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A young economist who had uprooted his life for the public service. A fierce accommodation defender ended just before buying his first house. A semi-finalist whose dreams rushed before materializing.
For decades, the program of presidential management scholarship holders was considered a block of construction of the public service in the hope that the few who obtained the post will one day become leaders of the federal workforce. Now the coming road is uncertain. Hundreds of scholarship holders have been terminated or put on administrative leave in the midst of a national reduction in federal workforce.
A president Donald TrumpExecutive decrees ended the program, which was created in 1978 to attract highly qualified workers with an advanced diploma to join the federal government.
Trump Republican The administration had ordered agencies to dismiss almost all probationary employees, potentially affecting hundreds of thousands of workers in one stroke. This included the recent classes of the Fellows program, which has a two -year probation period.
The scholarship holders had persevered by an intense selection process which included several tests and evaluations as well as a blind interview. The agency’s website said that around 10% of candidates are accepted, although this number has recently been as low as 3%.
Charles Conyers, a retiree from the personnel management who was a member of the 2003 promotion, said that he was saddened and perplexed as for the administration to eliminate a program which brought to the government some of the “most brilliant minds in America”. He said that losing their skills and putting an end to a program that attracted and cared for exceptional future leaders was tragic.
While many scholarship holders affected by job cuts were reluctant to speak on the file, several did it. As a group, they said they loved their work and saw the federal public service as a means of serving their country. All would welcome, if they were given a chance, the opportunity to return to work and use their expertise.
“An incredible brain leak”
Jenn Kauffman, who has training in public health and working studies, was semi-finalist for the Fellows program this year and was waiting to know if she would be accepted. While the layoffs were announced, she began to worry if she was continuing.
“I worked very hard and I wanted this satisfaction to see it through,” she said.
On February 19, during the week, the finalists were reportedly appointed, the Trump administration announced an executive decree reducing the program.
Kauffman, 45, said that she had been crushed by the decision and worries that mass layoffs and the dissolution of the Fellows program forever change the public service.
“It is so easy to decimate something but so much more difficult to rebuild,” she said. “And I fear that incredibly talented people who may have been my cohort or my colleagues will go elsewhere, and there will be an incredible brain leak. It is such a loss for the American people. »»
At the Forest Service, a perfect adjustment
Sydney Smith, 28, said that many scholarship holders were shocked to be released because they came to government with ideas on how to make it more effective.
Smith studied chemistry as a undergraduate student at Willamette University in Oregon before studying accounting in George Washington University. She heard of the presidential scholarship program but was skeptical that she would enter due to the low acceptance rate.
After being a finalist in 2023, she started working for the US Forest Service as an accountant. She is a backpacker who loves outdoor and is passionate about the realization of accessible public land. It was a perfect fit.
Now Smith’s goal is to complete CPA exams, which she did to make herself even more qualified for the federal service.
“I hope that in the future, there will be room for me to the government,” she said. “I don’t know what it would look like, but I hope it still exists.”
A high school dream has derailed
McKenzie Hartman, 26, was an economist for the IRS research division in Ogden, Utah, when she received an email on February 19 that she should return to the office with all her equipment.
The next day, a manager recovered his equipment and took it out. On the way back, Hartman took a bad turn because his mind was elsewhere.
“It was surreal,” she said. “I had planned to work for the federal government from high school.”
Hartman lost access to the videoconferencing software from his office and could not reach his colleagues for his own goodbye gathering. She had to call in place. His termination letter came the following weekend.
“It’s crazy to get a letter that puts you at the end of your performance when everyone around you says incredible things about your performance,” said Hartman.
Since then, she applied for jobs and embarked on a road trip with her partner in several national parks, where she saw demonstrations against the Trump administration cuts.
“For many of us, we have a question of whether we will return to federal services,” she said. “Many of us would like, and that was what we wanted for our careers, but it’s demoralizing.”
A termination, “heartbreaking” ending
Bianca Nelson, 31 years old, worked for the Ministry of Housing and Urban Development in the unit she calls the “gateway to HUD”. She had never planned to leave. On February 14, she received an email that she was dismissed, with immediate effect.
Nelson and his partner planned to buy their first house this month – their “dream apartment”. Now they had to rely on the savings to keep them afloat. She called him “heartbreaking”.
She had to transmit the e-mail to dismiss her boss, who had not been informed that she or others would be dismissed. A few days later, she picked up her personal effects, including a bell that was given to her during a revolutionary ceremony of the New York Housing Authority – a memory representing her love for her work.
Since then, she has spent her days organizing documents for unemployment and insurance, taking networking calls, volunteering with her union, organizing a resource fair for other federal workers dismissed in her region and volunteering with plea organizations for housing.
To put an end to the program, she said, “close a pipeline to future leaders”.
Worry about those who need help
The Madeleine Parker Stock Exchange began in September 2023, a month after completing its doctorate in the city and in regional planning at the University of California in Berkeley.
Parker, 32, has chosen to work in housing due to its importance in the supply of families stability. She said that she hoped to continue working for the federal government.
“It was difficult to step back,” she said.
She tries to develop strategies on what comes then while worrying about people who need help.
“There is the personal impact of my own work, but I have this immense concern concerning the impacts on the people we serve, programs on whom I have worked and on whom my colleagues have worked, of the affordable development of housing after sinister,” she said.
‘We made a difference’
Juliane Alfen, 25, has left her workplace at the American agency for international development in tears, leaving the acclamations of supporters who protested the abrupt manner of one of the pre -eminent aid organizations in the world.
Fellow in 2023, his goal was to build a life and a career around federal services.
Alfen has learned the scholarship through its international studies program in international affairs at the University of California in San Diego. The day she learned that she had arrived at the finalist, she said: “I literally shouted and called my mother on the phone.” There had been more than 10,000 initial candidates.
Now when she looks at her account Linkedin, everyone is looking for a job. She said that she would love the opportunity to return to the USAID, although the prospects for this are uncertain given the evision of the administration of the administration of Trump through her advisor Elon MuskDepartment of Government Efficiency and interrupting its humanitarian work.
“I think,” said Alfen, “as if we were making a difference.”
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Fernando reported to Chicago.
