For many years now, NASA has run a Graduate Student Researcher Program, offering a number of fellowships each year, typically lasting for three year terms.
These are the Future Rocket Scientists of America.
They are now, apparently, cut.
The GSRP takes a number of students per year in astronomy, physics and engineering.
The students are usually advanced graduate students working on thesis projects, often quite mission specific, and the program is run through researchers at the NASA Centers, with each center offering a range of topics.
Admission is competitive, and the program has been effective at linking graduate students to specific groups at NASA.
"The goal of NASA'S GSRP is to cultivate additional research ties to the academic community, to help meet the continuing needs of the Nation's aeronautics and space workforce requirements by increasing the number of highly trained scientists and engineers in aeronautics and space-related disciplines."
This year, the GSRP call for proposals came out with due date this spring, and awards to be announced before summer.
It is now November, and only some of the NASA centers have announced awards:
Dryden, JPL, Marshall and Stennis.
The others have not:
HQ, Ames, Glenn, Goddard, Johnson, Kennedy, Langley
These have no awards for 2011, that I have heard, students who applied, that I know of, were told they would not be admitted for the summer, but nothing beyond that.
Now:
"ONLY RENEWAL APPLICATIONS WILL BE ACCEPTED
Renewal applications can only be submitted by GSRP fellows
who were awarded a fellowship in 2010 or 2011.
NASA regrets that it is unable to accept new applications in 2012."
and the renewals will be limited to 70.
I don't think that is enough to renew everyone in their first or second year, so some people may be cut. Language is not clear.
There is no language yet on why this is being done.
The cost of the program should be in the ~ $10 million range, so cutting a year will realize some prompt savings, but this is very short sighted, I presume there is intent to restart the program at some point in the future, though even that is not clear.
This program is a pipeline to get students involved in NASA mission projects, it is a popular and effective program, it provides significant support for a significant fraction of graduate students working on "rocket science".
Cutting the GSRP is very strange, and it would be good to get a clear announcement from someone in charge of what is going on.
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I am deeply saddened by this. I was part of GSRP for three successful years, which ultimately led to going to Goddard under the postdoctoral fellowship through NASA, and now I am working at a NASA funded institution that supports one of the agency's most successful missions, Hubble. While a GSRP, I made contacts with people at Goddard that no doubt have helped me greatly in my career. I understand we can't have everything in this budget, but this seems like a bad idea for NASA.
very bad news indeed. Some of my fellow grad students had GSRP. NASA's other graduate fellowship program, NESSF, seems to be open for applications (deadline Feb 2012) but this is not like the GSRP where students necessarily come in and work with NASA scientists. I doubt that they are simply shifting their resources towards some other program. I'm up for an NESSF renewal this Spring and this makes me somewhat uneasy.