Workday Student: academic appointments for TAs and updates to managing instructor eligibility

Are you involved in hiring Teaching Assistants (TAs)? Learn more about what’s changing for 2024 Winter. 

As of July 15, TAs will now have Academic Appointments in Workday. These appointments will be automatically created and managed in Workday, based on the information included as part of the usual Workday processes (e.g. direct hire).  

TAs will also now have their course subject eligibility recorded in Workday, just like faculty, instructors, and other teaching staff. This task transitioned to Workday in November 2023. 

Why is this changing? 

Instructor eligibility – which is a record of which course subjects instructors, faculty, and other teaching staff are eligible to teach – is now recorded in Workday. In Workday, eligibility is tied to academic appointments. In order for a TA’s eligibility to be updated in Workday, they need to have an academic appointment.  

Ensuring TAs eligibility can be recorded in Workday is important because eligibility determines which course sections they can be assigned to and can also impact how they access courses in Canvas. 

Automating these appointments allows UBC to meet this requirement without needing the person who is hiring or managing the employment of TAs to take any additional actions.  

What do I need to do differently? 

If you hire TAs or manage people with a TA position, you will not have to do anything differently when hiring for this fall. Workday will automatically create academic appointments based on the information you provide when hiring, and update them when things change (e.g. a job ends).  

If you are someone who updates instructor eligibility, you will now need to do this for TAs, just as you do it for instructors today. See below for other changes to how eligibility is managed.  

What is changing in how instructor eligibility is being managed? 

The Designate Instructor Eligibility task, which was transitioned from Scientia to Workday in November 2023, is also changing based on community feedback and improvements made in Workday. This task is performed by individuals who support course scheduling and have a specific security role in Workday.  

The main change to how instructor eligibility is managed is that the Designate Instructor Eligibility task will now also need to be completed for TAs. To make this work easier to manage, the IRP Student team will also be making the following changes based on feedback from the respective teams at each campus: 

• UBC Vancouver staff will no longer receive a Workday notification for this task, but will instead access this task using search or the Scheduling dashboard in Workday 
• UBC Okanagan staff who manage eligibility will continue to receive Workday notifications when this task is ready for them to complete. They will have the option to cancel the task and complete it later. 

Note: TAs hired prior to July 15 who have appointments extending into the 2024 Winter term and who need to be assigned to a course section will need to have academic appointments created manually. In these cases, please submit a general Workday support request to have an appointment created for you.

When an academic appointment is added, updated, or ends, the TA’s eligibility in Workday may need to be updated. In some cases, this will be automatic (e.g. if no current academic appointments remain). 

Where can I find more information or access support? 

For general inquiries about TA hiring, please submit a Workday Student support request using the category Scheduling. For inquiries about hiring, submit a general Workday support request. 

Individuals who have the security role required to complete the Designate Instructor Eligibility task can learn more about it through the Workday training available to them in the IRP Student Training HUB. 

Visit Workday This Week for additional information and related resources on impacts to hiring.