Kevin Coriolan | News Editor
The government shutdown has reached an age of two weeks and has started to worry at least one Buena Vista University (BVU) undergraduate on campus. 
Senior Tesia Posekany is a planning to attend graduate school next year after commencement in less than eight months; however, stress has set in as the shutdown has caused a life science fellowship she’d hoped to apply for to not be available.
The application deadline is Nov. 8, leaving her less time to complete the application if the government reopens soon, and possible larger complications if the shutdown does not end before then.
“I feel like I didn’t do anything to deserve the government shutdown; however, it is affecting me in a pretty significant way,” Posekany said.
As a biology major, Posekany is interested in the Graduate Research Fellowship Program provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The NSF advocates for science in the United States and funds research for students of small schools such as BVU.
There is a message on the NSF website stating: “Due to the lapse in government funding, National Science Foundation websites and business applications, including NSF.gov, FastLane, and Research.gov will be unavailable until further notice. We sincerely regret this inconvenience.” Other federal sites such as the National Institute of Health’s are also temporarily unavailable with information used for research needing updates.
“When applying to graduate school, the [fellowships] make you a lot more competitive as an applicant because to do research projects you obviously need funding. It is the bottleneck of scientific research,” Posekany said.
Graduate schools are attracted to students with prior funding because part of the financial backing has been taken care of. The two previous research projects Posekany has experienced were almost entirely funded by the NSF. One summer Posekany spent 10 weeks at Iowa State University to research a plant’s virus protein and how it is carried to other plants by insects. She learned lab techniques and worked alongside an expert mentoring her in the field of plant life.
She then worked in Ithaca, New York the next summer at the Boyce Thomas Institute, an affiliate of Cornell University. This research was centered on the genetic basis of plants’ immune responses. Again, she received valuable funding from the NSF for a 10-week study with 40 hours of research and practice each week.
Posekany believes graduate schools will take into account the government’s lack of available aid for research, but the funding may need to come from different sources which are difficult to find. Even the schools’ funding efforts are likely to have been upset by the shutdown.
The federal government shutdown began October 1 after Congress failed to pass on a resolution for the 2014 fiscal year. According to U.S.A. Today more than 200,000 employees have been furloughed with no pay to deter costs.
Photo by Tyson Domingo
