Transforming Graduate Student Employment Processes with InfoReady

Like many higher education institutions, the Division of Physical and Biological Sciences at UC Santa Cruz (UCSC) faced a complex, high-volume challenge: managing over 500 graduate student appointments every quarter across nine departments. These included both Teaching Assistant (TA) and Graduate Student Researcher (GSR) roles, each governed by distinct union agreements and compliance requirements.

The previous system relied heavily on manual processes—mail merges, spreadsheets, and individual emails to track appointment letters and acceptances. Departmental staff had to enter and re-enter the same information across systems. Moreover, academic HR had to duplicate this work for GSR appointments, including chasing down separate funding approvals from research grant budgets.

This led to time-consuming, error-prone workflows and a lack of standardization, which put undue pressure on staff and risked compliance lapses. UCSC needed a streamlined, centralized solution that could accommodate union rules, automate complex workflows, and provide a clear audit trail.

UCSC chose InfoReady to modernize its graduate student appointment process. The team leveraged InfoReady’s flexible form builder, automated workflows, and conditional logic to build customized appointment workflows for both TA and GSR roles.

With InfoReady, the process starts when a graduate advisor logs in and completes a request form. Fields adjust dynamically based on department and position type, allowing advisors to upload necessary documents, select salary levels, and input funding details. Approval steps for policy exceptions—such as overload appointments—are automatically triggered, and templates adjust accordingly.

The GSR workflow was also digitized, replacing Google Forms and fragmented spreadsheets. Faculty now submit requests via InfoReady, attach required documents, and initiate a standardized, transparent review and approval process. Both workflows allow automatic generation of appointment letters, attachments, and email notifications to students.

Implementing InfoReady resulted in significant time savings and improved accuracy across the division:

• Over 80 staff hours saved per quarter just on TA appointments—plus additional hours for GSR processing.
• Faster turnaround times and improved student experience with real-time appointment tracking and standardized documentation.
• Centralized data and reporting—with custom reports for payroll, accepted appointments, and compliance.
• Automated policy alerts that ensure exception cases are flagged early and handled consistently.
• Improved resilience to staff turnover, thanks to reusable templates and process documentation.

Perhaps most notably, the InfoReady solution not only accelerated operations—it restored confidence in administrative systems and empowered staff to focus on strategic tasks, not paperwork.