Health Insurance
Eligible fellowship recipients are covered by the Graduate Appointee Insurance Program (GAIP). Complete information about the plan can be found on the UW Benefits website.
The cost of GAIP is charged to the hiring budget as a percentage of the salary in the form of the payroll load rate. Please note that the payroll load rate is different for fellowship appointments (the 01-90 object code) than it is for RA or TA appointments.
NOTE: Dates of GAIP coverage are NOT retroactive to the beginning of the quarter for appointments which are entered late. Coverage begins the first of the month following the appointment start date or the date the appointment was fully approved in Workday, if that date was AFTER the start of the appointment.
Fellowship recipients must be enrolled in 10 credits to be eligible for GAIP insurance (or may petition to reduce enrollment, if they meet the criteria to do so). Any fellowship recipient eligible for GAIP insurance is also automatically eligible for a non-resident waiver.
Tuition and Fees Coverage
Because the source of funding for fellowship recipients varies, the policies and practices around coverage for tuition and fees varies as well. In essence, there is no university requirement that any portion of tuition or fees be covered for a fellowship recipient. However, the source of fellowship funding may outline requirements to cover a portion of or even all tuition/fees for an awarded student. Or a department may wish, for strategic reasons, to structure a fellowship award in such a way that it provides some form of tuition coverage. As a result, there are a few policies and procedures you need to follow.
Tuition-based Students
Non-resident waivers
Fellowship recipients may receive a waiver of the non-resident differential when their fellowship appointment is paid over the course of a quarter via the UW payroll system. If you wish to provide this benefit, please refer to the process of paying appointments through UW payroll. Once an eligible appointment is entered in payroll, and after tuition charges are assessed, an interface between the payroll system and the Student Database (SDB) places the non-resident waiver on a student’s account. The waiver is charged to a central waiver budget and not directly to the fellowship budget.
This tuition benefit requires a minimum enrollment in 10 credits during the academic year, or two credits in summer quarter.
Resident waiver/fee coverage
Fellowship recipients may receive coverage of the resident portion of tuition and some/all of the required fees if the award either allows or requires such coverage. Such awards do not necessarily have to be paid via the UW payroll system in these cases, unless the recipient also requires other benefits noted above. The cost for this coverage would be charged to whichever budget you choose to use to pay these amounts. In order to provide such coverage, the budget you plan to use must be set up in the Student Database (SDB) through Student Fiscal Services. In addition, you must have someone authorized to make such payments via the student account screens in SDB.
This tuition benefit will require enrollment as defined in the terms of the award. Please note, though, that if it is coupled with a non-resident waiver or GAIP coverage, the minimum enrollment requirement is 10 credits during the academic year (or two credits in summer quarter).
Fee-based Students
Course fee coverage for fee-based fellowship recipients runs a little differently than that for tuition-based students. If you have a fee-based student to whom you wish to provide some portion of course fee coverage, you will work directly with Professional & Continuing Education (PCE) to provide the information that they will use to apply a credit to the student’s account. If the fee-based program is not administered through PCE, then you would work directly with the unit administering the program.
Possible reasons any portion of tuition is not paid
- The appointment and distribution have not yet been entered in the payroll database.
- The student is not enrolled in at least 10 credits.
- The unit needs to manually enter the tuition coverage in SDB or communicate coverage through PCE and has not done so yet.
For problems with the non-resident waiver that is automatically generated by the interface between payroll and the SDB, contact Student Fiscal Services.