2025 NMFS-SEA GRANT FELLOWSHIP

Instructions:
Page Limit: One page maximum

Important Details:

It should include the name and contact information of the prospective fellow, the title of the proposal, a brief project abstract, and should specify your project’s focus area (either Population and Ecosystem Dynamics (PED), or Marine Resource Economics (MRE)).

Depending on the student’s research concentration, the proposal title should read either "Last name_PED” or “Last name_MRE” as a prefix.

Instructions:
Page Limit: Five Pages (References and figures do not count towards the five page limit — include as a separate appendix)

Important Details: The project proposal is intended to describe the proposed dissertation or the general intended area of study. It must be written by the prospective fellow and include the following:

The number of years for which fellowship support is being sought;
A brief summary of the work to be completed;
A rationale for the proposed activity;
Scientific or technical objectives and/or hypotheses to be tested;
Appropriate details on methodology, and relevance of results.

Candidate projects will focus on at least one of the following: 1) the population dynamics of living marine resources; 2) stock assessment and survey methodologies; 3) marine ecosystem modeling; 4) integrated ecosystem assessments; 5) ecosystem-based management of marine ecosystems; and 6) economics of the conservation and management of living marine resources. Interdisciplinary topics are encouraged.

Additional Note: If a proposal is longer than five pages, only the first five will be shared with reviewers.

Instructions:
Page Limit: Two pages (single spaced)

Important Details: The statement should discuss the student's interest in the economics of the conservation and management of living marine resources, or quantitative marine ecology, with a focus on one or more of the following:

Development and implementation of methods for assessing marine ecosystems and/or stock status of living marine resources;
Ecosystem-based management;
Population dynamics of managed aquatic animals;
Quantitative survey methodologies;
Commitment to apply scientific expertise to serve society equitably (consider academics, volunteer activities, professional activities or personal experiences).

Note: If a career goal statement is longer than two pages, only the first two pages will be shared with reviewers.

Instructions:
Curriculum vitae (CV): The student, the faculty advisor, and the NMFS mentor must each submit a CV which is not to exceed 2 pages. The CVs should not include personal, contact information or web links to external resources (e.g., LinkedIn, articles, blogs, etc.). If included, programs should redact excess materials prior to submission to Grants.gov. If a CV is longer than two pages, only the first two pages will be shared with reviewers.

Note: State Sea Grant programs must redact all Personally Identifiable Information and/or web links to external resources. This typically includes social security numbers, birth dates, student identification numbers as well as the student's email, phone number, and address.

Instructions:
The students should provide a one-page single spaced maximum summary describing your academic training in quanittative methods; a listing of your top five classes in quantitative methods already taken; and classes you intend to take over the spring 2024 semester. Class listings should include course name (though course umber can be excluded) and a short description of the content covered in the course.

Instructions:
Transcripts can either be official or unofficial. For students who have been accepted but not yet enrolled in a current Ph.D. program, the program's acceptance letter is adequate to fill the requirement of Ph.D. transcripts. 

NOTE: State Sea Grant programs must redact all Personally Identifiable Information (PII). PII typically includes social security numbers, birth dates, student identification numbers as well as the student's email, phone number, and address. If included, Virginia Sea Grant will redact prior to submission.

Instructions:
A minimum of two signed letters of recommendation from:

The students's faculty advisor. The letter should discuss the following attributes of the students: quantitative skills, self-motivation, response to setbacks, skills and involvement in teamwork, academic and performance and/or potential.

The student's NMFS mentor. In addition to noting the NMFS staff member's commitment to serve as a mentor, letters from NMFS mentors should briefly address the relevance of the research to NMFS, as well as a statement of broader impacts of the proposal.

If multiple advisors or mentors are contributing, each one should provide a separate letter.

Instructions:
Abbreviated Environmental Compliance Questionnaire (OMB Control No. 0648-0538)

The Abbreviated Environmental Compliance Questionnaire, guidance on how to complete the questionnaire, as well as examples of completed questionnaires, can be found here: https://seagrant.noaa.gov/insideseagrant/Implementation. The student must ensure that the questionnaire is completed in full and includes detailed information regarding project location, methodology, and permits. Copies of all permits required for project activities should be included with application materials. If a permit is pending or planned, please provide this information. If detailed information is not provided, NOAA via the federal program officer, may request additional information or place a specific award condition on the fellowship award prohibiting specific activities, if permits or other environmental compliance documentation is not currently available.

A separate questionnaire must be completed for each relevant action/project in the proposal.

Guidance on how to complete the questionnaire, including how to describe work that will not involve any environmental impact, can be found here.

Examples of questionnaires can be found here.

If detailed information is not provided, NOAA via the federal program officer, may request additional information or place a specific award condition on the fellowship award prohibiting specific activities, if permits or other environmental compliance documentation is not currently available.

