The BDN Opinion section operates independently and does not set news policies or contribute to reporting or editing articles elsewhere in the newspaper or on bangordailynews.com
Gilbert Moss is an assistant professor of mathematics at the University of Maine.
Federal science funding is helping Maine students develop the curiosity that powers discovery.
I’m a math professor with a focus in number theory. Number theorists try to find and explain structure and patterns in the basic arithmetic of numbers. The tools and discoveries coming out of number theory research have led to critical technologies, including the encryption systems underlying internet security and the error-correcting codes enabling phone calls on busy cell networks.
Middle and high school students can start learning number theory before taking advanced algebra, but they rarely encounter it until slogging through calculus. Yet number theory is packed full of fun and engaging topics that could spark curiosity and improve quantitative skills in the 75% of Maine math students who enter high school below grade level.
That is why at the University of Maine, we’ve partnered with the National Science Foundation to offer a six-day annual summer workshop to help Maine educators bring this little-known subfield into their classrooms. NSF funding allows teachers to attend regardless of their schools’ professional development budgets. We just finished our third summer of the workshop and it is getting more popular each year. But a recent proposal from the White House to slash federal science funding is putting our program and many others in jeopardy.
In April, the Trump administration requested that Congress cut billions of dollars from several key STEM agencies in FY27. The NSF’s budget would be cut by more than 50%.
Federal science agencies play an outsized role in Maine’s economy. Between 2020 and 2024, they contributed more than $460 million to our state’s universities, primarily UMaine, supporting thousands of jobs in one of Maine’s largest employment sectors. They also funded hundreds of full-time local doctoral and postdoctoral positions to train the next generation of scientists, many of whom will wind up working in Maine and contributing their skills to our industries or government.
Less funding for math and science would mean missing out on major innovations. Beyond applications in internet security and cell networks, number theory has also led to the modern configuration of mechanical gears in clocks. Inventions like these come about because universities and federally funded research hubs sponsor fundamental science research.
Research institutions are already feeling the squeeze from existing funding limitations. The University of Maine told academic departments in December that they would need to trim budgets by 7%, in part because of reductions and variability in federal funding. If the White House’s FY27 cuts pass, tens of thousands of jobs would disappear across the country. STEM departments would be forced to slash their graduate programs, crippling labs that took decades to build up and leaving would-be researchers and innovators without the ability to pursue high-paying careers. K-12 schools would lose access to valuable STEM programming.
Lawmakers know how important federal science funding is to our future. Last year, Congress rejected similar cuts proposed by the president, instead choosing to keep funding largely level. Sen. Susan Collins, who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, has played a large role in protecting science. She and her colleagues should continue to support STEM by championing increases in federal funding this appropriations cycle.
When the high school teachers we train at our workshop bring their experiences back to class, students gain not only new math skills, but also a new way of thinking. Numbers reveal themselves to be a dynamic language underlying the foundations of our universe. Science and mathematics generate important economic gains, but they also foster the curiosity that young people need to become innovators. We owe it to future generations to help students ask big questions. Their answers might change the world.