The Graduate School
Staff Guidelines for checking fourteen-semester eligibility
Students are limited to fourteen semesters of support at the standard 20-hour per week appointment. To identify students approach the fourteen-semester limit, use the following guidelines:
- Identify students who have been enrolled in the Graduate School for six years, including transfers from other graduate programs.
- Use EASI or DEFINE to review student's employment history:
- EASI: use the GCD Grad Student Progress application and go to the "Funding" tab. Count employment history here using the guidelines below. NOTE: a 14 or 12 semester flag in this application may or may not be correct. The system does not differentiate between full 20 hour appointments and partial appointment, for example.
- DEFINE: You may view employment history by using the AL1 screen with a student's UT EID. Be sure to change the first fiscal year date field to something early enough to catch all appointments (ex: 90 for 1990). Press enter. You will be able to see all appointments by continuing to press enter.
- Eliminate cancelled appointments. (These have an end date of 000000 and the appointment status is "cancel.")
- Eliminate summer appointments and appointments during breaks (winter and spring break).
- Any semester during which the student receives an academic appointment of 20 hours per week or more, regardless of the period of appointment, will count as one full semester for purposes of the fourteen-semester rule.
- A student academic appointment for fewer than 20 hours per week, regardless of the period of appointment, will count as an appropriate fraction of a semester. For example, a 5-hour appointment represents 1/4 of a semester of support. Four 5-hour appointments over four semesters represent one full standard semester toward the fourteen-semester limit.
- A student having accumulated, for example, 13 1/2 semesters of support, is limited to only 10 more hours of appointment to complete a total of fourteen and become ineligible for further student academic appointment without an approved exception.
Further questions regarding the fourteen-semester limit on employment, exceptions, and method for calculation should be directed to Shannon Harris, Shannon.harris@austin.utexas.edu or 512-232-3624 in Student Academic Services at the Graduate School.