AmeriCorps funding cuts nix Miami programs on campus, in Oxford

Editor's Note: This story was jointly reported by The Miami Student and the Oxford Free Press.

Anyone walking by Oxford Seniors on Wednesday afternoons will find Kylie Gunning dancing across the floor, teaching line dancing to the members there.

She knows each of them by name, and they each know her. 

The groups can range from two to 10 participants, ready to go in their workout outfits with Dolly Parton singing in the background. Gunning leads them in stretches and then after a warm up, she starts teaching “Boogie Shoes.”

Gunning is a senior social work major and president of Miami University’s dance theatre. The members at Oxford Seniors are well aware of that, too — they’ve shown up to her past two performances.

“They were asking me every single week leading up to the performance, ‘When is the performance? When can we get the information? When can I buy my ticket?’” Gunning said. “So then Oxford Seniors was so nice to provide transportation, because parking up there is terrible, so they drove their little bus [to campus].”

When she saw the group of five in the crowd, Gunning said she felt her whole body light up knowing she has people out there caring about her.

“I feel important to [them],” Gunning said. “I feel like [they] have taken such interest in [me] that [they] want to come and support me and watch me do this [weird] abstract dance.”

Until recently, Gunning was compensated for her work through Service+, a Miami program which received grant funding from AmeriCorps. After the Trump administration cut a significant amount of AmeriCorps funding, Gunning and dozens of other Miami students learned they would no longer have support to stay involved with nonprofit organizations throughout Butler County.

Gunning graduates in a week and said she’s continuing to volunteer at Oxford Seniors. For the organizations that have relied on Service+, though, the loss of the program goes beyond individuals.

Federal funding cuts hit Miami

AmeriCorps is a federal agency that provides service opportunities for Americans to “address the nation’s most pressing challenges” and “improve lives and communities,” according to the agency website.

Until recently, that included Miami’s Service+ program, which began at the regional campuses. On April 25, the agency announced that it was terminating nearly $400 million in grant funding, effective immediately. That decision instantly shuttered more than 1,000 programs involving more than 32,000 corps members, according to America’s Service Commissions. This includes Miami’s program, which was on track to have 85 members this year.

Service+ connected dozens of students to service opportunities at university departments and local nonprofit organizations countywide each year, said program director Tiffany Block. 

Students received biweekly living expense stipends and a final educational award for their work, which ranged from keeping Miami’s natural areas and trails in good condition to working with Oxford Seniors and the Oxford Fire Department.

“All the supervisors were all devastated … The projects and work [the students] were doing for the departments and other organizations was helping change the community,” Block said. “That kind of comes to a halt, so we are and everyone is a little frustrated. We didn’t think that a program that helps people volunteer in our own backyard would be stopped.”

President Donald Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, led by billionaire Elon Musk, directed AmeriCorps to make the extensive cuts. According to reporting from The Washington Post, the $400 million represented 41% of the agency’s total grant funding and endangered programs across the country.

The program cuts came on a Friday, but Block didn’t learn that Miami would be impacted until Saturday. Serve Ohio, the state organization responsible for distributing AmeriCorps grants across Ohio, notified her in an email that the program “no longer effectuated the priorities of AmeriCorps.”

On April 28, after several Service+ members had already worked beyond the April 25 termination, she held a meeting to inform them all that the program had been cut. Beyond impacting student employment, Block is now searching for jobs herself to stay at Miami.

“I cried the whole 90 minutes, because we do, all of us in Service+, become like a little family,” Block said. “It was very hard, but I was at least able to tell them that they would be getting one more stipend payment, but then after that it stops, and that they are able to get a partial of the education award that they were promised.”

Impacts in the community

Oxford Seniors relied on three Service+ members who added up to more than a full-time position to help run the adult day service program and assist with other tasks at the senior center. Executive Director Emily Liechty said the two adult day service assistants led programming for seniors who need full-time care.

The positions wouldn’t have been possible without AmeriCorps funding, Liechty said, and the cuts have resulted in immediate changes.

“It’s going to reduce the programming we can offer [at the adult day service],” Liechty said. “It’s going to reduce the field trips that we can offer there … Service+ was part of that, which really allowed us to offer extra on top of what we were required to offer.”

Oxford Seniors, Miami and the federal government signed contracts to employ these students, Liechty said. Even when the government changes hands, she believes they should be required to honor their financial obligations. While her Service+ members had to stop working immediately, she’s looking at ways to make them whole by the end of the semester through Oxford Seniors itself.

“I understand shifting federal priorities,” Liechty said. “But just because you change the priorities doesn’t mean that you give up on your responsibilities, the commitments that you’ve already made … It’s a big deal because we were counting on these students.”

