The federal sequester hit home for Iowa State and other research universities this year. An impact ISU students may see as unexpected.

The sequester and it’s automatic spending cuts, which took place earlier this year, has limited research opportunities for professors throughout the university due to the lack of available funding.

“The bottom line is the sequester is having a big impact on research universities around the country, and we were impacted at Iowa State about the same as other universities,” said Jonathon Wickert, senior vice president and provost at Iowa State. “Over time, sequestration and its effects on university research will be a set back to the type of innovation that can come out of universities in the Midwest.”

Federal agencies that typically fund Iowa State and other universities externally held back a large amount of their money because of what was going on with the federal budget and across-the-board spending cuts.

“In the broad sense, several federal funding agencies held back some of their dollars not knowing how much they needed to save during the sequester and that trickled down to the research grants,” said Rob Schweers, program director for the provost.

Government agencies that would have typically given large research awards either reduced awards or removed them completely due to the lack of money they were receiving.

“Some of that we believe is a delay,” Wickert said. “We’ve heard from agencies like the USDA and the National Science Foundation that we have research awards to our faculty that have been delayed that we may be able to recover, its all very uncertain.”

External funding refers to any funds that are not from the university and can be from any group or organization, including the government. The sequestration only effected external funding to Iowa State that would have come from the federal government.

“Federal sequestration effects the federal portion of the research support at the university, so last year we had about $326 million in externally funded research at Iowa State and the federal part of that was down about 17 percent,’’ Wickert said.

While there was a decrease in federal funding at Iowa State because of the sequester, there was an increase in nonfederal external funding.

“Funding is down

$34 million because of the effect of the federal sequestration, but we also saw the nonfederal part, which can come from companies, the state or private foundations, was up 13 percent,” Wickert said.

The silver lining is an increase in nonfederal funding, however it was not enough to make up for the lack of funding from the federal government.

“The budget in Washington D.C. is still very unclear,” Wickert said. “We do have a number of faculty that have received notices that their projects have been approved and are just waiting for more clarity in the federal budget before that money is given.”

The faculty members that are hurting due to the lack of funding from the federal government are finding money from other places.

“Our faculty is being very entrepreneurial and looking for other sources like private funding,” Wickert said. “Two projects, one for work in vaccines and one for work in soybean nutrition in developing countries, were funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.”

The cuts that Iowa State experienced because of the sequester are not only an issue in the academic department or discipline, but an issue that is spread all across campus. A visible effect from the lack of funding is the inability of faculty to support students by acquiring equipment for labs.

“These cuts from sequestration, in my opinion, will be a setback for the United States in research and innovation because it reduces the number of new ideas that can be pursued in research projects at universities by faculty and staff and students,” Wickert said.