Instructions:
Page Limit: not to exceed 2 pages

All applications must include a Data Management Plan that is compliant with NOAA’s Public Access to Research Results Plan. The Data Management Plan should not exceed 2 pages. The Data Management Plan should include descriptions of the types of metadata and data expected to be created during the course of the project, plans for disseminating the metadata and data to the broader community, and plans for long-term archiving of the metadata and data.

If proposed activities will not generate any environmental data, such as the scoping activities and research competition, please include the following statement at the end of your proposal: “Because this project will not generate environmental data, a Data Management Plan is not required. “For more information, see Section VI.B.(9). For reference: https://nosc.noaa.gov/EDMC/documents/Data_Sharing_Directive_v3.0.pdf

Instructions:
The budget narrative must include the following budget documents (Sea Grant 90-4 forms and budget justification) in the following order and format. Sea Grant 90-4 forms and budget justifications must be included for each individual project within an application. Additional budget narrative guidance can be found at: https://www.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/gmd_budget_narrative_guidance_-_05-24- 2017_final.pdf

a) Sea Grant 90-4 Form (OMB Control No. 0648-0362): Sea Grant 90-4 forms are required to provide budget breakdowns and budget justifications by year and object class for the proposal. A completed Sea Grant 90-4 form should be completed for each project year, as well as a total budget for the entire project duration (i.e., Year 1, Year 2, Year 3, and Years 1-3). The Sea Grant 90-4 form can be downloaded at: https://seagrant.noaa.gov/insideseagrant/Implementation.

Budget Justification:
All Virginia university students applying for a NMFS-Sea Grant Fellowship must have their fellowship applications approved by their home institution’s sponsored programs/research office prior to submitting to VASG. Each institution may handle this differently, although all will have an internal deadline for submitting proposals to their sponsored programs/research office for their review and approval prior to the deadline. All required forms are available at https://seagrant.noaa.gov/insideseagrant/Implementation.

For each year of the project (or each individual project within an application), a budget justification is required. Each budget justification should explain the budget items in sufficient detail to enable review of the appropriateness of the funding requested. Each budget justification should be attached as a PDF to each Sea Grant 90-4 form, as appropriate.

The budget should include funds for travel to the annual Fellows Symposium and may include funds for stipend, tuition, fees, equipment, supplies, discretionary travel, and other reasonable and appropriate project costs (see Section II in the NOFO, "Award Information"). Sub-contracts, if any, should have a separate budget page.

Overall Application:
In addition to the forms required above, standard Federal Forms and Assurances are required for the overall application and can be found with the application package on Grants.gov or on the Sea Grant website. These include:

a. SF-424 Form (Grants.gov, OMB Control No. 4040-0004) 24
This form, titled “Application for Federal Assistance,” must identify the entire funding period (August 1, 2023 - July 31, 2026) as well as the federal funding amount being requested by the applicant and the non-federal matching fund amount. The form must be completed with the institution’s accurate UEI and Point of Contact, and signed by the institution’s authorized representative or designee.

b. SF-424A Form (Grants.gov, OMB Control No. 4040-0006)
This form, titled “Budget Information - Non-Construction Programs,” must describe the entire funding period (broken out by year if multi-year) in federal and non-federal dollars, for the entire application. Fill out Section B of this SF-424A form to show the overall budget breakdown by object class by year with separate columns for each year of federal funding as well as each year of non-federal funding. If there is insufficient space, an additional SF-424A form, Extra Section B should be used (see below).

c. Additional SF-424A Form, Extra Section B (Form found on Inside Sea Grant, OMB Control No. 4060-0006)
The SF-424A form described above only includes space to report the applicant’s yearly federal and non-federal dollars over two years. If the application includes more than two years of federal and non-federal dollars, please complete the additional SF-424A, Extra Section B to report the yearly non-federal matching fund budget of the grant. This form is an outlier and will be added to the “Budget Narrative Attachment” section on Grants.gov, as described in Section IV. C. 2.

d. SF-424B Assurances (Grants.gov, OMB Control No. 4040-0007)
The form, titled “Assurances – Non-Construction Programs,” must be completed and signed by the institution's authorized representative or designee.

e. CD-511 (Grants.gov, US Department of Commerce)
The form, titled “Certification Regarding Lobbying,” must be completed and signed by the institution’s authorized representative or designee. In some instances, the SF-LLL Disclosure of Lobbying Activities form may also be required. See the instructions on the CD-511 for further information.

f. SF-LLL (Grants.gov, OMB Control No. 0348-0046)
The form, titled “Disclosure of Lobbying Activities,” must be completed and signed by the institution’s authorized representative or designee, if appropriate.

Forms and Templates:
Please use this link to access an Excel budget form template: https://vaseagrant.org/wpcontent/uploads/Sea-Grant-90-4-Budget-Form_2022_GRF.xlsm.zip

Additional guidance documents and all Sea Grant budget forms are available at:
https://seagrant.noaa.gov/insideseagrant/Implementation.

Additional budget narrative guidance provided by NOAA Grants Management Division can be found here: https://www.noaa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/gmd_budget_narrative_guidance_-_05-24-2017_final

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