How chemists can rebuild

Two hundred thousand dollars. That was the number keeping Keana Redfearn up at night as her June graduation approached. She’d been accepted into doctoral chemistry programs—several, in fact. Then came the tailspin of federal funding cuts through the US National Science Foundation (NSF) and US National Institutes of Health (NIH). Her graduate school admissions were quickly revoked, then her undergraduate institution, the University of California, Los Angeles, offered a conditional reinstatement. The terms were strict: She would be a master’s student. And she would pay her own way, all six figures of it.“I’m not rich, and I don’t have anyone else to support me,” says Redfearn, a first-generation student in organic chemistry. Even the initial offers, which had included tuition and stipends, left her barely able to afford housing. Staring down a graduate school megabill, she panicked and applied to programs in Europe. Today, she’s packing to move from her home in California to Belgium, to continue her studies at KU Leuven. She’s not sure if it’s a one-way trip or not, only that her stipend will be nearly double what she’d been offered at UCLA and that tuition will be mostly covered. Redfearn’s projected rent abroad will be a bit over half what she’d pay in Los Angeles, she says.“Even though I wasn’t ready to make the decision, it was kind of my only option,” she says. Her classes start at the end of September. Friends from her graduating class, she reports, are taking a gap year, pursuing teaching,