Hiring Graduate Students on a Sponsored Program
You must coordinate the hiring of all graduate students with the Graduate School. The Graduate School can assist you with employment of graduate students and provide you with the appropriate policies, procedures, and forms.
If you wish to hire a graduate student on a sponsored program, complete a Restricted Account Graduate Assistant form following the directions provided. The completed form must be routed to your department head (or Center Director) and to the Dean of the college (or Center Director's supervisor) for their signatures. Then the form is sent to SPFAC to verify if funding is available. If approved, SPFAC will send the approved form to the Graduate School. (If not approved, it will be returned to you or you will be contacted). The Graduate School will send a copy of the approved form to you. Upon receipt, you should notify the student to proceed with the processing of employment forms with Human Resources.
If the GA is to receive a tuition waiver, the GA must report to Administrative Services in Martin Halll to process the waiver. The waiver process must be repeated for each semester that the sponsored program or University is paying the tuition.
A few additional points:
- Stipends and/or tuition paid by University funds to meet its cost-share obligations must be noted on the form. Enter the word "cost-share" and the R account number on the form.
- To be a graduate assistant, a graduate student must be enrolled in at least full-time status (9 graduate credit hours) during the fall and spring semester, unless the student is in the last semester of the student's graduate program,in which case the student must be enrolled for at least half-time status (5 graduate hours for the fall and spring semesters).
- A graduate student may work on the assistanship no more than 20 hours per week during the academic year. During the summer session, GAs may work up to 29 hours per week, however, if an international GA is enrolled in school, he is allowed to work up to only 20 hours per week. GAs may work up to 40 hours per week during the semester breaks.
For additional information on employing graduate assistants, please contact the Graduate School.
