17 UNC Charlotte grants cut since Trump took office — some focused on diversity
The federal government has terminated 17 research grants at UNC Charlotte since the beginning of this year, a university spokesperson told The Charlotte Observer Thursday.
The grant funding totals over $14.3 million. However, some portion of the funds had already been dispensed and spent prior to termination.
The grants were for a wide array of research across disciplines, from a project to get elementary age girls interested in STEM to research on mangrove forests in the Dominican Republic.
At least 10 of the 17 total terminated grants were for research focused on a particular demographic, such as Black youth or individuals with disabilities, or diversity within a particular field.
The federal government explicitly terminated some of these grants for their focus on the LGBTQ population, and UNC Charlotte confirmed at least four were terminated due to at least a partial focus on diversity, equity and inclusion. The university has not confirmed what reason was provided for the termination of each individual grant.
Annelise Mennicke is a social worker and researcher at UNC Charlotte. Her grant from the National Institutes of Health, for example, was cut due to her project’s focus on LGBTQ health outcomes.
“This award no longer effectuates agency priorities,” states the termination letter Mennicke’s team received that she shared with The Observer. “Research programs based on gender identity are often unscientific, have little identifiable return on investment and do nothing to enhance the health of many Americans.”
The letter went on to claim “many such studies ignore, rather than seriously examine, biological realities.”
Since January, President Donald Trump’s administration also has cracked down on federal grant funding it claims has ties to diversity, equity and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives. So far, there has been more than $2.7 billion in cuts to grants from the NIH. The U.S. Department of Education has also axed grant funding it argues was tied to DEI.
UNC Charlotte has doubled its research activity over the last decade, reporting over $92 million in research and development expenditures in the 2023 fiscal year. As a result, it achieved long-awaited “R1” research status earlier this year. The designation is reserved for institutions with the highest level of research activity, spending over $50 million on research a year.
It currently ranks as the third largest public research university in the state.
List of UNC Charlotte grant funds cut since Jan. 20
The amount shown represents the total award for the project and covers the full duration of the research period, which may span up to three years.
For some projects, a portion of the funds has already been spent. For example, Mennicke and her colleagues were about six months into their three-year research project when their grant was terminated. Around $50,000 of the total allotted $469,069 had been spent already.
$296,284 - U.S.-Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Green Building Education and Research Hub
$1,726,370 - National Technical Assistance Center on Transition & American Institutes for Research Collaboration to Improve Transition Outcomes for Youth with Disabilities
$49,773 - Mapping of Mangrove Inventory in Dominican Republic
$99,663 - Disability Innovation Fund Evidence Building Support Program
$469,069 - Reconstruction of an LGBTQ-specific sexual violence peer support program
$681,851 - CA-LINC: A Culturally Adapted Care Coordination Suicide Detection and Invervention Model for Black Youth
$3,312,445 - The Variation of the NK Cell Receptome in Pemphigus - This study is focused on a particular type of cell is involved in pemphigus, a chronic autoimmune disease of the skin.
$217,000 - SaTC: CORE: Medium:Information Integrity: A User-centric Intervention - This research is focused on how social and cultural factors contribute to the spread of online misinformation
$769,749 - Collaborative Research: Black Research Support Network: Studying Change By, With, and For Black Undergraduate Computer Science Faculty & Students at Three Institutions
$1,833,701- Project TLC: Preparing Teachers of Language and Content
$2,158,238 - Teaching for Resilience via Understanding, Support, and Trauma-Informed Education: Project TRUSTED
$149,746 - Leading and following in virtual meetings: An investigation of affect display
$1,062,034 - CAREER: Critical and Culturally Relevant Experiential Learning: Fostering Early STEM Exploration with Gifted and High-Ability Black Girls and their Elementary Teachers
$149,647 - SBIR Phase II: A Digital Platform that Engages Elementary Aged Girls in STEM Through Personalized Informal Learning
$992,789 - Collaborative Research: Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate (AGEP) Transformation Alliance: A Department-Led Model for Increasing Diversity from the Doctorate to the Professoriate
$318,053 - Center for Inclusive Computing Grant for Implementing Strategies in Computer Science Core Courses to Increase Women in Computing
$42,000 - A New Paradigm for Sustainability and Resilience Engineering: A Transdisciplinary, Learner-Centered and Diversity-Focused Approach
This story was originally published May 19, 2025 at 5:00 AM.
