Is Your SMART Award Conditional?

Answers to various questions regarding the SMART Scholarship application process. Includes many tips and statistics.
SMARTing

Is Your SMART Award Conditional?

Post by SMARTing »

I received this message today from an Army lab - does anyone know what this means? 'Since the selection of a SMART scholar involves a commitment to hire in the PERM civilian category a TDA slot has to be assigned. The Director approves this. Organization policy is to exclusively hire in the TERM category. The answer is historically 'no'.'

Can you SMART selection be taken away because there is no 'TDA slot assigned'?

User_123

Re: Is Your SMART Award Conditional?

Post by User_123 »

Hello, I'm not too familiar with TDA's, but I believe the Tables of Distribution and Allowances guides the number and type of hiring actions available. SMART's contract wording likely says permanent (PERM) employment, which had a probation period of 1-3 years and an indefinite end date. ARL (and likely other Army labs) recently switched to hiring 5 year term (TERM) employees as standard policy, which can be renewed an indefinite number of terms. This likely puts the two in conflict. I recommend open discussion with your sponsoring facility and SMART rep/liason to talk through possible solutions. Once a solution is decided, try to get confirmation via email of the path forward.

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