Graduate Student Employee Hiring

Hiring a graduate student employee using your own funds to work on your projects is a great way to support the department's graduate students while ensuring that you have an engaged and capable employee supporting the work you're directing. However, the past few years have brought quite a great deal of change to the structures surrounding graduate student employment. The purpose of this page is to establish a clear and consistent resource and process to make sure you're receiving general guidance around these changes, and to ensure that staff working on each graduate student hire are able to carry out their roles effectively.

The Two Primary Types of Hires

If you're hiring a graduate student using your own funds with a specific project in mind, it will typically be as either a Graduate Student Researcher (GSR) or Student Assistant (STDT). We'll learn more about these two titles below, but the short version is that the former is focused on academic research, while the latter is focused on non-academic work (e.g. proofreading/editing, supporting workshops/symposia, or assisting with events).

You may be familiar with other job titles for student workers, e.g. Research Assistants. Although these titles do exist at UC Davis, they're not currently used for student workers. Likewise, the other student academic employee titles (Associate Instructor, Teaching Assistant, Reader, and Tutor) are typically reserved for graduate students involved with instruction, and the department handles those hires as a matter of course. For these reasons, we'll be focusing on the GSR and STDT titles; if after reviewing this page you don't believe either would be a good fit for your intended hire, please contact Will Angel to discuss your hire further.

Okay! Let's learn a bit more about the two roles, and next steps.

Graduate Student Researchers

Graduate Student Researchers (GSRs) are graduate students appointed to assist in performing research. GSRs are salaried, union-represented positions, with their compensation determined by contractual agreement between the UAW and the UC.

What Kind of Work Can They Do?
Generally-speaking, GSRs can be expected to perform any research task expected of a skilled and creative scholar in your field. Specific tasks could include preparation of resources and materials for a research project, design and implementation of specific methods of inquiry, and documentation of results (including preparation of publications). Specific duties will of course be governed by your research focus, but the broad focus is to provide the student employee to develop their knowledge of research procedures and techniques while being fairly compensated and supporting the larger project on which they're being directed. You can see a sample document describing GSR expectations here.
Which Students are Eligible to be GSRs?
Broadly-speaking, they must be full-time UC Davis students in good academic standing who are eligible for employment in the United States. There are a few further limitations relating to total employment percentage, total employment during their time at UC Davis, and other factors, but for planning purposes, it's safe for you to assume that a current graduate student may be hired as a GSR already, or with an exception. After you submit your hiring request, your Graduate Program Coordinator will review the student's file and let you know if there are any issues.
What is the Cost of Hiring a GSR?
Like faculty and staff, GSR hires are expressed as a percentage of full-time. Their full-time salary currently ranges from $5,760.75 - $8,367.17 per month. Unlike faculty and staff, they cannot be employed at 100%, and hires in the range of 25-50% are typical. Given this breadth it's hard to give a specific salary, but GSRs can very broadly expect a pre-tax salary between $5,000 and $10,000 for a quarter of work.
As their employer, it's very important for you also know that your fund source must also cover a GSR's remission of tuition and fees. Especially when hiring a 25% GSR, this can often exceed the cost of their base salary. This is doubly-true if the student is subject to Non-Resident Supplemental Tuition (NRST), which currently adds $5,034 per quarter to their fees. The good news is that the preceding sentences can be interpreted as a "worst case scenario". For students employed as, say, 25% TAs and 25% GSRs who do not need to pay NRST, the cost is lessened, and there are other means through which the cost may be reduced (e.g. work-study and NRST diversion).
Once you've submitted your hiring request, your Graduate Program Coordinator will provide you with a cost estimate specific to your intended student hire, including any strategies to reduce the cost to you. Very broadly, though, it is prudent to anticipate a total cost to your fund source between $12,000 (covering a 25% GSR not subject to NRST at the lowest salary grade) and $23,000 (covering a 50% GSR subject to NRST at a medium salary grade) per quarter.
Is There Anything Else I Should Know?
A Caution on Supervision. When considering a grad student working as a GSR, it might be fair to say that the UC has struggled to effectively draw a distinction between the union-represented employee, and the graduate student -- given that their work as a GSR very likely bears strong resemblance to the work they are doing as a student. Sadly, it has become all the more necessary to do so given the current and future bargaining unit agreements. The guiding star of GSR work is simply that it can't impose a limit on the employee's ability to make satisfactory academic progress toward their degree. More specific guidance in this area is being developed rapidly enough that it's worth bringing specific questions to your Graduate Program Coordinator and Chair, who are able to give you the latest information and/or loop in Graduate Studies as necessary.

