Research Grant Administration: Post-award Resources for Faculty: Student research assistants

UofS Compensation Information

When hiring, please review the link above to see the current rates of pay for student assistants. This link is managed by HR and should always have the most current information.

To recruit student research assistants, researchers can create and post a job advertisement on the Student Employment and Career Centre website. Researchers may also want to post on certain department and college websites if they are looking for an RA with a particular background and/or set of skills.

Applications go to the generic library.jobs@usask.ca email address, and the Dean's Office staff collects the resumes and provides them to the researcher at the close of the competition. The Dean's Office staff will contact candidates once the researcher has selected those to interview.

Letters must include the following information:

• Name of student
• NSID
• Date of Hire
• Account Number to be paid out of
• Position Title
• Term of Employment
• Rate of pay
• Summary of duties
• Approximate hours a week

Note: The contents of the letter of offer change to suit each particular circumstance and may change due to other factors such as changes to the SK Employment Act.

Student hours are reported on the Casual Timesheet. Timesheets must be submitted to the Dean's Office on the first working day of the following month.

Student Salaries

You can hire students as research assistants on an hourly salary. Please note that graduate students can work at most 12 hours a week. This hours limit can be surpassed through mutual agreement with the students and may require a written agreement. Please work with the HR SBA if more than 12 hours/week will be required from a Grad student. Undergraduate students do not have the same limitation on working hours.

Student Wages

These are minimum numbers, but you can offer more money if you want to attract top graduate students. Benefits include the current rate of non-discretionary benefits (CPP, EI, WC with vacation pay) on all undergraduate rates and grad student stipends. The benefits’ rates depend on the type of wages/salary.

• PSAC Hourly wages + 12.21% (includes holiday and stat pay)
• Undergraduate Hourly wages + 9.79% (includes holiday and stat pay)
• PSAC Monthly salary + 7.69% (includes vacation pay, stat holidays are paid as a normal working day)
• Undergraduate Monthly salary + 5.77% (includes vacation pay, stat holidays are paid as a normal working day)
• Benefits - add 7.2% on average on top of all other pay to the student

Rate are updated as of the 2018-19 rates for each employee group provided from the Budget Office.

Make sure you justify why employing a student at a particular level is necessary.  If the work can be done by an undergraduate, do not indicate that a graduate student will do the work.