Grad Student Effort - Working on Thesis

[math...@umn.edu]

We have a graduate student in our department who used lab services for work on her thesis.  These lab services pertain to her thesis and project A.  Her 50% grad RA appointment is assigned 100% to project B, however. Do we need to document that the lab services pertain to work outside of her regular 50% RA appointment, similar to how we document travel on a project outside of a regular appointment?

[Rachel Veenstra]

When I see situations like the one you explained, I email the PI and ask if there needs to be an adjustment to the payroll distribution to reflect work performed on project A.  If there is no pay to support the effort, I ask the PI to confirm that work performed is occurring outside the student's RA appointment. 

I am unaware of a policy that prohibits us from processing documents such as the one you described, but I do think it's my duty to ask the appropriate questions and document the PI response.  I include the entire email conversation as back up to whatever financial transaction is being processed.  If it's an ISO charge that I can't upload to, I leave a comment summarizing the situation and include a pdf of the email labeled with the document number in the grant file.