Gunning had worked at Oxford Seniors for two semesters when her contract was terminated. 

When she walked into work last Monday, instead of going to a staff meeting, her boss told her that she needs to check her email and to get on the emergency Zoom call. That’s when she learned her Service+ contract was terminated. 

“It was upsetting,” Gunning said. “Especially as an organization that is a nonprofit, the extra help that they get, I know, is so beneficial to them.”

Gunning said without the Oxford Seniors encouraging her to teach line dancing, she never would have known about movement therapy and working with people with Parkinson’s disease or Alzheimer’s. 

“On that Zoom meeting, people were very upset by what was happening, not only because they weren't getting the money, but [because] this program was genuinely doing so much good [by] helping students and helping the nonprofits in the area,” Gunning said.

Emma Custer, a sophomore biology pre-physician associate major, was another student cut from her Service+ job at the Oxford Fire Department as an EMT.

“I would go on calls with them, and I would be a third on the ambulance,” Custer said. “I would sit in the back as just an extra set of hands and do anything that a regular EMT there would do.”

Custer had completed 435 of the total 450 required hours when she lost her job. She said she earned roughly $220 biweekly and will receive only a percentage of the education award.

“It's frustrating, because I'm fortunate enough that my parents can help me out,” Custer said. “… [but] I know other students don't have that. And so I know those students might not be able to come back to finish out [their degree] just because of how much that money and that time meant for them, so just like, what comes next?”

Custer said she was also using the Service+ program to earn clinical hours for grad school.

Even though she was offered a job at the firehouse, she said others aren’t as fortunate, including students who worked on Miami University’s farm through Service+.

Impacts at Miami

Multiple departments at Miami relied on Service+ members to assist them throughout the school year, especially environmental departments.

Amanda Bentley Brymer, assistant director of Miami’s Institute for the Environment and Sustainability (IES), said in December 2023, IES absorbed the 14-acre farm from the Institute for Food Farm after Miami didn’t renew the farmer and assistant farmer positions.

After university administrators approved a farm specialist position, Bentley Brymer and her colleague Sarah Dumyahn helped manage the farm.

“Sarah and I believe in it as such a crucial resource for students in a space where students can get outside and grow food and learn a bit about the whole food system,” Bentley Brymer said. “We wanted to try and keep it going until we could figure out a longer-term strategic investment for that space.”

Bentley Brymer and Dumyahn recruited students through the Service+ program to help keep the farm running. The students learned skills like using a tractor and planting in a greenhouse, and they led tour groups of three to six students twice a week for two hours, exactly the type of learning and leadership opportunities Bentley Brymer said the farm was intended for. 

But once the funding for Service+ stopped, so did the farm.

“It's vacant,” Bentley Brymer said. “I mean, Steph is still going out there to check on things, but the students are the life and spirit of that whole space.”

The farm also had projects planned with the Myaamia Center devoted to their culturally relevant and meaningful foods in perpetuity, and 1,000 cells of tomatoes, mixed greens, peppers, herbs and flowers are now sitting in the greenhouse waiting to be planted.

Bentley Brymer said the goal is to continue running the farm; the only issue is finding a way to recruit and pay students to be out there. She added that the farm has been in a perpetual transition since 2023. 

“It felt like being hit while we were already down a little bit,” she said.

Nancy Feakes is the field manager for Miami’s Natural Areas. She oversees maintenance of the trails through Bachelor Preserve, Western Campus and other university-owned wooded areas.

Prior to the Service+ cuts, Feakes managed a team of three members who helped keep the trails clear, removed poisonous plants and invasive species, and repaired trail infrastructure like stairways and bridges. Now, she’s a team of one.

“Later this week, I’ll be out with a chainsaw cutting trees that have fallen across the trail, and I’ll definitely be prioritizing which of the trails will get the mowing and the weed-eating done,” Feakes said. “It won’t be near as often as people have been used to in the last couple of years.”

The Natural Areas first partnered with Service+ in 2023 after the university cut funding for Feakes’ student employees. Now, she’s again looking for new solutions to maintain the trails and stay on top of what needs to be done.

Last week, one of her Service+ members was supposed to lead a project installing a handrail on a staircase along the Bachelor Pine Loop. A trail user had offered to pay for the materials to see the project done, and the student took the lead, Feakes said. Now that the program has been cut, that project immediately stalled.

“The students that we’ve had have been really valuable,” Feakes said. “They’ve had a diverse background, and by having the AmeriCorps program, we’ve had students that were able to do things that we otherwise would not have done, including a visitor survey.”