Alaska
University of Alaska president reports $50M in grants frozen under Trump administration, warns of cuts to staff
The administration of President Donald Trump has suspended and canceled more than $50 million in funding at the University of Alaska, university President Pat Pitney told the Board of Regents this month.
Pitney also warned regents at the board’s two-day meeting last week in Fairbanks that the statewide system faces the possibility of future staff cuts in programs that receive high levels of federal grants.
The statements came as the regents approved the coming fiscal year’s operating and capital budgets.
The operating budget’s $352 million in unrestricted general funds represents an increase from last year. But it does not keep pace with rising costs, Pitney told regents.
Constrained state funding is also adding to pressure on the university, Pitney told the regents.
On the bright side, enrollment is growing with help from the Alaska Performance Scholarship and the university’s affordability, she said. (Alaska legislative leaders have recently approved a plan that could lead to a draw from the account that pays for those scholarships to help close a $200 million budget shortfall. The decision, and the budget bill, currently sits on the desk of Gov. Mike Dunleavy, who could potentially veto the item.)
“The Board has intentionally adopted a budgetary approach that balances fiscal restraint with specific investments in our university system, and that approach continues to yield positive results, including institutional stabilization and enrollment growth,” Board Chair Ralph Seekins said in a statement from the university.
“As the state budget environment contracts and uncertainty at the federal level remains, the board will continue working” with university leaders to maintain progress on student enrollment and success, he said.
Canceled and frozen grants
About $5.6 million worth of federal grants have been canceled, said Jonathon Taylor, a spokesperson for the university, in an interview last week.
The cancellations include a $2.5 million grant over five years for the Alaska Native Science and Engineering Program, Matt Calhoun, the program‘s executive director, said in a notice.
The National Science Foundation grant is one of the program‘s largest grants, the notice said.
The cancellation was “unexpected and untimely” and required canceling the program‘s summer Acceleration Academy, he said. Five other summer programs remain in place, he said.
ANSEP will look for new funding sources to strengthen the academy in coming years, Calhoun said in the letter.
Another $50 million in federal grants is frozen, Pitney told regents.
They include a $46 million, 10-year grant from the Department of Homeland Security for the Arctic Domain Awareness Center-ARCTIC Center of Excellence housed at the University of Alaska Anchorage, Taylor said.
Initial projects for the program include detecting emergency calls from mariners and researching renewable and nuclear energy options, the university said in a statement last year. New and existing academic programs were also planned through an interdisciplinary Arctic Security graduate degree and student fellowship program, the statement said.
Pitney told regents the program is in wait-and-see mode.
The university is working with the Department of Homeland Security to find a way to allow the grant to continue, Taylor said.
About $21 million in previously frozen federal grants for a variety of other programs has been reinstated, he said.
The university receives $270 million in federal funds annually, Pitney said. About $220 million of that is associated with research and academic grants. The rest is associated with student aid, Pitney told regents.
“Everything in the rhetoric puts all that at risk,” she said, referring to language in presidential executive orders and agency notices. “That also has to go through a congressional process. It will go through court processes.”
“But we can kind of see the pressure coming,” she said. “I mean, we can clearly see the pressure coming. There’s no ‘kind of’ about it.”
‘Fewer employees’
The university works on 1,200 grant-funded programs supported largely by the federal government, often on multi-year timelines, Pitney said.
The university is fairly confident that the vast majority of those 1,200 grants will continue, she told regents.
“And so we have a runway as an institution up here,” she said.
“It’s the 250 new grants every year we think is where we’re going to see the difference,” she said.
The number of new grants could fall to perhaps 200 or 100 annually, she said.
Also possible is that average award amounts might drop substantially, she said.
That would change the university workload.
Pitney said, “it would be nice to be able to report that we see no staffing changes in our horizon, but that’s just not practical. And I’d rather let people know that the expectation is changes are going to be happening.”
