Article Intended For

Graduate program coordinators who wish to review access requests to the Graduate School Admission Decision System (GRADS).

Introduction

GRADS is an enterprise-wide online system created and supported by the Graduate School that allows graduate programs to manage program applications and make admission decisions.  There are two access levels for GRADS users within graduate programs:

• Level 2 - Users who are permitted to make offer decisions to applicants and adjust GRADS program-level settings.
• Level 3 - Users who are able to view applications but unable to make offer decisions.  This level is typically used by faculty and staff application reviewers.

Prior to obtaining any level of access to GRADS, users must:

• have completed FERPA training and certification.
• be listed as Graduate Faculty or assigned at least one administrative role within the Graduate Program Management System (GPMS).  Primary program contacts can add or remove GPMS roles to staff members

In order to obtain level 2 or 3 access to GRADS, faculty and staff must first request access through Penn State's identity administration tool, IdentityIQ.  Once the request is created and approved by the employee's manager, it must then be further reviewed by the program coordinator of the program being requested who then determines whether to approve or deny the request.  This article details how to use IdentityIQ to review a GRADS access request and submit a request decision.

Step-by-Step Instructions

1. Visit the IIQ home page (you must be on either a Penn State network or Penn State's Virtual Private Network (VPN) in order to access IIQ).  If prompted to log in, do so using your Penn State access account credentials.

2. Click the Approvals button near the top center section of the screen.

   

   
    

3. At the next screen, you will see a list of all outstanding access requests for your review.

   

   
    

4. Each entry in this table shows the user for whom the request is for, the academic plan, and the level being requested.  You can either approve/deny all requests in the table by using the "Approve/Deny All" buttons in the table header, or approve/deny individual rows by clicking the "Approve/Deny" button(s) found in the table cell header. 
    
5. Once decision requests have been made on all access requests, you will see the below dialog box.

   

    

6. Click "Complete" to finalize the approval decision(s).

7. If the access request was approved, the user will have access to GRADS within ten minutes.  Users may have to close their web browser and reload GRADS if they had previously visited the GRADS website prior to access being granted.

8. If the access request was denied, no further action is needed.

Links

• IdentityIQ
• GRADS
• Graduate Program Management System (GPMS) for program code lookups
• Requesting GRADS Access
• Manager Approval of GRADS Access Request