ONR shifts program funds

The Office of Naval Research has suspended its Graduate Fellowship Program for students seeking Ph.D.s in science and engineering. A glut in Ph.D. production prompted the agency to shift funds further down the pipeline to post-Ph.D. faculty.

"The country's got a lot more Ph.D.s than can be employed," said Debra T. Hughes, ONR deputy director of the Corporate Programs Division. "Obviously, we don't want to stop people from going into these fields," she said, adding that the shift in funds was merely a response to changing demographics, employment statistics and trends in degree production.

Hughes also said ONR will continue participating in other Defense programs that provide fellowships to graduate students.

The $5 million program offered three-year fellowships to students seeking Ph.D.s in one of 11 fields, including computer science. Each year, ONR would award fellowships to four CS students.

The funds are being moved to the Young Investigator Program, which accepts research proposals from tenure-track faculty, Hughes said. She added that the faculty program has seen a "marked" increase in the number of qualified proposals.

Students already awarded fellowships will continue under the program. However, no new students will be accepted for the fall of 1995.

"The decision was made after much deliberation," Hughes wrote in a letter to faculty. "We considered carefully the impact of responding to today's circumstances against long-term scientific goals. We will continue to observe economic and other trends and to evaluate our program balances in response to these trends and Navy needs."