LINCOLN -- In its effort to draw more students into engineering-related career fields, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln embarked on a plan to grow interest in the field close to home.

The UNL College of Engineering has sought to expand its reach to rural schools across Nebraska to raise awareness about opportunities available for students in engineering, as well as illuminate the pathways to those jobs.

Dean Lance Pérez said UNL has long had strategies in place to recruit students from Lincoln and Omaha, the state's two population centers, but has largely left students from west of the Capital City to find their own way.

Once upon a time, enough of those students from rural parts of the state would matriculate at UNL to fill the demands of the engineering workforce, Pérez said, but no longer.

"The workforce demands in engineering, computing and construction are so big that we have to get more and more and different students to study those fields," he said. "We can't just rely on that natural pipeline; we have to build the pipeline."

This year, the College of Engineering began building connections to rural high schools and forming an advisory committee made up of teachers and community members to design ways to make it easier for students to see the path to becoming an engineer.

But the UNL engineering college's effort to extend its reach across the state suffered a setback last month after the $1.2 million grant from the National Science Foundation supporting the initiative was abruptly canceled.

The cancellation was among hundreds of grants terminated at the National Science Foundation last month amid a push by President Donald Trump to end support for programs tied to diversity, equity and inclusion.

Since returning to office in January, the Trump administration has axed billions of dollars of federal grants into scientific, medical and humanities research being conducted at universities, including at institutions like UNL.

While the impetus of the cuts to federal grant programs has been what Trump has described as an attempt to root out discrimination, many of the so-called DEI programs in Nebraska are focused on improving outcomes for rural students.

In the case of the UNL College of Engineering, the Nebraska Engineering Inclusive Excellence Center was focused on leveling the playing field between students from urban centers and rural areas, Pérez said.

The program, in addition to building a recruiting pipeline, would have also provided additional supports for rural students to ensure they are successful, he added, such as tutoring and counseling.

The notice of cancellation came in an email informing UNL that the grant program no longer aligned with the priorities of NSF or the Trump administration.

"There's no question that they are using a very broad brush when they are painting something as DEI," Pérez said. "I suspect if this had been looked at more carefully, they might have found this program was consistent with national priorities."

Other research projects at UNL funded through the NSF, including a study on improving the learning outcomes of college-level math students that involved five other universities, also received termination notices in April.

The Achieving Critical Transformation in Undergraduate Programs of Mathematics -- ACT UP -- project had the goal of shifting long-held paradigms for teaching math before its funding was shut down.

"The way we teach math at the college level is the same as when medicine was about leeches," said Wendy Smith, a research professor in UNL's Center for Science, Mathematics and Computer Education. "But you can't just tell somebody they should stop lecturing at students and start engaging them actively without giving them the tools to do so."

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In partnership with California State University East Bay, Clemson University, Colorado State University, Duke University and Kennesaw State University, UNL researchers have improved the math placement process used by colleges and universities.

ACT UP has also trained instructors to see students as partners rather than "passive, empty vessels waiting to be filled with math knowledge," Smith said, as well as how to improve student attitudes as a way to improve attendance and reduce anxiety.

Encouraging math departments to engage with students in different ways means being aware of the racial makeup of student bodies, Smith said, but ACT UP said instructors should also be aware of the needs of first-generation students, commuters and non-traditional students with families.

"We were never doing anything preferential based on race," Smith said. "From our perspective, yes, we were talking about equity, but in trying to help all students be more successful by improving the teaching, beliefs and practices of instructors."

Smith said while ACT UP anticipated that its funding could be struck, the manner in which it happened unfolded in an unconventional way.

On April 18, a termination email from the National Science Foundation was sent to a random address within UNL's office that handles federal grants, rather than the principal investigator, as normally happens.

"It looked like spam," Smith said of the email address, which included the word "Grants" with a series of numbers behind it.

The message it contained was generic, telling UNL the research project "no longer aligns with grant priorities," and informing the university that no appeal of the decision was possible, which Smith called "blatantly illegal."

Grant recipients are typically notified of any changes to the status of their funding in person and are given a period of time to correct any deficiencies that have been identified.

At the end of a 90-day review period, the NSF can then finalize its decision to continue or cancel the funding, Smith said. If the grant is canceled, recipients have an opportunity to file an appeal.

"Regardless of how much we agree or disagree with the priorities NSF has stated, we're not being given a chance to show these canceled grants are meeting those priorities," Smith said.

On May 5, NU President Jeff Gold told state lawmakers in a letter the university had lost more than 70 federal grants totaling nearly $92 million in funding since January, even as the university has attempted to comply with a Trump administration order to remove references to diversity and inclusion from its policies.

The lost grant funding has affected research in areas of agriculture, biomedicine, counterterrorism, weather and climate, as well as the humanities.

A reduction in "facilities and administration rates" that help cover the cost of utilities and other on-campus services has also resulted in a $60 million funding loss, Gold said in a letter to the Legislature.

Both Pérez and Smith said they are looking for avenues to keep the NSF-backed work moving forward as the funding landscape continues to change.

Pérez said the UNL College of Engineering remains committed to the goal of the grant and will keep engaging with its community advisory committee to look for opportunities.

"I'm trying to gather some resources to continue the things we think are most important," he said. "We can't abandon our commitment to rural communities."

Smith said she and others working on ACT UP were ready to explain the value to NSF officials, or to look for ways the project could adjust to meet the Trump administration's goals going forward.

Eliminating programs focused on words such as "equity" or "critical transformation" cast a broad net and may be running counter to what federal officials had intended, she said.

"What we're not seeing is anybody trying to understand what this work is," she said. "We're trying to help more students be more successful at mathematics, but in order to do that, we need to look at how some students have been excluded."

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