A. Eligibility for Award
All full-time faculty on regular or special title series(e.g., tenure-track, non-tenure-track clinical, lecturer/teaching, or professor of practice) are eligible for the award, excluding visiting, acting, adjunct, and research appointments (e.g., research professor or research scientist). Faculty with research appointments are ineligible, as salary coverage using grants and contracts is typically an explicit expectation of employment focused solely on research.
This incentive applies exclusively to AY salary buy-out of research time covered by external funding. It therefore excludes any external funds the PI has directed toward summer salary or AY teaching time (i.e. course buyouts) covered by grant support. Additionally, the incentive excludes funding toward faculty salaries paid from non-general fund sources, such as endowments.
B. Determination of Award Amount
PIs may allocate between 5% and the full allocation of their research time to external funding. The percentage of allowable effort used in the equation will be determined by the Research/Teaching/Service workload allocation framework.
Fifty percent of this amount will be returned to the PI as the incentive. Benefits are approximately 35%, so the calculation uses 1.35 to represent benefit coverage.
Award Amount Calculation:
(1.35 × Percent of AY salary covered by external funding × AY salary) × 0.5 = Incentive Amount
The maximum incentive amount is capped at $35,000.
C. Award Allocation
Salary savings will be used to pay an award as research discretionary funds to eligible researchers. Research discretionary funds earned through the Salary Savings Award are subject to the same conditions and restrictions as the Indirect Cost Recovery Sharing program.
If a faculty member has at least $10,000 in research discretionary funds in their account, they may request to take part or all of the Salary Savings Award as supplemental salary. The faculty member must submit a formal request with a narrative justification indicating why they do not need research discretionary funds and prefer to take the award as supplemental salary. These requests must be approved by the faculty member’s department chair and dean. The Award, if approved to be taken as a salary supplement, will be subject to standard state and federal tax withholding.
To be eligible for award payout, the calculated award must be at least $1,000 for the individual faculty member. In addition, the faculty member must still be employed at the University on the date of the distribution. The awards will be paid out in August after the end of the fiscal year as a payroll payment to the faculty member.
Awards may be adjusted or withheld on the basis of the following conditions:
- An annual performance evaluation with poor performance concerns
- Over expenditure of grants
- Sabbatical
- Determination of research or other misconduct
- Determination of non-compliance or inappropriate use of funds
