Graduate Education Management System (GEMS)

As per the Governing Council's Policy on Student Financial Support (April 1998), the goal of the University of Toronto should be to give doctoral-stream students multi-year packages of support that are competitive with packages offered by peer universities.   Since 2000, the U of T took a major step by committing a minimum stipend package amount, which is currently at least $15,000 plus tuition and fees to eligible doctoral-stream students.  Full funding will be available for up to four or five years for Ph.D. students and up to two years for the Master’s doctoral-stream students in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine.  The complete policy is available at: http://www.governingcouncil.utoronto.ca/policies/stufinan.htm

GEMS will act as an automatic tool to track that this policy is followed for the graduate students in the Faculty.  The ability to assure that the full-funding is made to all doctoral-stream students relies on accurate tracking of funding for each student.  The collection and analysis of the representative data is annually reported to the Vice-Provost, Students.

GEMS contains a Student/Supervisor Agreement Form for each Temerty Faculty of Medicine Graduate Department.  Each Graduate Unit produces an internal award policy, which the Agreement Form conforms with.  The agreement from the student, supervisor and graduate unit indicates intent to abide by the terms and provisions of the Agreement Form.

Information from ROSI/ACORN (student information service) is imported into GEMS each evening.  As this data resides in ROSI/ACORN, it is for display only.  Any changes to the awards, registration or person information will then need to be made on ROSI/ACORN and will be reflected on GEMS the next day. 

Students with INVITE and REG status on ROSI will appear on GEMS.  Students with outstanding conditional offers should be cleared before an agreement form can be approved.

At present, an agreement form is not required for students in professional Master’s programs as they are not part of the guaranteed funded cohort. 

GEMS has the capability for the application to expand to support future plans such as evaluation frameworks, awards module, and further process automation.

GEMS Student/Supervisor Agreement Form Deadlines

GEMS Agreement Form Process

GEMS Users and Roles

WHO ARE THE USERS AND WHAT ARE THEIR ROLES

Graduate Students : Doctoral-stream Master’s and Ph.D. students registered in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine

Students will be sent an invitation email from their graduate department to logon and complete their Student/Supervisor Agreement Form on GEMS. 

• Please note, students may work together with their supervisor to complete an Agreement Form online. 
• Completing the Agreement Form entails reading all the student/supervisor policies, entering all funding information for the current academic year, and consenting to the form agreement.

Supervisors: Faculty with a graduate appointment in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine, School of Graduate Studies

Faculty are sent an invitation email from their graduate department to logon GEMS and notification emails when their students submit their Agreement Form online. 

• Please note, students may work together with their supervisor to complete an Agreement Form online. 
• Completing the Agreement Form entails reading all the student/supervisor policies, confirming, editing or entering all funding information for the current academic year, and consenting to the form agreement.

Co-Supervisor: Faculty with cross-appointment in the Faculty of Medicine

• Students who have a co-supervisor are required to record the name of professor on GEMS.
• Faculty who are indicated as co-supervisor on the Agreement Form do not need to sign off on GEMS. 

Graduate Units: Temerty Faculty of Medicine Graduate Units

• Able to access information on all agreements in their unit. 
• Responsibility to maintain and track the agreements in the system. 
• Sends the invitation emails to new users and notification emails to both students and supervisors to review forms. 
• Makes the final approval on Agreement Forms. 
• Main contact for GEMS inquiries regarding the agreement details for both students and supervisors.
• Maintains own departments Faculty information on GEMS.

Graduate & Life Sciences: Office of the Vice Dean, GLSE

• Administrative support for Graduate Units.
• Maintains fund names and annual updates.
• Responsible for annual funding reports.

Information Commons Help Desk

Some of your base stipend  funding  will be paid through the University through ROSI/ACORN and will automatically appear on your Agreement Form.  Examples of Funds administered through ROSI/ACORN are: University of Toronto Fellowships, OGS, QEII-GSST, CGS M, Connaught, OTS, and most OSOTF awards.

You should only be entering funds NOT paid through ROSI/ACORN on your Agreement.  Non-ROSI/ACORN funds include awards paid at:

Hospitals
Research Institutes
External Agencies

Also, you may be paid  from your Supervisor's Research Grant (e.g., supervisor's contribution), which you need to enter on your Agreement.

If a fund name is not on GEMS, PLEASE CONTACT YOUR GRADUATE UNIT with the following info and it will be added on GEMS:

• Full name of the fund.
• Indicate whether the fund is an award/fellowship/studentship or a supervisor's research grant.

To Add External Fund:

 Click on "Add External Fund" button.

  Type a unique identifier (e.g. CIHR) in the External Fund box.  If acronym does not work, type in a keyword, for example, "Canadian Cancer" for CCSRI Awards.

Select the correct fund name from the list:

Note:  The Supervisor's Research Grants will be listed at the top (e.g., *Supervisor's Research Grant - CIHR), followed by a list of awards/fellowships/scholarships (e.g., CIHR CGS D).

 Enter the funding amount, Administrative Site (where funding is paid from), and pay period for the current academic year.

Funds not paid through ROSI/ACORN are listed below.  If not found here, please contact your Graduate Unit.
Note:  Supervisor's Research Grants are denoted with an "*" and located at the beginning of the list followed by awards.

To find a list of funds/awards, click here. 

Students use their UTORid and password to log onto GEMS (http://gems.med.utoronto.ca).  This is similar to other U of T systems like ACORN, Blackboard Portal or Degree Explorer. Instructions on how to activate your UTORid are provided to you when you pick up your TCard. 

Your graduate unit and other university offices may send important information, including the invitation to start an Agreement on GEMS, to you by UTORmail (University based email account ending in utoronto.ca or toronto.edu).  It is your responsibility to ensure that your email address, mailing/permanent address, and telephone numbers are up to date at all times on ACORN. 

If you prefer to recieve emails in another email account, you can forward emails from UTORmail.  To setup forwarding email, follow the instructions here.

See: How to add an External Fund on GEMS?  Search Tips!

Some awards, such as the NSERC CGS D, are entered on ROSI/ACORN by SGS, GLSE or other UofT offices and you do not need to add these funds on your Agreement.   ROSI/ACORN paid awards may not yet be entered on ROSI at the time you are completing your Agreement.  Therefore, please enter a note in the Comment Box in your GEMS Agreement that you are waiting for UofT to add your <award name of $amount> on ROSI/ACORN.

Grouper uses the UTORmail account associated with the UTORid.  GEMS does not use the email address on HRIS as the two systems don’t talk to each other.

It is possible and simple to have the UTORmail account forward automatically to another address – lots of our administrative MD faculty do that. 

Go to  http://help.ic.utoronto.ca/content/16/162/en/forwarding-email-from-utormail.html  and follow the directions.  The person doing it will need to log in with their UTORid and password so if it is a supervisor, the faculty member will probably want to do it themselves.

Note:  The forwarded email address will show up on the GEMS Email History log.

Unless a user has activated their UTORid, GEMS cannot get the UTORid and email address from LDAP.  They cannot be sent emails from the system and they can’t log in.  See http://tcard.utoronto.ca/activate-your-utorid/ .   That explains why some new students in the GEMS student list are showing up without an email address.

GEMS is an online financial tracking system that helps to ensure all doctoral-stream students recieve their full funding.