Paying & Employing Undergraduate Researchers

• Students must be paid for all hours worked.
• Time spent on mandatory employee trainings should go on timesheets/WorkDay.
• During the Fall and Spring semesters, students cannot work more than 20 hours per week from all jobs on campus combined unless that have special permission from the Student Employment Office to work 25 hours per week.  During the summer, students may work up to 40 hours per week when they are not enrolled in classes.

• Students should never be scheduled during time they should be in class.
• On average, research students work 5-10 hours per week during the academic year, but each student’s course load and research workload will vary and should be taken into account.
• Consider giving the student time off for mid-terms/finals.

You must directly tell students your expectations. For many students, this may be their first job so do not assume they know even basic office communication and courtesy. You will likely need to teach them the basics of workplace etiquette.

LSU Discover recommends a starting hourly wage of $12/hour for all undergraduate research student workers. Students with more experience should be given a higher pay rate. [Note: advanced research students funded with an LSU Discover Project Grant are paid a minimum of $15/hour.]

• The median hourly wage on campus across all student worker jobs is $10/hour. Undergraduate researcher student workers have a higher level of responsibility and skillset required than the vast majority of these jobs and should be compensated for their work appropriately. For example, LSU Discover pays our Office Student Workers a starting pay of $10/hour for a job that entails completing simple office tasks, but we pay our Project Grant recipients a minimum of $15/hour to conduct research with a faculty mentor.

To pay a student more than $15/hour requires a brief budget justification. Here is an example of the budget justification used by the LSU Discover Office: 

Pay justification for [Student’s First and Last Name}:

[Student’s First Name] is an experienced student participating in research.  Due to this experience, his/her/their skill set, and the requirements of this position he/she/they should be paid $15.50/hour.

Pay rate increases: students should be given a $.50 increase to their hourly pay rate after each semester worked.

April 2024 Student Employment Wages (provided by Student Employment.)

RS17 information as distributed by Student Employment. 

Per RS17, all employees including student employees who are hired into a research or research-related position will need to complete the RS17 Request Screening through Workday, which includes a pre-employment screening through HireRight. 

All research or research-related employees including student employees will need to provide the answers to the RS 17 questionnaire, provide the requested documents, and will have to be screened through HireRight before the hire. Before the hire, a potential student employee candidate will need to:

1. Provide answers to the RS 17 questionnaire so the SEP can complete the RS 17 Request Screening in Workday.
2. Provide the requested materials for the SEP to upload to the RS 17 Request Screening (You will not be able to process the RS 17 Request Screening without the required documentation):
   1. A copy of the applicant's current passport and recent DS-160 (if applicable). If you are a U.S. citizen and do not have a current passport, then you may upload your U.S. birth certificate or certificate of naturalization in lieu of the passport.
   2. A CV/resume that lists all former institutions of higher education attended
   3. Previous employment since the applicant's eighteenth birthday
   4. All published material affiliated with the applicant's educational history
   5. A list of the applicant’s current and pending research funding, and its amount, from any source, including the applicant’s role on the project, and a brief description of the research; and a full disclosure of non-university professional activities, including any affiliation with an institution or program in a foreign country of interest
3. If a student employee does not have any of the documents above, they will need to make a document attesting that it does not apply to them. For example, if a student employee did not have any published materials, they would upload a document stating "I, (student's name), do not have any published materials."
4. The student employee will need to send you sensitive documents like their passport or birth certificate. This should be sent in a secured method like Files to Geaux and not as an email attachment if not collected in-person.

Students hired in research or research-related roles should be hired under a Student - Research Job profile. These profiles are new as of August 2024 and will be used going forward for all students hired in research or research-related positions. The added research profiles are: Student - LSU (Research), Student - Non-LSU (Research), Student - President Aid (Research), and Student - Work Study (Research)

You do not need to go back to correct job profiles but all future actions (hires, continuations, change jobs, etc.) should be changed to the appropriate Student Research Job Profile.

Previous guidance was to collect the information via in person, online meeting, or call. SEPs can now collect the information via a paper form that the student employee candidate can fill out and sign.

RS17 Screening Candidate Form

RS17 Screening Student Employment Partner Guide