The U.S. Department of Education ended funding for minority-serving institutions on Sept. 10, halting federal funding for the University of Minnesota Asian Pacific American Resource Center.
APARC is a space to support, tutor and guide Asian American and Pacific Islander students throughout their college career, according to the APARC website.
The center was created after the University first received the Asian American and Native American Pacific Islander-Serving Institutions award, also known as the AANAPISI award, from the Department of Education back in 2016.
The award was created to provide support for Asian American and Pacific Islander students, according to an article from the College of Education and Human Development.
APARC Associate Director Tev Lee said following the Department of Education funding cut, students will likely struggle to find a space similar to APARC.
“We have become sort of a home away from home for a lot of students,” Lee said. “By not having our space, it also creates a sort of displacement for students that find our space to be a safe space on campus.”
Lee said he hopes the University will acknowledge the resource center’s concerns about the funding cuts and hopes to provide support for the resource center to continue on campus.
“The institution and the U of M upper administration will react in a way that would allow for us to still exist on campus to support and fund the work that we continuously strive to do in supporting students,” Lee said. “That would allow for us to continue our outreach, not just to AAPI students, but also to the greater university as well.
With the funding cut announced last month, Bic Ngo, a principal investigator of the AANAPISI award at the University, said the resource center doesn’t have much funding left.
“We have no funding right now, and we have a little bit of funding to stretch for this academic year,” Ngo said.
The funding cut also affected resource center jobs.
First-year Ph.D. student Laichia Vang said she was going to be a graduate assistant at the resource center, but the position was cut due to lack of funding. She said the center does not have much staff, even though students appreciate what it provides.
“There’s an impact of just a sense of community belonging, people just returning to the space and feeling like they belonged there,” Vang said. “Because of that, and the funding cut, there is no (staff left).”
Vang said despite the resource center being open to every student, the Department of Education ended the funding because they view the resource center as exclusionary.
“I think with APARC, it’s specifically for Asian American and Pacific Islander students, but it was still all welcome to all students that came in,” Vang said. “In the Department of Education’s eyes, we were segregating.”
