Overview of the NRAO Student Observing Support Program

Overview of the NRAO Student Observing Support Program

A guiding (and prudent) assumption has been that the NRAO will have a very limited amount of funds to disburse as awards. But the NRAO wishes to assist many investigators through this Student Observing Support Program. Resolving this dilemma is the reason for (a) limiting indirect costs, (b) disallowing tuition, (c) imposing a limit of one funding proposal per observing proposal, (d) imposing a funding cap of $35,000 in active awards per investigator, and (e) usually limiting the award duration to one year. The funding cap for student support is$35,000 to be divided between student stipends and miscellaneous expenses. Regarding stipends, it is considered essential that an award be able to support a graduate student for up to one full year. At the NRAO, the current wage rate for a graduate student is $1850 per month and the current fringe rate is 32%. These rates may differ at other institutions but, used as a guide, imply an annual cost of$29,000 for a graduate student. In addition, we provide an amount of up to $3,000 to offset the cost to the institution of administering the award. These costs are reflected in the funding cap of$32,000 imposed on student stipends. A funding cap of \$3,000 is imposed on miscellaneous expenses, for computer hardware and/or student travel to domestic meetings to present acquired data. Domestic meeting locations include those within the U.S. and its territories, within Canada, or within Mexico. Inclusion of the latter two countries is consistent with emerging North American partnerships in radio astronomy, as well as with venues for meetings of the American Astronomical Society. A two year program may well be better suited to supporting a doctoral dissertation with radio astronomy as a focus. So although this initial program is oriented toward a one year program, a request for support of a two year program of observations for a dissertation may be considered. The last four items in the "General Provisions" are the minimum legal words that the NRAO should convey to awardee investigators and institutions, regarding records and access (item 10), nondiscrimination (item 11), behavior of institutions (item 12), inventions (item 13), and copyright (item 14). These words were distilled from the Cooperative Agreement AST-0956545 between the NSF and AUI entitled "Management and Operations of the National Radio Astronomy Observatory", as well as from the general grant provisions applicable to NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and Chandra XRay Observatory.