The changes, if needed, will be more concentrated in “highly leveraged units” that receive large amount of federal research money, such as the International Arctic Research Center at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, the Alaska Coastal Rainforest Center at the University of Alaska Southeast in Juneau, or the College of Health in Anchorage.
“There will be fewer employees here next year than there are now” because of the federal cuts and pressure from state funding, Pitney said.
Staff with one program at the International Arctic Research Center, the Alaska Center for Climate Assessment and Policy, recently have raised concerns that the program’s existence is endangered by potential Trump administration cuts to scientific research.
[Trump administration cuts endanger critical science programs in Alaska, researchers say]
Despite the “noise in the federal environment,” the university in the coming fiscal year is looking at a “relatively modest” reduction of around $2 million to $3 million in indirect cost recovery associated with federal awards this coming fiscal year, Pitney told regents.
Indirect cost recovery provides reimbursement for university costs that are not directly related to research, such as lab equipment or administrative support.
In a best-case scenario, funding levels in this area would be maintained, Pitney said.
(Bethel, AK) –Wednesday, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals issued a favorable opinion for the State of Alaska in ConocoPhillips Alaska v. Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission (AOGCC), agreeing that State laws requiring disclosure of oil well data are not preempted by federal law.
“Alaska relies heavily on our resources and resource development,” said Acting Alaska Attorney General Cori Mills. “We are also stewards of those resources for the citizens of Alaska. Alaska’s law both allows resource development now, and encourages further development and exploration in the future. We’re pleased that the Ninth Circuit recognized that federal law has not overridden Alaska’s balanced approach.”
The Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission regulates oil and gas operations throughout Alaska, including within the National Petroleum Reserve–Alaska (NPR–A). Under Alaska law, companies need permits from the AOGCC to drill and must submit well data. The AOGCC is required to keep well data confidential for 24 months.
ConocoPhillips drilled several wells on lease holdings within the NPR–A and submitted data to the AOGCC. When the 24-month period expired, the AOGCC notified ConocoPhillips of the upcoming well data disclosure. ConocoPhillips sued in federal court to stop the disclosure process claiming that the Naval Petroleum Reserves Production Act, the federal law allowing private exploration in the NPR–A, preempted Alaska’s 24-month disclosure law. The federal district court found Alaska law preempted, and the AOGCC sought appellate review by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals.
On appeal, the Ninth Circuit agreed with the AOGCC. The federal Production Act does not preempt state law. The Ninth Circuit therefore reversed the district court’s holding to the contrary.
“The Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission is pleased with the court’s decision upholding Alaska law,” said AOGCC Commissioner Jessie Chmielowski in a declaration filed in the litigation court. “Alaska’s balanced approach to well data confidentiality leads to increased exploration activity, not less. Alaska law allows for a two-year confidentiality period on exploration well data to leverage a company’s investment in drilling. Thereafter, making the data public has incentivized exploration on the North Slope. Placing well data in the public record allows competing companies to evaluate different exploration concepts or interpretations based on seismic data that, without well data, are just educated guesses.”
# # #
Alaska needs change. That’s why I’m running for governor: to bring new energy and a new generation of leadership to the governor’s office.
For 13 years in a row, more Alaskans have left our great state than have moved here. Prices are rising, schools are closing and Alaskans are getting left behind.
This year, those planning to leave Alaska include Ben and Catherine Walker, both recipients of Alaska’s Teacher of the Year Award. They can’t justify staying in the place they grew up in and love because of our failure to invest in the fundamentals, such as our schools.
The problem is personal. I’m 37. Many of those leaving Alaska are my age — debating whether there’s a future for us here or not. It’s a challenge we must solve.
I love challenges.
Back in 2012, I dropped out of college to challenge an entrenched Republican incumbent legislator who was running unopposed to represent my home region of Southeast Alaska. I launched a scrappy, grassroots campaign and focused on the kitchen table issues that matter to every Alaskan: good schools, getting our fair share of oil revenues, lowering costs, protecting our fisheries. I won — by 32 votes.
