Anna McElhannon had been studying physics, a traditionally male-dominated field, for seven years when she lost the fellowship meant to fund three years of her education.
McElhannon said physics can be socially ostracizing for gender minorities and women in the field, making fellowships like hers more crucial.
But the U.S. Department of Education discontinued a fellowship supporting six IU physics doctoral students, including McElhannon, from “traditionally underrepresented backgrounds,” only one year into its original three-year duration.
The fellowship, Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need, provides grants “to support graduate students with excellent academic records who demonstrate financial need to pursue the highest degree available,”according the Federal Register website.
“The students [selected] had to be excellent students already,” said Mike Snow, IU physics professor and principal investigator of the fellowship.
As principal investigator, Snow was the “point person,” of the fellowship. He organized the proposal for the award with input from the rest of the physics faculty.
The selection criteria for GAANN also included that the recipients chosen were from traditionally underrepresented backgrounds.
Snow selected women and nonbinary students — groups classified as underrepresented in physics — for the fellowship in accordance with the award criteria from the education department, distributed under the Biden administration.
“We did what the program asked us to do,” Snow said. “Then, a year later, we got this message that said, ‘we changed our minds’ basically.”
One year into the three-year grant cycle, on Sept. 16, Snow received a letter from the education department saying GAANN’s funding would be canceled starting Sept. 30. The letter offered a chance to appeal and seven days to respond. After the physics department consulted with the College of Arts and Sciences, the IU Office for Research Administration sent that appeal on Sept. 17. Shortly after the seven-day window, the education department responded, stating that their original decision still stood.
The letter from the education department cited two points on why the fellowship was discontinued. The first was the physics department’s promise to request assistance from the IU office of the Vice President for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion and the second was the department’s goal to increase the fraction of graduate students from traditionally underrepresented groups.
The second point made was explicitly listed as one of the goals of the GAANN program by which the proposals of the grant would be evaluated for approval. Now, the education department cites it as a reason for the termination of the fellowship.
The letter also requested that the physics department pay back the distributed funds that had already been given for beyond Sept. 30.
The next steps, Physics Department Chair Mark Messier said, include clarifying with the education department how the accounts need to be closed, which is currently impossible due to the ongoing government shutdown.
“Priorities change when administrations change, so that’s not unusual,” Messier said. “It’s unusual for an administration to terminate something that's already been approved midstream.”
Snow advises McElhannon, who said having the money yanked out from underneath her has left her life up in the air.
“We had planned our thesis and our research around this fellowship,” McElhannon said. “Now it’s being disrupted by the fact they've taken away this money that they have assured us.”
The main way doctoral students are supported, Snow said, is through a combination of being associate instructors and support for research from external grants or fellowships. So, having a fellowship like GAANN allows students to devote all their time to research instead of having an obligation to teach.
Some of the graduate students will now have to become associate instructors, which may cause a delay in their degree progress. McElhannon would’ve opted to become an associate instructor for financial support, but she isn’t sure she can teach while living in Japan. McElhannon received a separate fellowship to live in Japan for two months during the spring 2026 semester to finish her thesis work.
“So, how am I supposed to be able to teach when I’m gone for two months?” McElhannon said. “I don’t know if I have to save up extra thousands of dollars for rent in case I get paid late.”
Going forward, Snow said, there will be a collective effort among the physics department to figure out how to keep the students making progress toward their degrees. There is no “one size fits all” solution to the problem, he said, but it is a department priority to ensure the students find new sources of support.
“This was a fellowship that supported outstanding students,” Snow said. “The ‘underrepresented groups’ aspect of the fellowship was kind of on top of that. We are fortunate to have a lot of outstanding female PhD thesis students in our physics department who were already kicking ass.”
McElhannon said the cut upended the trajectory of people's doctoral degrees, but she’s grateful the department has people she knows will work to make sure the students are okay.
“I have faith in my department, and I have faith in my advisor and in Mark Messier, the chair,” McElhannon said. “They’re doing everything that they can. It just sucks that they’ve been put in this situation.”
