SOUTH KINGSTOWN – Six programs at the University of Rhode Island that were financed by the U.S. Agency for International Development will be eliminated at the end of March due to the ongoing cuts occurring at the federal agency by the Trump administration.
URI President Marc B. Parlange and Barbara Wolfe, the university’s executive vice president for academic affairs and provost, jointly announced Thursday the “very difficult, but necessary” decision to stop the USAID grant-funded programming at the university. Parlange and Wolfe said the state’s land-grant school has a federally funded research program portfolio that includes the six projects which received $66.7 million in USAID financing.
“URI has a long and proud tradition of leading USAID-related work aimed at reducing poverty, improving global health, and advancing democracy. We do not take these steps lightly and we recognize the impact they will have,” Parlange and Wolfe said.
In an email to Providence Business News on Friday, URI spokesperson Dawn Bergantino said the impacted programs focused on food insecurity across several countries that are listed by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency as having “concerning levels” of food insecurity. Such countries included the Philippines, Fiji, the Federated States of Micronesia, the Republic of the Marshall Islands, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Vanuatu, Republic of Madagascar, The Gambia and Ghana, Bergantino said.
The USAID Fish Right, USAID Our Fish Our Future, USAID Riake, USAID Women ShellFishers, USAID Feed the Future Innovation Lab for Fish 2 and Sensor Controlled Riverbank Filtration-Rain Irrigation System programs at URI will all end at the end of next month, Bergantino said. She also noted that many programs are spread out over multiple years.
“While court orders have mandated the federal government to unfreeze and restore USAID funding related to stop-work orders, the current reality is that the funds continue to be frozen and are not being distributed to partners,” Bergantino said.
Additionally, URI’s decision will affect 11 employees who were working on the projects, Wolfe and Parlange said. They said URI’s human resources team is working with the impacted employees to match them with new university positions where available.
“It is our sincere hope that many of [the impacted employees] will find opportunities to remain at URI,” Wolfe and Parlange said.
URI officials did not immediately answer as to how the university plans to seek funding elsewhere for any upcoming research projects. Parlange and Wolfe did say in a statement that URI remains committed to its community and to moving forward “in a way that ensures financial viability and preserves our mission and foundational values.”
The Trump administration moved its fast-paced dismantling of USAID toward what appeared to be its final phases, telling all but a fraction of staffers worldwide that they were on leave as of earlier this week and notifying at least 1,600 of the U.S.-based staffers they were being fired.
The move was the latest and one of the biggest steps in what President Donald Trump and cost-cutting ally Elon Musk say is their goal of gutting the six-decade-old aid and development agency in a broader campaign to slash the size of the federal government.
“We are deeply disappointed by the agency’s decision and we strongly disagree with this outcome, which undermines the very real, positive impact this work has had on global communities,” Wolfe and Parlange said.
James Bessette is the PBN special projects editor, and also covers the nonprofit and education sectors. You may reach him at Bessette@PBN.com. You may also follow him on X at @James_Bessette. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
