- #1
Dishsoap
- 1,017
- 310
Hey fellas!
I'm wondering if anyone here has experience taking a short (~1-2 month) leave of absence while being funded by the NSF GRFP.
The longer version is that I'm eligible for a medical deferral, as I'm taking care of my mom while she is in home hospice, 800 miles away from my (experimental) PhD program. However, I'm also in the middle of my tenure (my last funded year will end May 2020). My advisor has informally let me take time off (when her life expectancy was days-weeks), but at this point I've been gone for a month and the poor guy is still paying the portion of my stipend/tuition that the GRFP isn't covering, and my mom is still alive but needs my help. In order to take a leave of absence from the program (so my advisor can stop paying me), I need to change my GRFP status.
My university has a particular person appointed to handle the GRFP students, however they're being pretty unhelpful, telling me that I cannot change my tenure status in the middle of the year.
After talking to an administrative person at my university, it seems like one option is to leave the program (which is apparently different from a leave of absence?), which will then cancel the remainder of my GRFP. However, I have two non-NSF nine-month fellowships which I will forfeit by doing so.
I can guarantee I'm not the first person to be in these circumstances, so I thought I'd reach out to see if anyone knows of a solution. Unfortunately, when I left I didn't know that I wouldn't be returning (her cancer spread incredibly quickly), and so I wasn't able to sort these things out in person.
I'm wondering if anyone here has experience taking a short (~1-2 month) leave of absence while being funded by the NSF GRFP.
The longer version is that I'm eligible for a medical deferral, as I'm taking care of my mom while she is in home hospice, 800 miles away from my (experimental) PhD program. However, I'm also in the middle of my tenure (my last funded year will end May 2020). My advisor has informally let me take time off (when her life expectancy was days-weeks), but at this point I've been gone for a month and the poor guy is still paying the portion of my stipend/tuition that the GRFP isn't covering, and my mom is still alive but needs my help. In order to take a leave of absence from the program (so my advisor can stop paying me), I need to change my GRFP status.
My university has a particular person appointed to handle the GRFP students, however they're being pretty unhelpful, telling me that I cannot change my tenure status in the middle of the year.
After talking to an administrative person at my university, it seems like one option is to leave the program (which is apparently different from a leave of absence?), which will then cancel the remainder of my GRFP. However, I have two non-NSF nine-month fellowships which I will forfeit by doing so.
I can guarantee I'm not the first person to be in these circumstances, so I thought I'd reach out to see if anyone knows of a solution. Unfortunately, when I left I didn't know that I wouldn't be returning (her cancer spread incredibly quickly), and so I wasn't able to sort these things out in person.