Graduate Student Rights

In addition to the rights delineated under the USU Student Code of Conduct and the Faculty Standards of Conduct, the School of Graduate Studies policy provides Graduate Students with additional rights.

• None of the following rights supersede the USU Code of Conduct, other USU policies (including Policy 4002, commonly referred to as Faculty Code), or state or federal legislation or regulation.
  

Graduate Students have the following rights:

• The right to clear and appropriate credit for assigned work in advance of the work being undertaken. Such credit can be provided in one or more of the following forms: financial compensation (e.g., hourly wage or assistantship stipend), student credit hours (e.g., independent study, registered supervised research), authorship (e.g., listed author or co-author on a publication).
• The right to have clarity and accuracy regarding when courses required for a degree or Program of Study will be offered.
• The right to have clarity on any mandatory costs imposed by a program in addition to standard tuition, insurance, and fees at the time of matriculation and (without a change in amount from initial notification) 6 months prior to the time of the expense.
• The right to have clarity regarding the process of changing advisors/major professor and committee members and the policy and process protections in place for doing so.
• The right to have an independent party from within the University community (i.e., student, faculty member, or staff member) present in any meeting regarding academic or degree progress, standing in program, or performance within an assistantship, internship, or practicum to serve as a personal support and/or witness to the discussion. This individual may not serve in an advocacy capacity.
• Examples of appropriate individuals for this role include an officer of the Graduate Student Council or other student association, major professor, Graduate Program Coordinator, and Associate Dean or Associate Vice Provost for Graduate Studies.

Graduate Students have the following rights in the context of research and graduate assistantships

• The right to have clarity on how authorship/contributor credit will be handled for scholarly works to which they contribute.  
  
  • This clarity will be provided prior to their contribution, delineating how the extent of work aligns with the nature of credit (e.g., authorship order). 
  • If actual contributions differ in scope from what was anticipated, authorship/contributor credit must change accordingly in a manner that is mutually agreed.
• The right to have clarity on hours to be worked and work schedule for a research assistantship, teaching assistantship, internship, practicum, or other formal responsibilities assigned—whether paid or unpaid—prior to the start of the work.  
  
  • Graduate students cannot be compelled to work more than their assigned hours (maximum of 20 hours per week, unless the School of Graduate Studies has granted a waiver, or the student is a full-time employee of Utah State University related to their graduate program). This restriction does not apply to work performed in a voluntary capacity or for academic credit.  
    
    • Note: A credit hour is a unit of measurement that represents the amount of work a student needs to complete to earn college credit. The federal definition of a credit hour is one hour of direct faculty instruction and two hours of student work outside of class per week for about 15 weeks.  Thus, 3 credits for a course, independent study, or registered research credit should account for ~9 hours of work time per week.
  • Within 25%, hours may shift from week to week based on workload (e.g., working 15 hours in one week and 25 hours in a subsequent week) in keeping with the often-uneven pace of academic work.  However, average hours per week within any given 1-month period must not exceed 20 hours per week (up to 30 hours with waiver). Working hours cannot be accumulated from semester to semester. Hours not worked from an expected 20-hour week cannot be “banked” to the following semester or summer.
  • Assigned hours include all time required to perform assigned work, regardless of the location or timing of the work in relation to “office hours” or “scheduled work hours.”  
  • If actual hours to be worked or work schedule must change, that change must occur in a manner that is mutually agreed and does not violate total assigned hours.  
    
    • Note: Depending on the specifics of formal responsibilities, contributing to scholarly publications may be considered an activity outside the scope of assigned responsibilities (i.e., independent volunteer work in part or full).  Accordingly, some or all time spent writing for publication may not be considered an assigned responsibility.  Thus, writing time may or may not be compensated or subject to the 20-hour per week work restriction.  The specifics of this arrangement must be specified and agreed to by the student and the supervising faculty member before the work is initiated.
• The right to clarity on these expectations is not affected by the recognition that scholarly writing may not occur as a formal responsibility and may in part or full be considered an independent, voluntary activity.
• The right to set reasonable boundaries around personal time, such that students can expect to not receive phone calls or text messages regarding their work responsibilities during their personal time.
  
  • “Reasonable boundaries” does not preclude one-off urgent of emergency communications.  However, the conditions constituting such exceptions should be specified in advance.  Inappropriate or excessive use of emergency communications is not permitted.
  • While email communications can be sent to students at any time, students can reserve the right to not reply during personal time.  
• The right to have clarity on the amount, duration, and conditions of funding, including stipend or hourly rate, tuition, insurance, and fees.
  
  • Clarity includes both the details of individual funding and the average funding package and range of funding (smallest and largest funding package) within the department normalizes to 20 hours per week.
• The right to receive feedback or revision instructions on academic or scholarly work in a reasonable period of time.
  
  • Specifically, actionable feedback must be provided within a period that will not change anticipated time to degree or relevant degree benchmark (e.g., dissertation proposal defense) as previously agreed to by both student and major professor.  
  • This right is conditioned on students providing sufficiently completed work products to the appropriate faculty member (e.g., major professor) within agreed upon timeframes.  
• The right to be provided adequate and appropriate workspace and working materials necessary to accomplish assigned tasks as part of a research assistantship, teaching assistantship, or other form of student employment.