kknierim

Hey everyone. I am a 2011 STAR recipient and I thought maybe I could add some info to this discussion. I know how frightening this process is. In 2011, I received in email at the end of May (May 27) stating that I was a finalists for the STAR, but that nothing was official until my paperwork came. It sounded like they had made selections, but were having problems with the money that year. Here is the content of that email: "Dear Applicant, Congratulations! You recently applied for an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Science to Achieve Results (STAR) Fellowship for the 2011 award year. The review process has been completed and you have been selected as a finalist and are now eligible to receive an EPA Fellowship. We will now begin the process to recommend to EPA’s Grants and Interagency Agreements Management Division (GIAMD) that you receive this fellowship award. GIAMD is the only organization in EPA that can formally offer you this fellowship. You should refrain from making any type of formal announcement about this decision or any monetary commitments until you have received and signed the formal offer (i.e., Activation Notice) that will be sent to you directly from GIAMD. Upon receiving confirmation of your declination/acceptance you will receive further information in order to get your formal acceptance letter. Please do so by May 31st. If we have heard no word of your acceptance after the 31st your recommendation will be revoked and given to another perspective fellow." I immediately replied that I would like to accept, and it took most of the summer for my paperwork to come through (I called it the "Summer of Anxiety"). What is interesting is that during the summer, they were contacting us about registering for the fall conference. I took that as a good sign that things were moving forward, but that obviously won't be happening this year since they cancelled the conference. Even in September we were filling out paperwork to help get our fellowship stipends more quickly so we wouldn't be a out a paycheck. Considering the political climate this year, I would guess there will be delays. I filled out my renewal forms (for my final, 3rd year of EPA STAR funding) in April, and last year we had our renewal packets (to have signed by our advisors) at the beginning of May. I am anxously awaiting my renewal packet... Good luck to everyone who is left!

Has anyone else gotten paperwork? I haven't gotten anything. I'm a bit on edge because of some departmental moves around campus, so there is a really high potential for things to get lost in the mail...

Thanks to everyone for keeping us posted with updates. Last I had heard was the mass "we are working hard" email on July 6. I talked with one of my advisors and he very seriously thought it may have to do with the federal budget deadline. That is coming up now, so maybe we will hear soon. I had contacted my grants officer before the July 6 email, (because of some address change stuff) and he said he hoped the grants division would let the individual grant officers know that the packets were coming so they could give us a heads up.