A Caution on Funding. As you may be all too aware, 2025 has brought fresh uncertainties into the handling of contracts and grants. This does, sadly, affect the hiring of GSRs. Student hires (once finalized) are binding agreements, and if a student is hired on a grant from which the funding agency attempts to back out or delays disbursement of funds, you remain responsible for that student's salary and tuition/fee remission. For this reason, we strongly recommend that if you would like to hire a GSR using external funding, you do so using only funds which have already been transmitted to UC Davis (as opposed to funding which is expected to arrive). While recognizing that this is a jarring change from historical practice, the intent is ultimately to ensure that neither you nor your student employee get any nasty surprises if the winds of change affect your funding agency. If you would like to discuss whether this caution is applicable to your funding, please contact the L&S Research Administration team.

With all the above in mind, you can click the button below to start your hire! Please know that this will only begin the process, and you will be hearing from staff before any details are finalized. There's no need to worry about setting anything in stone at this stage.

Begin Your GSR Hire!

Where possible, please submit your hiring request no later than seven weeks prior to the student’s intended start date.

Student Assistants

Student Assistants (STDTs) are graduate students performing work with non-academic responsibilities. They are hourly, non-unionized positions, with their salary rate determined by the University.

What Kind of Work Can They Do?
"Non-academic" is a slightly loaded term in our environment, isn't it? STDTs are not staff titles, but it might be helpful to think of their duties as being "staff-esque" and distinct from any duties with an explicit focus on research. Employees in the STDT role would be expected to perform tasks like maintain websites or workshop registration systems, provide support for program information sessions and career fairs, proofread presentations or papers, and lead development and delivery of professional development programming. Once you submit your hiring request, your Graduate Program Coordinator can help you think through the position description to ensure it best fits the title.
Which Students are Eligible to be STDTs?
Broadly-speaking, they must be full-time UC Davis students in good academic standing who are eligible for employment in the United States. There are a few further limitations relating to total employment percentage, total employment during their time at UC Davis, and other factors, but for planning purposes, it's safe for you to assume that a current graduate student may be hired as a STDT. After you submit your hiring request, your Graduate Program Coordinator will review the student's file and let you know if there are any issues.
What is the Cost of Hiring a STDT?
Student Assistants are compensated hourly, with a very broad salary range (currently stretching from $16 - $45/hr). Like other employees, they also have a percentage on their appointment (usually 25% or 50%, never to exceed 75% during academic quarters), although this only changes their hourly work expectation (10 hours per week at 25%, 20 hours at 50%, and so forth) and not their salary. With that in mind (and omitting minor details concerning benefit percentages) it's hard to give a precise figure, but very generally -- and with reference to Graduate Studies' guide to STDT salary ranges -- the cost to you is simply a function of the STDT's hourly wage multiplied by their hours worked per week. Something like $3,600 per quarter for a 25% STDT would not be unusual.
The big distinction on cost is that STDTs do not benefit from tuition and fee remission -- that is, your fund source is not responsible for these potentially-large costs. For this reason, students often prefer to combine STDT employment with work which does provide tuition and fee remission. For example, students working as 50% Teaching Assistants will frequently seek out 25% STDT positions to provide supplemental income.
Is There Anything Else I Should Know?
STDT roles, being hourly, do require you to approve detailed timesheets in order for the student employee to get paid. This is a pretty straight-forward process (and one with which your Graduate Program Coordinator can help), but it's important to sign off on the student's hours to ensure they get paid promptly.
Student Assistant hires need to be posted on Handshake, the UC's student jobs board (which staff will take care of), but you can still pre-select a student for your hire. If you don't have one in mind, a public posting can be helpful to identify a great student employee! This does mean that a detailed position description is necessary, though. It need not be too extensive, but should at least say what the student will be doing on a daily basis and what skills are necessary to do that work.

With this information in mind, you can click the button below to start your hire! Please know that this will only begin the process, and you will be hearing from staff before any details are finalized.

Begin Your STDT Hire!

Where possible, please submit your hiring request no later than seven weeks prior to the student’s intended start date.

Next Steps for Your Hire

Once you submit your GSR or STDT request using the link above, departmental staff will start working on the hire. These steps will include:

First, you'll hear from your Graduate Program Coordinator (GPC) with a final cost estimate and a verification that the student is eligible for employment. If this cost exceeds your available budget for the position, they can work with you to "tune" the hire -- reducing a GSR appointment, or adjusting it to fit within the bounds of an STDT role.
Your GPC will work with the business office to confirm account details and complete a financial review of the hire. If you are using an externally-managed fund source, staff will loop in the fund manager at this stage.
If yours is a STDT hire, they will finalize and post the Handshake ad (with or without a pre-selected student).
They will then reach out to you and the student to finalize the description of duties and offer letter for the position, if one is necessary.
Finally, the hire will be submitted to UC Path.

We hope this guide has been helpful! If you have any questions or feedback after reviewing this page, please contact Will Angel.