As summer approaches and your unit begins to process appointments or administrative stipends for faculty on 9-month contracts, please be sure that you are familiar with the campus Policy on Effort and Compensation on Sponsored Projects and related federal guidance. Faculty members who plan to engage in activities that aren’t allowed on a sponsored project must have a source of non-sponsored funds to cover salary costs associated with unallowable activities. Unallowable activities in this context are those not directly connected with the sponsored project and could include, for example, grant proposal writing (even if it is a renewal of the grant that is currently supporting faculty summer effort), course preparation, departmental or college administrative duties, or professional travel/workshops/conferences not directly related to the grant project.
Please note that the portion of a faculty summer appointment paid on sponsored funds represents a commitment to the federal sponsor to devote the appointed time explicitly to the sponsored activities and not to activities that are unallowable on sponsored funds unless these are covered by institutional funds (State, ICR, auxiliary enterprises/self-supporting, or gift funds).
Faculty members who intend to be paid on sponsored funds during the summer of 2022 should review the Policy and talk with departmental staff to make sure that faculty appointments, as well as any stipends, are structured to correspond to plans for sponsored research and other activities. This is an important step in fulfilling our institutional responsibility to accurately represent summer effort to our research sponsors.
We appreciate everyone’s efforts to accurately and fairly allocate faculty summer effort to the appropriate source of funds. You are welcome to contact Melanie Loots in the OVCRI if you have questions.