NSF announces RIF plans, in-person policy and equity division elimination in staff memo

The National Science Foundation is taking steps to slash its workforce, including reducing the number of senior executive service roles as well as temporary and non-federal roles, according to an internal memo to staff obtained by FedScoop.

The memo was emailed to staff Friday afternoon by Chief Management Officer Micah Cheatham. It also included plans to require in-person work starting June 16 and the elimination of the Division of Equity for Excellence in STEM in the next two months, which it announced publicly Friday as well. 

Details of the agency’s workforce reduction plans come after its termination of hundreds of grants that don’t align with President Donald Trump’s policies, such as those that included diversity, equity and inclusion activities. Amid those actions, Sethuraman Panchanathan resigned his position as NSF’s director. Panchanathan had been appointed by Trump during the president’s first term. 

Per the memo, NSF began on Thursday a reduction-in-force of its senior executive service workforce, which is a designation for federal senior leadership and management officials. Of the 143 total SES roles — including vacant positions — that NSF had on Jan. 20, just 59 are needed under the agency’s “new organizational structure and proposed future year budgets.”

“The remaining 84 positions are no longer required to be filled with Executives. NSF will sunset some SES positions and create new, non-Executive supervisory positions,” the missive said.

All “non-continuing SES positions” will be “sunset” by June 30 via a RIF, the memo said. Impacted employees will be “reassigned to fill vacant SES positions that will continue after the RIF,” and those who can’t be reassigned to a vacant SES-level role “will be reassigned to an AD-05, GS-15, or equivalent position within NSF.” 

The SES employees “without fallback rights will be separated,” it said.

Further, NSF is reducing its temporary workforce — including time-limited employees, visiting experts, and rotators under the Intergovernmental Personnel Act (IPA) — from 368 to a “target of 70” workers, according to the memo. It announced immediate plans to not extend or renew temporary workers beyond their current end date. 

The agency said it plans to identify the 70 roles that are needed to support the administration’s priority areas of “artificial Intelligence, biotechnology, nuclear energy, quantum science, and translational science” and will prioritize filling those roles with existing “IPA employees.” Under the IPA, workers aren’t considered full federal government employees. Those assignments are initially for two years and have a maximum duration of four years, per NSF’s website.

The memo comes after reporting from Science that the agency was planning to get rid of its 37 divisions, with leaders expected to lose their titles and layoffs anticipated as soon as Thursday night. In its budget request to Congress, the Trump administration has sought to dramatically reduce the science research agency’s funding, asking lawmakers to cut the agency’s funding in half.

In addition to the staffing reductions, the memo included details about its return-to-office plan. 

There are some carveouts for employees with reasonable accommodations, exceptions for hardship, and any employees who accepted the deferred resignation offer also known as the “Fork in the Road.” But the plan appeared to include workers who don’t live near the agency’s Alexandria, Va., headquarters, as it offers relocation benefits to workers who accept their reassignment to the headquarters. 

Those who don’t accept reassignment will be separated from the agency and “eligible for most benefits” that employees removed during a RIF would get, such as severance and discontinued service retirement, per the email. It didn’t, however, say what benefits those employees wouldn’t be eligible for. It also stated that the agency “is no longer seeking arrangements for staff to work in alternate facilities outside of the NSF headquarters building.”

Finally, the memo said that in addition to shuttering the Division of Equity for Excellence in STEM Education, or EES, it was implementing immediate RIF plans of all of that division’s workers that will be completed by July 12. The division is part of NSF’s Directorate for STEM Education.

The EES page was removed from the agency’s website, but according to a copy archived by the Wayback Machine, the mission of that component was to promote “diversity, equity and inclusion in STEM by removing barriers and supporting the full participation of underrepresented groups in science and engineering fields.”

NSF didn’t respond to a request for comment by the time of publication.