RE:  USDA/CSREES -- Food and Agricultural Science National Needs Graduate
and Postdoctoral Fellowship Grants Program

How do others handle the appointments for students under this award?

Our institution has a personnel system that defines appointment types which
include predoctoral fellows, postdoctoral fellows, research assistants, and
research associates.  If the application is within a fellowship grant
program, the titling would be pre- or postdoctoral fellow.  In the case of
this USDA program, we would expect the fellows to be appointed accordingly.

If an individual were appointed under a typical research grant, the titling
would be research assistant or research associate.  For a research
assistant, our structure then includes a stipend, fringe benefits, and
tuition remission.  For a predoctoral fellow, the structure does not
include tuition remission.

I would be interested to know how others title individuals under this USDA
award.  We are being encouraged by faculty to appoint the graduate students
as research assistants instead of predoctoral fellows so that they receive
tuition remission.  The faculty believe that USDA does not care if the
student is appointed as a fellow or not.  USDA has implied that appointment
type is defined by the institution; our faculty interpret that to mean USDA
doesn't care, so why should we.  We interpret the opportunity as a
fellowship to drive the titling and believe that allowing fellows to be
appointed as research assistants would be inappropriate in this case and
would open the door to inappropriate deviation on many other awards.

Any thoughts or opinions will be appreciated.

Carol

Carol Y. Hillmer
Assistant Dean
CALS Research Division
136 Agricultural Hall
Madison, WI  53706
ext. 5-5495
fax ext. 5-9534

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