This year, President Donald Trump is proposing to cut more than $100 million of funding from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and Ocean Atmospheric Research (OAR). NOAA’s educational grant programs fund student organized research, providing educational opportunities to scientifically passionate scholars.
Trump believes that NOAA’s educational grant programs fund endeavors to radicalize students against markets to propagate alarmism.
“These NOAA grants funded activities such as a ‘Policy Experience in Equity Climate and Health’ fellowship and NOAA Climate Adaptation Partnerships which funded webinars promoting a children’s book ‘designed to foster conversations about climate anxiety,’ as therapy,” the document reads.
These cuts would affect students like Caroline Barr. A junior who is involved in NWA’s science department, participated in a field-based survey determining the extent of human waste on Oregon coastal beaches.
Barr’s team gathered information on the impact of beach pollution on marine ecosystems and the distribution of debris between survey sites. This experience marked an important starting point in her scientific work.
This pivotal work is at risk for students everywhere who take part in grant funded research.
“I gained and began developing so many practical skills, and saw what kinds of gaps in research were present in scientific literature,” said Barr. “It helped me see what might be possible in the future.”
Barr reflected on how funding changes could affect other students beyond NWA, specifically around the country who may not have the same opportunity to experience invaluable, hands-on research in high-school and her own experience.
“Without grants like this, it would be significantly harder to access those opportunities,” said Barr. “It would mean students might not be able to begin developing foundational, applicable research skills early on, and won’t have the opportunity to participate in citizen-science initiatives that have a real-world impact on their communities and environment.”
Barr emphasizes that funding is a ‘crucial’ component of science education and provides rare opportunities for students and researchers alike.
“The research itself does make an impact,” said Barr. “It brings communities together, and paves the way for future initiatives. For us, we were able to remove a lot of debris from the beach. Even if it was a relatively small amount in the grand scheme of things, it hopefully still made a small difference.”
This reduced funding will impact important research like NOAA’s habitat restoration program that repairs coastal wetlands, coral reefs and shorelines. This program fosters coastal resilience by protecting countless communities from flooding, erosion and climate-related temporal extremities.
NOAA fisheries and other organizations invest in these solutions to restore ecosystems damaged by oil spills and industrial pollution, support tribes and underserved communities, restore shellfish populations, replant seagrass, remove outdated dams to open fish migration routes, restore salt marshes and more.
The administration’s proposal would “eliminate all funding for climate, weather and ocean laboratories and cooperative institutes,” the 2026 budget request document reads.
Elise Walters, another junior, also participated in the field-based survey of marine debris. Walters marks this experience as one that opened future doors for classes like Scientific Publications, Climate Change Biology, as well as publications in the Oregon Birds magazine.
“That [research] experience helped me realize that I wanted to pursue academic writing,” said Walters. “Without these grants I would not have known about the nuances of scientific writing, and how fun it can be.”
The proposal would additionally cut $70 million in funding to academic scientists for research grant programs. Trump details the impact of these academic grant programs in a recently released document, “Ending the Green New Scam,” which lists the main ‘highlights’ of the budget cuts to environmental organizations as well as examples of how funds were allegedly used to “proliferate climate radicalism.”
“NGO beneficiaries of this program like the National Environmental Education Foundation received taxpayer dollars to indoctrinate children in classes focused on ‘climate emotions,’” the document states. “The Budget would eliminate these wasteful programs to disempower the climate agenda and prevent further misuse of taxpayer money.”
