Email Updates

The OVPRI plans to send weekly email updates on Wednesdays.

The following message was sent to tenure track and research faculty, department grant administrators, OVPRI centers and institutes, core facility staff, Government and Community Relations, Office of General Counsel, and OVPRI staff on Wednesday, May 7.

Dear colleagues,Last week the National Science Foundation (NSF) issued a statement that it intends to cap the rate for “indirect funding” from grants—reimbursements that cover a portion of universities’ facilities and administrative costs (F&A)—effective Monday, May 5.

The 15% rate maximum applies only to new awards and supplements awarded on or after May 5, 2025. Continuing grant increments awarded before May 5, and existing awards, are subject to their original terms and conditions. However, this new 15% cap on F&A, in lieu of a separately negotiated rate for indirect costs in every grant, poses a significant challenge for the UO given the size of our annual NSF expenditures.

Pre-award in Sponsored Projects Services (SPS) has already contacted principal investigators (PIs) with pending and upcoming proposal submissions. Given that planned submissions have target rather than set deadlines, we plan to postpone submission briefly as we await court challenges. Late Monday afternoon, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities (APLU), Association of American Universities (AAU), and the American Council on Education (ACE) filed a lawsuit challenging the rate cap. The UO is a member of these organizations. 

In addition to the rate cap, the “skinny” budget (a short version of a full federal budget with recommendations from the White House’s Office of Management and Budget) released last week proposes a 55% cut to the NSF budget from $9 billion to $4 billion. However, despite the proposals put forth in the skinny budget, Congress has historically had significant bipartisan support for research and significant advocacy challenging these draconian cuts is underway (see below). 

Updates on NEH, NEA awards

The White House’s skinny budget also proposes to cut entirely the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) and the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA). A lawsuit to reverse the wholesale cuts to the NEH budget has been brought against the Trump Administration by the American Historical Association, the Modern Language Association, and the American Council of Learned Societies. 

The UO is a member of the Modern Language Association, one of the plaintiffs in the suit. The UO has received two termination notices for NEA grants, two NEA applications were canceled despite high likelihood of funding, and 10 NEH awards were terminated. 

Update on NIH

In the past few weeks, some PIs have begun to receive award continuation notices from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that impose new terms and conditions which feature language from executive orders issued earlier this year. These terms and conditions reference executive orders related to “gender ideology” and diversity. SPS is working closely with the Office of General Counsel to review the terms before setting up the awards in Banner.

PIs should review the terms and conditions for awards carefully and work with their sponsored projects administrators (SPAs) to be fully aware of what those terms may require the PI to comply with for future compliance and reporting purposes. Along these lines, NIH issued a notice to inform the community of a new civil rights term. This policy does not change the administration of NIH awards. The UO interprets the guidance to require that we comply with federal civil rights laws governing gender and race discrimination as those laws have been interpreted by those courts with jurisdiction over Oregon, which the UO contends is not in violation of federal anti-discrimination laws. 

NIH recently issued a guidance notice changing the way it manages foreign subawards. Further information was provided this morning in an Extramural Nexus News release. The Office of General Counsel and  OVPRI’s Research Integrity and SPS units are analyzing the impact of this notice as it pertains to the UO. If you have a foreign subaward, please reach out to your post-award team for further guidance.

Additionally, as of this morning, NIH has temporarily disabled the automatic no-cost extension functionality in eRA Commons. All requests for no-cost extensions (NCEs) must now be submitted as a prior approval request in eRA Commons. Please continue to submit your initial NCE request via the Smartsheet form and work with your post-award team to submit to NIH. However, please make sure to build in additional time for review and approval when preparing and submitting NCE requests.  

General guidance

A few final housekeeping items:  PIs and DGAs should forward all “defend the spend” emails to SPS, which in turn will provide a template to DGAs and PIs to collect more detail on expenditures. SPS will submit the information to DOGE. To that end, researchers should be aware that they may receive requests from SPS related to DOGE emails. 

With multiple temporary restraining orders, injunctions, and ongoing lawsuits, the situation can feel overwhelming and difficult to navigate. There is additional guidance on the Updates on Federal Executive Orders and Research Activities webpage, which is updated nearly every day. 

Advocating for research

I want to acknowledge the fatigue our community feels under the constant onslaught of disheartening news by sharing news that inspires hope instead. 

We’ve learned of significant advocacy efforts on the part of the nation’s leading scientific organizations. Six former directors of the National Science Foundation (NSF) and seven former chairs of the National Science Board have published a letter calling for historic reinvestment in the NSF, rather than cuts. The American Association for the Advancement of Science has called on Congress affirm its long-standing bipartisan support of American research by rejecting the proposals laid out in the skinny budget. More than 1,900 members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine published an open letter to Congress urging it to support of American research and academic freedom. These efforts are not in vain. 

Finally, I want to take a moment to recognize the enormous amount of work DGAs and SPS staff are doing to continue to provide best-in-class service to the UO research community despite the constantly changing federal funding situation. I also want to thank our colleagues in the Office of General Counsel and Government and Community Relations whose collaboration in working through the several crises has been invaluable. All of the above’s contributions to the research enterprise are essential.