When I was sworn in, I was baby-faced and bushy-tailed, just 23 years old. It was the beginning of a decade-long tenure in the Legislature. A lot happened in those 10 years.
Among the most important: We formed the House Bipartisan Coalition in 2016. While I have a “D” next to my name, I believe strongly in working across party lines. That’s what the Bipartisan Coalition was, and is, all about: Democrats, moderate Republicans and independents, all working together to do what’s best for Alaska.
I want to bring that same bipartisan, vigorous problem-solving spirit to the governor’s office, where it has been nonexistent the last eight years.
As governor, I want to work hand in hand with the Legislature to deliver some desperately needed wins for Alaska that will make our lives better and get our state back on track:
• Reinvest in our public schools. Our school districts are in battlefield triage mode, but instead of amputating limbs, our school boards are forced to choose which sports to cut, which electives to discontinue and which neighborhood school to close. Enough already. Get school funding back up to par.
• Forward fund our schools. Our school districts shouldn’t have to guess how much education funding will end up being appropriated in end-of-session legislative haggling.
This circus forces school districts to prospectively fire teachers, then rehire them a month or two later, when they find out the final education funding number. It’s awful for all involved. We should fix it by forward funding.
• Close the Hilcorp corporate income tax loophole. Hilcorp should pay their fair share in taxes just as ConocoPhillips, and nearly every other major corporation in Alaska, already does.
• Lower the cost of energy. Chugach Electric Association, Golden Valley Electric Association, Homer Electric Association and Matanuska Electric Association operate about 1,700 megawatts in power generation capacity. Peak Railbelt winter demand is half that: about 850 megawatts. Guess who pays for the nearly gigawatt in underused and unused power plants? You, on your power bill. The governor should force the co-ops to work together, reduce redundancies and diversify energy sources, including renewables, in order to reduce the sky-high cost of energy for Alaskans.
• Lower the cost of childcare. Alaska has inadvertently created a system of childcare permitting and licensing that effectively amounts to death by a thousand pieces of paperwork. It’s creating scarcity and cost. We need to fix it.
• Lower the cost of housing. Cut red tape to make it easier and cheaper to build more homes of all kinds — from tiny homes and ADUs to manufactured and modular housing, to apartments and condos, to traditional single-family homes. More housing of all kinds, faster.
• Rein in bottom-trawl bycatch. I will nominate Alaskans to the North Pacific Fishery Management Council who will make sure that Alaska and Alaskans — not Seattle and Lower 48 industry interests — foremost benefit from our fisheries.
• Responsibly develop our resources. Support projects that have regional buy-in and support, such as Pikka on the North Slope, which just produced first oil this month, while saying “no” when the risks are too great and those in the region are opposed, as is the case with Pebble.
• Grow our tourism economy. And let’s crack the code on winter tourism while we’re at it. If Iceland can do it, we darn well can, too. Fairbanks is having burgeoning winter tourism success. Let’s follow their great lead.
• Make Alaska an awesome place to live. Let’s build dozens more public-use cabins. Let’s build an alpine hut-to-hut system like they have in New Zealand and the Alps. Let’s build the Alaska Long Trail. Let’s make Anchorage a world-class winter city.
Does this sound like the kind of Alaska you want to live in? Then I have great news: We are the governor campaign for you. And if what you just read gives you indigestion, you’ll be relieved to know you have 17 other options.
I have more great news: I can win.
After beating an entrenched Republican incumbent, I spent a decade representing a swingy district that voted for Donald Trump.
In those 10 years, I recorded some of the highest margins of crossover support from Trump voters of any Democrat in Alaska. I ran 12% ahead of Hillary Clinton in 2016 and 15% ahead of Joe Biden in 2020.
Here’s the simple truth: Whoever becomes our next governor will need to win with the support of significant numbers of independents and moderate Republicans, in addition to Democrats. I’ve done that. And I’ll do it again. Will you join me?
Former state Rep. Jonathan Kreiss-Tomkins of Sitka is a candidate for governor of Alaska.
• • •
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May 28, 2026
3 min
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