By SHANNON O. WELLS
A Pitt professor who said her National Institutes of Health (NIH) training grant was terminated because of White House-generated executive orders brought home to Senate Council a topic that’s prompted increasing fear and uncertainty among University faculty in recent months.
Jesse Merlin, general internal medicine professor in the Department of Medicine, spoke up on May 15 during the final Senate Council meeting of the 2024-25 academic year in Posvar Hall to seek guidance and possible courses of action via shared governance or Pitt administration after her T32 (Institutional National Research Service Award) grant was terminated.
Merlin said she wondered if Pitt, at the University or individual-school level, has plans for a coordinated effort for “folks who are in this situation, whose funding has been terminated … that I may not be aware of. What are the next steps that the University plans to take?
“Maybe there are things happening in other schools that I'm simply not aware of because I don't have an official role as part of this sort of grassroots effort,” she added. “I would love to be able to understand what efforts are being discussed or planned, and how to find people to support that.”
While expressing empathy, Chancellor Joan Gabel explained that despite quickly building momentum of advocacy and legal action and an “administrative appetite” for more direct pushback against funding changes, an “aggregate executive council of response or support does not yet exist.”
“Most of what you're describing is happening at the college level. And in particular in Health Sciences — which runs on its own budget — is happening at the Health Sciences leadership level,” Gabel said. “That doesn't mean it couldn't happen in a more coordinated way, or that we wouldn't be open to a suggestion of a different way of pulling together the different pieces that you on the front line will see as opportunities for support.”
As the grant’s multiple principal investigator contact, Merlin, who said she’s appealing the termination of her grant, clarified that she’s become “sort of a local point person” for those in similar positions.
“This is an NIH grant, but obviously it reaches far beyond the NIH, both in terms of mutual support,” she said. “Because for us, this is a career-ending moment, really a life wake-up call, and also specifically for us to support our staff, colleagues and technical support on the appeal process,” she said.
Merlin, who said she was part of a “larger group” referenced earlier in the meeting by her colleague Ghady Haidar, associate professor of medicine, noted that she “really appreciated” outgoing Senate Council President Robin Kear’s comment about “wanting to support faculty whose research is threatened, and acknowledging that those individuals are in crisis.”
“While the folks who are terminated from grants may be the tip of the iceberg” amid a “much bigger” systemic problem, for those whose grants have already been terminated, “it's really a crisis on steroids,” Merlin said.
Noting the “incredibly fast” pace that executive orders affecting research funding has moved, Gabel said the “real time” response from the research and higher education communities has included filing lawsuits and planning advocacy strategies.
“We figured out who our partners are, who they're not, where the research university is positioning relative to the schools with different missions,” she explained. “All of that has been shaking out to now looking at what can we actually do, either within the campus community — cohesively, college level, department level — because what you're describing” has elements with national implications as well as “some things that are very customized to the needs of each college or even each principal investigator (PI).”
While the “aggregate executive council”-based response may not yet be in place, Gabel said current options may include “sharing of different resources that you don't even realize people have. When you don't always know what everyone else is doing, how people are plugging into their own professional associations or to the support available, where your PIs are, where those universities may have perhaps pulled together their resources in different ways.”
The chancellor added that although “there's absolutely an administrative appetite” for what Merlin is asking, it has yet to be fully coordinated, “and we would definitely not want to do that without hearing from affected community leaders on what would be the right set of next steps.”
Noting that her “very large” grant and T32’s in general are “held in very high esteem by universities,” Merlin said “this is a grant that I really expected.
“What I can say is I received very little communication, even from within my college. I've been able to appeal, but I guess my point is, I — as an end user of the system — have, if there's a coordinated effort in the schools for the health sciences, I guess it hasn't reached me,” she said. “So if there's something like that, I would very much like to plug into that.”
Echoing Gabel’s support, Kear told Merlin that “we can talk further.”
“I'm sorry that's happening. This is not something that we wish to be happening,” she said. “This is something that is an external condition to us.”
Kear said although Anantha Shekhar, senior vice chancellor for Pitt Health Sciences, has “spoken to this and the future, anticipated funding gaps and ways to mitigate that broadly,” that sometimes is “not enough for those who are individually impacted in the situation. I can understand that, but this is something that is affecting us very broadly, and I hope that that we can discuss more.
“We are all trying to respond in the ways that we know best, or trying our best to do so,” Kear said. “… I know sometimes it doesn't feel like it's satisfactory, but … that doesn't mean that we aren't acutely aware of what is happening and what we can do.
“We are adapting to the changing environment, and we're going to have to continue to do that, especially in our next budget year,” she added. “But we can always talk more about coordinating efforts and more communication. And I appreciate that our senior administrators are trying to do that.”
Noting that she appreciates the sentiment and “the desire to collaborate,” Merlin said she wanted to make it “really clear that she’s not asking for individual PIs to receive additional, sort of, personal support,” but is wondering “if more can be done, because of my experience, and also my experience trying to support dozens of other people in the same situation.”
Shannon O. Wells is a writer for the University Times. Reach him at shannonw@pitt.edu.
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