The federal government shutdown, which began last Monday at midnight for the first time since 1996 after Congress failed to agree upon a working budget for the 2014 fiscal year, will postpone new research awaiting approval for funding from being conducted at Brandeis.

According to Senior Vice President for Communications Ellen de Graffenreid, the National Institute of Health and the National Science Foundation, along with most other federal agencies that fund university research, are not accepting proposals during the shutdown. The agencies are also not making any new awards using current year funds, which do not exist at this point due to the budget stalemate.

According to Assistant Provost for Research Administration Paul O'Keefe, the shutdown would primarily affect funding for scientific research. "The humanities don't get a lot of funding, and very little of what they do get is from the federal government," wrote O'Keefe in an email to the Justice. "The shutdown shouldn't have much impact on them, at least in terms of grant funding."

Although, according to O'Keefe, the University has not received any stop-work orders on existing projects, he wrote that he cannot be sure of that fates of projects awaiting approval for funding. "The longer the shutdown continues, the more likely it is that we, like all other universities, will suffer reductions in research funding."

Major resources for research, such as the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian Institution and the National Archives, will remain closed during the shutdown.

Despite the fact that the government shutdown is preventing new projects from being funded, according to de Graffenreid in an email to the Justice, "We have substantial existing funding for projects that use prior federal fiscal year authorizations, so those projects can continue."

According to an Oct. 3 USA Today article, several scholarly resources will not be updated during the shutdown. The websites for the U.S. Census, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Data.gov, Fedstats.gov and the Education Resources Information Center are currently not up-to-date.

Such closures and lack of updates could potentially have an effect on pending research.

The effects are extending to universities across the nation, although Brandeis is directly experiencing effects as well. According to the USA Today article, the shutdown has caused sexual assault investigations to come to a temporary pause, as the U.S. Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights has stopped its current investigations of universities suspected of mishandling sexual violence cases on their campuses. In addition, several naval academies have been forced to close or cancel classes, and resources for the academies have been cut, according to the article.

In regard to financial aid, Director of Financial Aid and Student Employment Sherri Avery explained that the government shutdown has had a minute impact.

"Since the Pell Grant and Direct Loan programs (the largest federal financial aid programs we administer) were appropriated prior to the shutdown, we are still able to award and receive funds from these programs for all eligible Brandeis students," Avery wrote in an email to the Justice.  

According to Avery, during the shutdown, students may also continue to work under the Federal Work-Study program, and the online federal financial aid application remains available to all students who wish to apply for federal aid at this point in the semester.  
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