“In the Division of Physical and Biological Sciences, one of our biggest pain points has been managing more than 500 graduate student appointments every quarter. On top of that, both groups, our teaching assistants (TA) and our graduate student researchers (GSR), are represented by separate unions, each governed by complex bargaining agreements. Every appointment must comply with detailed labor provisions, covering workload limits, pay rates, appointment duration, and benefits eligibility," said Patti Schell, Department Manager-Special Assignments, Division of Physical and Biological Sciences at UC Santa Cruz.
Patti continued, "the current appointment letter, as mandated by our campus academic personnel office, is six pages long. It includes multiple required attachments. TA appointments are managed by graduate advisor staff within each of our nine departments. They handle the full range of the appointments.
Before we had InfoReady, they did mail merges for every single appointment letter, did individual emails out to each student, and then had to manually track acceptance responses in spreadsheets. Meanwhile, on the other side in our academic HR in our division, they repeated the same process for graduate student researcher appointments.
Adding yet another layer of complexity to this was the funding approvals tied to each individual faculty research grants that have to be recorded. So what we needed was a centralized automated solution, one that would let us enter data once and automatically generate letters and emails. We wanted templates for both TAs and GSRs that were easy to update, flexible for different departments, and tracked our acceptances in one location. Our goal was a standardized process, consistent, efficient, and resilient to staff turnover. We needed a system that made the process smoother, not just faster."
“InfoReady was the perfect fit. It was already in use by the Office of Research," explained Patti. "It was already in use by the Office of Researcher on our campus, so there was an existing foundation, and we chose it because it's flexible enough to handle different workflow types. It offers transparent reporting for leadership, and it allows us to build a workflow that matched exactly how we operate. The results have been remarkable. We've saved about 80 staff hours per quarter just on TA appointments, and even more on the other side when you include the GSR appointments. Turnaround time has improved, and we now have a clear audit trail for every appointment."
Jianna Dehoyos, Senior Academic Personnel Analyst explained and demonstrated the form and process they use to manage the TA appointments. Watch that demonstration.
InfoReady helped UCSC make their graduate employment process faster, clearer, and more compliant. If you're still managing appointments with spreadsheets and email, it’s time for an upgrade. Request a demo to see how InfoReady can help your institution streamline program administration.