertise in ergonomics and biomechanics, particularly in the biomechanical analysis of deep squatting tasks associated with occupational activities."
- Awarding agency: Centers for Disease Control (CDC)
- Start date: 6/15/2024 - End date: 8/31/2025
- Expected total award amount: $24,000
- Amount subject to termination: $4,000
Benedictine University
Grants targeted for termination so far: 2
Total amount of awarded grants: $319,992
Total amount subject to termination: $170,145.88
- NSF ADVANCE CATALYST: EVALUATION AND ASSESSMENT OF GENDER LEADERSHIP EQUITY AND SUPPORT
- “NSF-advance catalyst project evaluation and assessment of gender, leadership, equity, and support to investigate barriers that exist along the STEM faculty career pathway hindering successful hiring, advancement, and leadership of women, persons with disabilities, persons who identify as LGBTIQ+, and peers excluded because of their ethnicity or race.”
- Click here to read full grant description
- Awarding agency: National Science Foundation (NSF)
- Start date: 5/1/2022 - End date: 4/30/2025
- Expected total award amount: $300,000
- Amount subject to termination: $151,414.75
- CONFERENCE: RESEARCH, MENTORSHIP, AND COMMUNITY FOR CURRENT AND FUTURE UNDERREPRESENTED ALGEBRAISTS
- “This award will support the conference research, mentorship, and community for current and future under-represented algebraists to be held at Benedictine University on May 31 and June 1, 2025. Recent reports from the scientific and mathematics communities have highlighted a large gap between obtaining a bachelor's degree and a PhD for women and minoritized populations, especially in algebra and related fields. This conference aims to address this disparity by providing opportunities for potential researchers to engage with current algebra research.”
- Click here to read full grant description
- Awarding agency: National Science Foundation (NSF)
- Start date: 12/15/2024 - End date: 4/25/2025
- Expected total award amount: $19,992
- Amount subject to termination: $18,731.13
Rock Valley College
Grants targeted for termination so far: 1
Total amount of awarded grants: $59,386
Total amount subject to termination: $59,386
- CHRONICLES OF CHANGE: ARCHIVING STORIES OF DESEGREGATION IN ROCKFORD PUBLIC SCHOOLS
- A project to create a collection of oral histories of and primary source documents related to the 1989-2002 federal desegregation order of the Rockford Public Schools.
- Awarding agency: National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)
- Start date: 7/1/2024 - End date: 6/30/2026
- Expected total award amount: $59,386
- Amount subject to termination: $59,386
Beloit College
Grants targeted for termination so far: 1
Total amount of awarded grants: $349,971
Total amount subject to termination: $226,319
- BELOIT COLLEGE, CENTER FOR COLLECTIONS CARE: CAPACITY AND COMMUNITY BUILDING THROUGH PRESERVATION AND ACCESS TRAINING
- “A three-year project that will: (1) provide training to over 280 individuals from approximately 180 cultural institutions across the nation; (2) provide 162 scholarships to practitioners at smaller museums, libraries, archives, and other cultural organizations; (3) provide two 12-month postgraduate fellowships for emerging practitioners of color; and (4) develop two online courses (fundamentals of collections management and culturally appropriate stewardship).”
- Click here to read full grant description
- Awarding agency: National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)
- Start date: 3/1/2023 - End date: 2/28/2026
- Expected total award amount: $349,971
- Amount subject to termination: $226,319
Elmhurst University
Grants targeted for termination so far: 2
Total amount of awarded grants: $1,807,513
Total amount subject to termination: $404,331.05
- ELMHURST UNIVERSITY/DISTRICT 88 COLLEGIATE EXTENSION PROGRAM
- “Project to enrich and enhance an existing program that introduces underserved high school students to college-level humanities study and encourages them to pursue higher education. High school seniors, most of whom are low-income, first-generation, and/or from racial/ethnic minority backgrounds, enroll in English and communications courses for which they receive collegiate credit from Elmhurst. Proposed project activities include establishing a two-day summer program on the Elmhurst campus for the rising high school seniors enrolled in collegiate credit courses, providing diverse and enriching field trips and access to public lectures for students enrolled in the collegiate credit courses, and offering annual one-day professional development workshops at Elmhurst for high school English teachers.”
- Awarding agency: National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH)
- Start date: 6/1/2023 - End date: 5/31/2025
- Expected total award amount: $59,404
- Amount subject to termination: $34,691
- LOUIS STOKES NEW STEM PATHWAYS IMPLEMENTATION-ONLY ALLIANCE: PROMOTION OF UNDERREPRESENTED MINORITIES IN ACADEMIC STEM (PUMA-STEM)
- The Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) program assists universities and colleges in diversifying the STEM workforce through their efforts at significantly increasing the numbers of students successfully completing high quality degree programs in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) disciplines.
- Click here to read full grant description
- Awarding agency: National Science Foundation (NSF)
- Start date: 7/1/2019 - End date: 5/2/2025
- Expected total award amount: $1,748,109
- Amount subject to termination: $369,640
