September 18, 2000

 

 

 

 

 

MEMORANDUM

 

TO:                 Graduate Administrators

FROM:            John Chambers

SUBJECT:            ON SCREEN INFO RE: ASSISTANTSHIPS

 

You may have noticed an addition to the class schedules and class history screens for some students this semester. Over the last year the Graduate School has been working closely with SIS Data Resources to get valuable information about graduate assistantships included onscreen in student records and you may have seen for example on 104 and 136 an additional course id IDGR - 600 with a number of hours.

 

Starting from fall 200 this has been refined into four courses which indicate the nature of the assistantship as well as the hours represented by the FTE, based upon the occupation code used on the students' pa forms.

 

The type of assistantship held will be shown is as follows:

 

Occupation code     Course no.       Type of Assistantship

4401                            IDGR 601      GTA - Assist Only

4005                            IDGR 602      GTA - Teach

4203                            IDGR 603      GRA - Research

6003                            IDGR 604      GRA - Admin. or Other

 

The number of hours shown equates to the following FTE levels:

 

FTE                 Hours

0.25                 3

0.50                 6

0.75                 9

1.00                 12

 

These courses will not be included in the students' hours earned, GPA calculation, or any other academic data; they will not be reported on the students' transcripts. However, they will show the total hours for each semester for determination of, for example, full- time status. This will also enable departments to identify if a student already holds another assistantship and the FTE. It will also assist financial aid office when determining a student's enrollment status.

 

All graduate assistants must be full-time students. Full-time status for graduate students is 12 credit hours and where a student holds an assistantship the minimum hours required to be enrolled for classes varies depending upon the level of FTE of the assistantship. The idea is for the total hours for the semester to add up to at least 12 including the assistantship "value". For example, if a student has a 0.50 assistantship this represents 6 IDGR hours and he only needs to be enrolled in a minimum of 6 class hours to give him his total of 12 hours for full-time status. If he has a 0.25, this gives him 3 hours and he will need to be enrolled in a minimum of 9 class hours. Hopefully, this clarifies the minimum hours requirements set out on page 83 of the Graduate Catalog.

 

I hope that this addition to SIS will help all administrative personnel involved with graduate assistantships and the Graduate School looks forward to bringing you future enhancements with similar benefits.

 

If you have any questions please e-mail or call me at the Graduate School Office at 8-5921.

 

Thank you.

 

JC