Growing up in Bowdoinham in the ’80s and ’90s was a great place for a kid with a blossoming interest in science. During elementary school, we would go to the woods behind the school to learn about the food chain and how to observe nature in action. We built boats to float in the Cathance River. We took the late bus home and sat under the train-track bridge to watch the river flow by. One of us even started a “mica-mining” business that involved hustling other fourth graders into grinding sparkly rocks against each other to make homemade glitter. There was lots of frog catching. After school, we would rush home, hoping to catch “Reading Rainbow,” “3-2-1 Contact” or, later, “The Magic School Bus” — shows brought to us by the National Science Foundation that engaged our curious young minds.

From this foundation of science and scientific curiosity borne out of the Maine woods, the three of us left the Midcoast area and started our journeys to become scientists. The path to becoming a scientist is long and rarely leads back home, so after many stops around the country and the world, we are now settled in Colorado, Rhode Island and Texas, where we run labs ranging in size from a handful to a couple dozen people, focused on understanding the relationship between human bodies, brains and health. Although our research interests are diverse, we share the goal of addressing important problems whose solutions will improve the lives of people in our communities, back home in Midcoast Maine and, frankly everywhere. The National Science Foundation is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year. Since its founding, the average life expectancy of Americans has grown by 10 years, thanks, in part, to progress in medical science supported by the federal government.

Each of us is actively engaged in research that can make us live even longer and healthier lives. Maggie is working on lowering the risks of adverse obstetric outcomes among pregnant women. Simon is trying to understand how brains recover following stroke. Josie is studying how to best time sleeping, eating and exercise to lower the risk of disease. Each of these are enormous questions whose answers will have a tangible impact on human health and quality of life. Thanks to federal funding from the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the Institute of Education Sciences, we have been able to make real progress toward novel interventions, hire students and staff to help solve these problems, and to train and develop the next generation of the scientific workforce.

The long-term goal of federal investments in science is to set us on a path to discovery, focused on the common good rather than the bottom line. But there are immediate impacts as well. Every federal dollar spent on science generates $2.50 in local economic impact. Federal science dollars are job creators, both directly for the people hired to conduct the science and indirectly through the numerous jobs that universities and colleges create to support the institution. The federally funded projects that we have been lucky enough to lead have supported our local communities. Similarly, Bowdoin, Bates, Colby and all the schools in the University of Maine system receive millions of dollars every year that make an impact on the local economy of Midcoast Maine. Other research institutions like Jackson Labs in Bar Harbor and FHC in Bowdoin also participate in the research endeavors that stimulate our local economy.

We are writing home because we are the scientists who we are today thanks to where we came from, growing up in rural Maine. Historically, support for science has been bipartisan, with a recognition that U.S. global leadership in science benefits our prosperity and our national security. But the federal commitment to science that has made the U.S. the global leader is currently unraveling. We have already seen a variety of executive actions, implementation of new policies and the indiscriminate firing of the experts that oversee the apolitical processes by which proposals are evaluated and funded. Because of these actions, the ability of federal funding agencies to support science with funds that have already been appropriated has been massively diminished. If the threats of deep cuts to science agencies in future years actually occur, America will undoubtedly lose its place as a global scientific leader.

We are alarmed by this unraveling. If you are, too, we urge you to reach out to Susan Collins, Angus King and Chellie Pingree (unless you are reading this in the 2nd District like in Gardiner or Lisbon, in which case you should contact Jared Golden). Tell them how important science funding is to you, to the Midcoast region, to Maine and to the United States of America. As we learned in Mr. Shedd’s U.S. history class, only Congress has the power of the purse. Encourage our representatives to use that power to stand up for science.

Josiane Broussard, Ph.D., Mt. Ararat High School Class of 1998, is an associated professor at Colorado State University. Margaret Hanson Bulbitz, Mt. Ararat High School Class of 1998, is an associate professor at Brown University Medical School. Simon Fischer-Baum, Mt. Ararat High School Class of 1999, is an associate professor at Rice University.