School Me Saturday 4/26/25- Funding changes, what do we do now?

Yes, I know I have written about this before. I don’t care. It is too important. Every day research that has been in the works for I can’t even tell you, research that has already been paid for, is shriveling in the petri dishes.

Research is expensive. Proper, well structured research is expensive. You have to pay for the researcher, you have to pay for the research assistant, you have to pay any adjunct helpers who are conducting the research, you have to pay for the computer you use to write up the reports, you have to pay for the electricity that run a lot of this, you have to pay for the IRB, you have to pay for the data analysis, you have to pay for the lab time, sometimes you even have to pay to get it published (those are the predatory publishers, don’t give in to them), and if you are offering an incentive to garner participation, you have to pay each participant the incentive.

It gets expensive. Capital red letter expensive.

Oh, not only do you sometime have to pay to publish, you have to pay to present at conferences. With all of those attendant costs as well. At AORN there were several international hospitals and countries and research presented. Each of them had to pay for the conference fee, the flight, the hotel, and the food while they were in Boston. Or Orlando, or Chicago, wherever the conference is held.

Many of these are covered in grant indirect costs. These indirect costs are not well understood and is more than a line item in the grant. Not being understood, like at all, means that people overact when they see the line item.

The hammer has fallen. Nascent grants are not being approved. Existing grants are being yanked, even as the research is underway. That is what I meant when I wrote that research is shriveling in the petri dishes.

Why?

This is a very good question. Because the researchers are daring to research something that isn’t white or male. It is being stripped because of the specter of DEI.

Another not well understood concept that is being used as a bludgeoning tool.

DEI doesn’t mean what they think it means. Inigo Montoya snuck in the chat.

This, of course, has started panic at the research universities. Especially the ones who don’t have billions of dollars in endowments. But even if you have that kind of money doesn’t mean it is just sitting around in coffers, or under a dragon like Smaug.

It has been a long time since the students (hello, that’s me and my cohort), had any guidance in the matter. Probably because those doing the reaping are being mum on the matter.

No DEI is all they know how to chant. Again, it doesn’t mean what they think it means.

Yesterday we had a rare in person day on campus where the second and third years who were interested, were given a ground level “this has happened and this is how we envision going forward” talk.

We had a group discussion about how to find and secure funding. Ideas about other funding sources were floated. It was a good conversation. Remember, all of us are nascent nurse researchers.

I know I left feeling a little more hopeful about this crappy situation we find ourselves in. I hope others did too.

I offered my notes to the rest of the cohort that were not there and I hope to have the notes to them tomorrow. I just want to reflect on it some more.

I wore my “Baking is Science” tee shirt with a baking cat on it. On my husband’s recommendation that I leave the political shirts at home. I think a stronger worded tee would have been better. There is always the August in person day.