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Graduate Research Fellowship


III. Eligibility Information

A. Eligible Applicants

Awards are normally made to the fellow's graduate institution through the use of a grant.  Therefore, students must work with their institution's authorized representatives to complete the following required standard federal forms - SF 424, CD-511, and SF 424B. Institutions eligible to receive awards include institutions of higher education, other non-profits, state and local governments. All reserve staff are ineligible to submit an application for a fellowship under this announcement. Funds are expected to be available on a competitive basis to qualified graduate students for research within a reserve(s) leading to a graduate degree. Students must be admitted to or enrolled in a full-time master's or doctoral program at a U.S. accredited university in order to be eligible to apply. Students should have completed a majority of their graduate course work at the beginning of their fellowship and have an approved thesis research program. Minority students are encouraged to apply.

B. Cost Sharing or Matching Requirement

Requested federal funds must be matched by at least 30 percent of the TOTAL cost, not the federal share, of the project.  To illustrate, the total project cost for a one year Graduate Research Fellowship is $28,572.  Twenty-thousand of this funding is supplied by the federal government with a minimum 30% non-federal match for the total project cost ($28,572) in the amount of $8,572 is supplied by the student's eligible applicant institution.   Requested overhead costs under fellowship awards are limited to 10% of the federal amount and institutional fees that do not qualify as direct costs under fellowship awards are limited to 10% of the federal amount as well. Waived overhead costs may be used as match. 

C. Other Criteria that Affect Eligibility

No more than two fellowships at any one reserve will be funded at one time. Based upon fellowships awarded in the 2009 funding cycle, we anticipate 22 openings for fellowships in 2010. The amount of each fellowship award is expected to be $20,000, which will be available to all current and prospective fellows and is intended to provide any combination of research support, salary, tuition, supplies, or other costs as needed, including overhead. Awards are issued as grants to the recipient institution.

Graduate student fellows who are selected for funding will be required to:

  1. work with the research coordinator or manager at the host reserve to develop a plan, relevant to the student's research, to participate in the reserve's research and/or monitoring, stewardship, education, or coastal training programs for up to 15 hours per week (Fellows conducting multi-site projects may fulfill this requirement at one or a combination of sites);
  2. submit semi-annual progress reports to the Estuarine Reserves Division through https://grantsonline.rdc.noaa.gov with the assistance of the applicant's Office of Sponsored Programs, or similar Office of Research at their graduate or other eligible institution, and send a copy of the reports to their advisor, and host reserve research coordinator via electronic copy at the end of each 6 month period;
  3. acknowledge NERRS support in all relevant scientific presentations and publications. In addition, fellows are strongly encouraged to publish their results in peer-reviewed literature and make presentations at local, national, and international scientific meetings.

Fellowships are expected to be available at the following sites:

NERR Site Openings
Apalachicola, FL 1
Chesapeake Bay, MD 2
Chesapeake Bay, VA 1
Delaware, DE 1
Great Bay, NH 1
Guana Tolomato Matanzas, FL 1
Hudson River, NY 2
Jacques Cousteau, NJ 1
Jobos Bay, PR 2
Kachemak Bay, AK 1
Narragansett Bay, RI 1
Old Woman Creek, OH 1
South Slough, OR 2
Tijuana River, CA 1
Waquoit Bay, MA 1
Weeks Bay, AL 2
Wells, ME 1

The Estuarine Reserves Division, Office of Ocean and Coastal Resource Management, reserves the right to immediately halt activity under the award if it becomes obvious that award activities are not fulfilling the mission of the National Estuarine Research Reserve System. Non-compliance with a federally approved project may result in immediate halting of the award. For applicants awarded more than one year of funding, the Estuarine Reserves Division will review and approve each stage of work annually before the next stage begins to assure that studies will produce viable information on which to form valid coastal management decisions.



For more information contact Alison Krepp.