diff --git a/apps/mast/qwen3_14b_mast.yaml b/apps/mast/qwen3_14b_mast.yaml
index 83d5b8103..484a71538 100644
--- a/apps/mast/qwen3_14b_mast.yaml
+++ b/apps/mast/qwen3_14b_mast.yaml
@@ -71,8 +71,8 @@ trainer:
     enable: false
   parallelism:
     data_parallel_replicate_degree: 1
-    data_parallel_shard_degree: 4
-    tensor_parallel_degree: 2
+    data_parallel_shard_degree: 8
+    tensor_parallel_degree: 1
     pipeline_parallel_degree: 1
     context_parallel_degree: 1
     expert_parallel_degree: 1
@@ -85,7 +85,7 @@ trainer:
     interval: 500
     async_mode: "disabled"
   activation_checkpoint:
-    mode: selective
+    mode: full
     selective_ac_option: op
   comm:
     # TODO: needs to be revisited. causing NCCL timeouts on inits when loading CP
@@ -112,7 +112,7 @@ ref_model:
     enable: false
   parallelism:
     data_parallel_replicate_degree: 1
-    data_parallel_shard_degree: 1
+    data_parallel_shard_degree: 2
     tensor_parallel_degree: 1
     pipeline_parallel_degree: 1
     context_parallel_degree: 1
@@ -121,6 +121,10 @@ ref_model:
     enable: true
     initial_load_path: /mnt/wsfuse/huggingface_models/models--Qwen--Qwen3-14B/snapshots/8268fe3026cb304910457689366670e803a6fd56
     initial_load_in_hf: true
+  comm:
+    # TODO: needs to be revisited. causing NCCL timeouts on inits when loading CP
+    # from oilfs if the traienr is not in the same region as in oilfs
+    init_timeout_seconds: 1200
 
 # All resource allocations
 services:
@@ -131,7 +135,7 @@ services:
     mesh_name: policy
     hosts: 1
   ref_model:
-    procs: 1
+    procs: 2
     num_replicas: 2
     with_gpus: true
     mesh_name: ref_model
diff --git a/apps/mast/qwen3_32b_mast.yaml b/apps/mast/qwen3_32b_mast.yaml
index 0db8f4af3..47368becd 100644
--- a/apps/mast/qwen3_32b_mast.yaml
+++ b/apps/mast/qwen3_32b_mast.yaml
@@ -1,5 +1,5 @@
 # Grouped Relative Policy Optimization (GRPO)
-# >>> python -m apps.grpo.main --config apps/grpo/qwen3_1_7b.yaml
+# >>> python -m apps.mast.main --config apps/mast/qwen3_1_7b_mast.yaml
 
 # Global configuration
 group_size: 8
@@ -71,8 +71,8 @@ trainer:
     enable: false
   parallelism:
     data_parallel_replicate_degree: 1
-    data_parallel_shard_degree: 4
-    tensor_parallel_degree: 2
+    data_parallel_shard_degree: 8
+    tensor_parallel_degree: 1
     pipeline_parallel_degree: 1
     context_parallel_degree: 1
     expert_parallel_degree: 1
@@ -85,7 +85,7 @@ trainer:
     interval: 500
     async_mode: "disabled"
   activation_checkpoint:
-    mode: selective
+    mode: full
     selective_ac_option: op
   comm:
     # TODO: needs to be revisited. causing NCCL timeouts on inits when loading CP
@@ -113,7 +113,7 @@ ref_model:
   parallelism:
     data_parallel_replicate_degree: 1
     data_parallel_shard_degree: 1
-    tensor_parallel_degree: 2
+    tensor_parallel_degree: 4
     pipeline_parallel_degree: 1
     context_parallel_degree: 1
     expert_parallel_degree: 1
@@ -121,7 +121,10 @@ ref_model:
     enable: true
     initial_load_path: /mnt/wsfuse/huggingface_models/models--Qwen--Qwen3-32B/snapshots/d47b0d4ae4b48fde975756bf360a63a9cca8d470
     initial_load_in_hf: true
-
+  comm:
+    # TODO: needs to be revisited. causing NCCL timeouts on inits when loading CP
+    # from oilfs if the traienr is not in the same region as in oilfs
+    init_timeout_seconds: 1200
 # All resource allocations
 services:
   policy:
@@ -131,7 +134,7 @@ services:
     mesh_name: policy
     hosts: 1
   ref_model:
-    procs: 1
+    procs: 4
     num_replicas: 2
     with_gpus: true
     mesh_name: ref_model
@@ -141,7 +144,6 @@ services:
     num_replicas: 1
     with_gpus: false
     mesh_name: reward_actor
-
 actors:
   dataset:
     procs: 1
diff --git a/src/forge/actors/reference_model.py b/src/forge/actors/reference_model.py
index cc57e5246..7ab9f9527 100644
--- a/src/forge/actors/reference_model.py
+++ b/src/forge/actors/reference_model.py
@@ -18,6 +18,7 @@
 
 from torchtitan.config.job_config import (
     Checkpoint,
+    Comm,
     Compile,
     Model,
     Parallelism,
@@ -42,6 +43,7 @@ class ReferenceModel(ForgeActor):
     parallelism: Parallelism = field(default_factory=Parallelism)
     checkpoint: Checkpoint = field(default_factory=Checkpoint)
     compile: Compile = field(default_factory=Compile)
+    comm: Comm = field(default_factory=Comm)
     training: Training = field(
         default_factory=Training
     )  # Needed in order to set attrs like dtype, garbage collection freq, etc.
diff --git a/src/forge/controller/launcher.py b/src/forge/controller/launcher.py
index f75114114..f2fe5f0f2 100644
--- a/src/forge/controller/launcher.py
+++ b/src/forge/controller/launcher.py
@@ -299,9 +299,9 @@ def create_server_handle(self) -> str:
 def get_launcher(cfg: LauncherConfig | None = None) -> BaseLauncher | None:
     if not cfg:
         return None
-    if cfg.launcher == Launcher.SLURM.value:
+    if cfg.launcher == Launcher.SLURM:
         return Slurmlauncher()
-    elif cfg.launcher == Launcher.MAST.value:
+    elif cfg.launcher == Launcher.MAST:
         if not _MAST_AVAILABLE:
             raise ValueError(
                 "MAST imports did not succeed, cannot launch MAST jobs. Please verify your installation"
diff --git a/src/forge/types.py b/src/forge/types.py
index 45312db79..6a9dcc122 100644
--- a/src/forge/types.py
+++ b/src/forge/types.py
@@ -163,6 +163,10 @@ class LauncherConfig:
     services: dict[str, ServiceConfig] = field(default_factory=dict)
     actors: dict[str, ProcessConfig] = field(default_factory=dict)
 
+    def __post_init__(self):
+        if isinstance(self.launcher, str):
+            self.launcher = Launcher(self.launcher)
+
 
 @dataclass
 class ProvisionerConfig: