Millions in grants cut at Fresno State, CSU schools. ‘It’s a great loss to society’

California State University campuses have lost millions of dollars in federal grants through Trump administration cuts and freezes and policy changes targeting diversity, equity and inclusion policies and education, science and technology programs across the nation.

At Fresno State, the total is $9.5 million in grants that have been terminated or paused, according to the university. Those grants impact campus and programs funded by the National Institutes of Health, National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Department of Commerce and U.S. Department of Education.

“Especially with the NSF, there is a giant panel of people who review these grant proposals, and I’ve been on them before where there are 15 or 20 people who review the grant proposals, and then choose the best ones in the county to get funded,” said Fresno State biology professor Brian Tsukimura, who was collaborating on a grant with peers at UC Merced, George Washington University and Ohio University that was terminated.

“This kind of termination without review, they have no idea, other than looking for specific words, what will happen. It’s a great loss to society. We don’t know what these grants were going to accomplish, they just got cut off.”

Summaries of 11 of the 14 university programs impacted by the cuts in federal funding include keywords or phrases such as underrepresented minority, Hispanic Serving Institution and Minority Serving Institution. Programs in STEM categories (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) were most impacted on the Fresno State campus, along with the Jordan College of Agricultural Sciences and Technology.

Initial award amounts for the Fresno State grants ranged from $50,000 to $2.5 million.

CSU campuses received more than $250 million in federal grant funding in 2023 led by San Diego State ($68 million) and San Jose State ($31.8 million), according to the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics and Higher Education Research and Development Survey. There were seven schools in the system at $11 million or more.

The first, a collaboration between Fresno State, Cal Poly, the University of Puerto Rico at Mayaguez and Iowa State, sought to bridge an equity gap in the poultry industry for historically underrepresented groups. Its objectives included developing comprehensive online welfare training modules, development of industry-backed certification programs, enhancing the accessibility of poultry science resources across HSIs (Hispanic Serving Institutions), augmenting professional development through career services and networking events and expanding poultry education and career resources for high school educators.

The Center for the Optimization of Poultry (COOP) at Fresno State in partnership with Fresno City College in the second grant was to increase increase equity in job training for HSI students through provision of career counseling, utilization of innovative curricula development, facilitation of online welfare and in-person certificated modules at a pilot processing plant, hosting a West Coast poultry career fair and maximize experiential learning.