To be considered for an assistantship at UIS:

• You must possess an earned baccalaureate degree (or its equivalent) by your beginning assignment date. If you are applying and are conditionally admitted to your UIS graduate degree program pending submission of your final undergraduate transcript documenting the official posting of your baccalaureate degree, or in the case of international students, pending submission of attested and sealed degree certification documents, required documentation must be submitted to the UIS Office of Admission prior to an assistantship contract being executed. You may not begin working until the contract is executed.
• You must satisfy the selection criteria for graduate assistants established by the appropriate graduate program or support unit where you will be placed.
• You must be admitted to graduate study, enrolled in a UIS master’s or doctoral program, and, for appointment, be in good standing at UIS. If you have earned graduate level credit at UIS or elsewhere,  you must have a cumulative graduate grade point average (GPA) of no less than 3.0, with no incomplete grades (except thesis or master’s project courses).
• If you are a first-year graduate student who has earned no graduate-level credit, but has been admitted to a graduate degree program, your cumulative undergraduate grade point average must be at least 2.50.
• If your graduate program has identified program prerequisite courses that must be completed prior to being fully admitted to the master’s degree program, you may not be eligible for the applicant pool until you have successfully completed some of the required prerequisite courses.  To be eligible for the GA applicant pool, you are allowed to have no more than four (4) prerequisite courses that still need to be completed.
• You must have a minimum of two full-time semesters of course work remaining (16 hours).
• You must possess a valid social security number and it must be on file with UIS. International students must apply for a social security number upon arrival to campus if they have been selected to fill an assistantship position and do not possess a valid one.
• If you are an international student, you must have a current F-1 visa on file with UIS before you can begin working in your assistantship position. (Please note that this rule does not apply to students who are Canadian citizens.) The F-1 visa is the only visa that will be accepted for purposes of working as a graduate assistant.

Students who have previously earned a degree at UIS while participating in the Graduate Assistantship (GA) or Graduate Public Service Internship (GPSI) programs are not eligible.

Assistantships at UIS involve responsibilities which require assistants to be present on campus. Applicants who have applied to and been accepted by an online graduate degree program at UIS must notify the Graduate Assistantship Office and the Office of Admissions, in writing when they submit the assistantship application, of their availability to fulfill on-campus responsibilities if awarded an assistantship.

Applicants are strongly encouraged to initiate the application process at least three months prior to the graduate assistantship application deadline (annually, March 15th).