Nittany Lions Read/Nittany Lions Count Mentors earn $14/hour. A mentor’s wages are paid in full by their FWS award, with paychecks being directly deposited into their personal bank account biweekly.
The Penn State Office of Student Aid processes all timesheets and payroll. Award amounts are established before the semester begins, typically $3500/year for undergraduates and $4000/year for graduate students. It is the mentor’s responsibility to know their award amount, monitor their earnings, keep track of their award balance, notify their placement site when they are within $250 of reaching their award limit and STOP working if/when they have met it. Mentors are encouraged to generate a plan for maximizing their award and spreading it out over the semester.
Mentors may work a maximum of 8 hours/day. They may not work more than 20 hours/week when classes are in session and 40 hours/week when classes are not in session. Mentors will not be paid if they work more than eight hours/day, more than their maximum hours/week or more than their total award amount. These hour limits are in combination with any other Penn State FWS employment they have.
At the end of the pay period, mentors will complete their timesheet and submit it to their site supervisor. The site supervisor will verify their time against the sign in/out work log and sign their timesheet. The timesheet is to be scanned and emailed (by the site supervisor) as an attachment to fwstimesheet@psu.edu by 5:00 pm on the submission deadline date. Late timesheets will result in a delay in processing and the mentor will not be paid until the following pay period.