The United States, one of the world’s most technologically advanced countries, has enjoyed a long-standing reputation and prestige in its dynamic, competitive and complex research programs in science as well as social science. Science has been an important investment for the States, through which promising research proposals are reviewed and funded by government, corporations and charitable foundations. However, beginning in December 2007, the economic recession has had an important impact not only on employment and productivity, but also on scientific research conducted nationwide.
As an independent federal agency created by Congress in 1950, the National Science Foundation (NSF) is a major source for non-medical research funding, supporting twenty percent of all federally approved basic research in colleges and universities. Its medical counterpart, the National Institutes of Health (NIH), is responsible for biomedical and health-related research. In addition, the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) are also typical funding sources for the research carried out here at Mount Holyoke College. Faculty members prepare their research proposals that describe in detail their programs for scientific investigation. As Private Investigators (PIs), they submit the applications to one or more organizations for funding support. The submitted funding applications must undergo peer review, a process of subjecting the investigator’s work to the scrutiny of others who are experts in the same field. Each application gets an overall impact score to represent its scientific merit, which is then converted into a percentile score. Only research projects that acquire application scores within the payline will get the grant. Once granted, the funding is used to facilitate the research labs with cutting-edge technology and equipment, to employ lab-technicians or post-doctoral fellows so that the faculty can keep their research projects going throughout the year, and to pay current students working in the lab part-time/full-time.
According to Professor Craig Woodard, the Associate Dean of Faculty for Science, when he first came to Mount Holyoke College in 1995, a comparatively high percentage of grant applications were funded. Until the late 1990s, individual researchers had many opportunities to get funding and it was easier to get money from granting agencies. However, “it has been much more difficult to get funding requests approved recently,” said Professor Woodard when asked about the impact brought by the economic crisis. “Nowadays, the application process has become very competitive and research is funded at a lower percentage… ” Although the government is putting a large amount of money into scientific research, some non-government organizations such as HHMI and the American Chemical Society (ACS) certainly see a decline in their endowment, which makes federal grants very competitive. Although it is more difficult to obtain research funding in these hard economic times, a good number of Mount Holyoke faculty have recently been awarded grants. Megan Núñez, Associate Professor of Chemistry Department, together with Katherine Aidala, Clare Boothe Luce Assistant Professor of Physics Department, received stimulus funding last year. “We do not cut the student stipends as we believe that is an important part of grant, but we have to cut the amount of funding spent on equipment,” said Professor Núñez when talking about the tight summer research funding. “We try to be more efficient – not wasting time and resources – in all of the science research groups, and we have nothing to complain about…” Professor Woodard also suggested that it is important for Mount Holyoke faculty to keep submitting grant proposals, and to revise rejected proposals based on the reviewers’ comments, then resubmit the proposals.
Translating to chemical jargon, research funding and scientific investigations are two indispensable reactants leading to the products, namely, new discoveries and technology advancement. The lack of grants awarded from federal national institutes has increased the necessary energy input, making this reaction less possible to take place. In this situation, appropriate catalysts like economic stimulus packages must be introduced and help to facilitate the reaction progress. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), one of the facilitating reagents, was enacted by the 111th United States Congress in February 2009. The provisions of the Act include federal tax cuts, social welfare, and scientific research along with other recovery related items. The new money for research will certainly release the stress for a while and keep basic science research alive and lively.
In the future, when asked about how the current economic downturn might influence us students here at Mount Holyoke College in applying for research opportunities sponsored by HHMI, Professor Woodard made it clear that the funding would be unaffected at least for the coming two years. The point to restate here is that undergraduate research at Mount Holyoke College should not be sacrificed under the current recession in any way. Our society benefits so much from various research projects. They not only expand the knowledge of humankind, offering more convenience in people’s daily life but provide various opportunities, which are unavoidably related to economic prosperity.
The writers would like to thank Craig Woodard and Megan Nunez for their contribution to this article.
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