All GRAs and GTAs must be given initial documentation on their employment that contains the information listed below. Offer letter templates are available from HR that include this information, see Graduate Student Employee Offer Letters. This documentation must be updated anytime there is a change to any of the highlighted information below, and the student must be provided with the updated information within two weeks of the effective date. The initial documentation and all updates must be sent to noreply-gradhiring-repository@grad.gatech.edu (an inbox maintained by the Office of Graduate Education) and held for a period of 5 years in accordance with USG Records Retention Schedules 0472-04-025 – Payroll Record.

• Position (GTA or GRA)
• Hiring department
• Supervisor
• Hiring manager (if different from supervisor)
• Term of employment (e.g. the semester(s) and/or start and end dates of employment)
• Workload expressed in hours/week
• Stipend expressed in $/month
• Job duties (see generic descriptions below)
• Tuition waiver details including responsibility for paying applicable differential tuition and all fees
• Full-time registration requirements
• Mandatory student health insurance plan information
• Conditions on maintaining that appointment

Students should review this employment documentation and compare it to their stipend amounts. Any underpayments or overpayments must be reported immediately to their supervisor. All overpayments will be due back to Georgia Tech.

Standard stipends for all academic units must be posted on the Graduate Education site. If a student is hired at a rate that differs from posted rates for that hiring unit (when comparing the hourly rate), then the department must give rationale for that difference. Documentation of this rationale must be held for five years by the hiring department in accordance with USG records retention; see Section 3.3 for further documentation details.

The following description of a GRA may be used to describe the job duties:

Graduate research assistantships provide research-related work experiences for graduate students that contribute to their education. A GRA position involves tasks such as setting up equipment, gathering and analyzing data, participating in research team interaction and training, and writing up and presenting results.

The following description of a GTA may be used to describe the job duties:

Graduate teaching assistantships provide teaching-related work experiences for graduate students that contribute to their education. A GTA position involves activities such as planning and delivering classes, laboratories, or online educational experiences, grading, and evaluating the teaching and learning experience, and any other additional duties assigned by the instructor of a course.

If a student is hired as a GTA to be the Instructor of Record for an undergraduate course, then the course should be listed.