The Unofficial SMART Scholarship Forum

I asked my CA about stipends via voicemail and I got this response in my email. Hope this is true! I guess we'll find out soon.

"Hi XXX,

I received your voice mail and I wanted to follow up with you regarding the shutdown.

Your stipends and tuition will not be affected.

Please let me know if you have any questions."

notworried wrote:If SMART works like most contracts the money is already given to ASEE and since they are the one who pay us I don't see why we wouldn't get paid on time.

After many emails over funding issues this doesn't seem to be the case. It seems more like the money has been allocated to pay ASEE, but still has to be sent each month. The government likely wants to hold the lump sum in interest rather than let ASEE do so.

If SMART works like most contracts the money is already given to ASEE and since they are the one who pay us I don't see why we wouldn't get paid on time.

I had the same question and asked my POC a couple of days ago when I went to go visit their lab. My lab is working on "IOU's" from the government and there is a 50/50 shot of students not being paid as well. The fellowship payment freeze depends on what funds are used. As of now, the facilities are not sure if it will or will not affect fellowship payments because they don't know what funds the DOD has set aside for us. What I do know is that tuition payments or anything like that will NOT be paid during the government shutdown. I have a feeling that the funds for payments to students are frozen if the employees at the facility are not getting paid.

My site contact point is currently Furloughed.

Has anyone asked SPO about this?

I have no idea, but if nothing else at least stipends are supposed to go out closer to the end of the month and with some luck the shutdown won't last that long. Most prior shutdowns in the 20th century have lasted days as opposed to weeks. However, I'm not exactly thrilled about what this might do to the odds of being hired post-graduation.

Yea I'm wondering too, I came here to see if anyone might have heard anything

Is anyone else worried whether the shutdown will affect our stipends? Any ideas of how this might play out?