Faculty FTE Leverage Program Policy

The Faculty FTE Leverage Program (FLP) is a program enabling faculty members to expand the time available for research and other scholarly duties. Participation cannot be guaranteed for all who may be interested; each proposal must be supported by the Department Chair and endorsed by the Dean of the School of Engineering, who forwards the request to the Executive Vice Chancellor-Academic Affairs for final approval. Some essential features of the program are:

1. Expansion of Research Time

   Participants agree to release a portion of their salary in exchange for a decreased teaching load on a year-to-year basis. When an appropriate alternate teaching plan has been identified and approved by the Chair, a faculty member may propose to be relieved of teaching duties up to two courses in one year, according to the schedule below which is based on a normal teaching load of four courses per year*:

   Relief of one course:	Participant agrees to support, from non-state funds, 1/6th of his/her regular nine-month salary (1.5/9ths).
   Relief of two courses:	Participant agrees to support, from non-state funds, 1/3 of his/her regular nine-month salary (3/9ths). Of the two remaining courses taught by the participant in this case, at least one must be an undergraduate course.
   Multi-year agreement:	An alternate arrangement may be made by a faculty member who can only support, from non-state funds, a fraction of his/her salary other than 1/3 or 1/6th. Two examples of this type of arrangement are: Participant agrees to support, from non-state funds, 1/12th of his/her regular nine-month salary for each of two years while being relieved of one course during that period. Participant agrees to support, from non-state funds, 1/4th of his/her regular nine-month salary for each of two years while being relieved of one course the first year and two courses the second year. * A faculty member whose course load has been less than four courses per year is expected to participate in this program, participation being phased in over time at the Department Chair's discretion, since the teaching load for individual faculty is the responsibility of the Chair. Faculty shall not, however, as part of these programs, teach less than two courses per year, and at least one of those must be at the undergraduate level.

2. Provisions

   1. Provides flexibility for use of FTE savings to the Department.
   2. The resulting release salary will be distributed as follows;
      
      • 75% to the department to fund teaching replacement costs,
      • 15% to the department for administration
      • 10% to the Dean and will be re-allocated to the departments to off-set budget reductions

3. School of Engineering Goal

   Savings of 10% of academic salaries.

4. Procedures

   1. Faculty member and Department Chair develop a plan for covering part of the faculty member's teaching duties.
   2. Faculty member requests relief of teaching one or two courses, according to the schedule in A above.
   3. Department Chair authorizes the faculty member's request.
   4. School of Engineering Dean endorses the Chair's approval.
   5. Final Approval by Executive Vice Chancellor of Academic Affairs.

Revised: 8-2012

FORMS

Basic Guidelines and Procedures for FLP and FSEP

For the Faculty Leverage Program - aka buyout (FLP)

Purpose

The Faculty FTE Leverage Program (FLP) is a program enabling faculty members to expand the time available for research and other scholarly duties. Participation cannot be guaranteed for all who may be interested; each proposal must be supported by the Department Chair and endorsed by the Dean of the School of Engineering, who forwards the request to the Senior Vice Chancellor-Academic Affairs for final approval. Participants agree to release a portion of their salary in exchange for a decreased teaching load on a year-to-year basis. When an appropriate alternate teaching plan has been identified and approved by the Chair, a faculty member may propose to be relieved of teaching duties up to two courses in one year. See policy.

General Guidelines

• Faculty must teach at least one UG course
• No more than two courses can be bought out in a year
• No more than one course may be bought out in any quarter
• Faculty must support 1/6 of their annual salary on grant/gift funds (50% of the quarter = 1/6th of annual)
• Should be requested and approved 30 days prior to the start of the quarter

Request FLP

For the Salary Exchange Program (FSEP)

Purpose

FSEP allows faculty to achieve salary savings by redirecting salary from FTE funds to grant funds. This is different from FLP because it does not involve relieving the faculty member from his or her normal teaching assignment and generally involves charging a much lower amount to the grants.

General Guidelines

• When faculty are directing effort to a research project and it is allowable and appropriate on the project they can charge salary directly to that project
• Typically the percent charged will be <25%
• The department/PI needs to be mindful of the other actives of the faculty and not overcharge grants
• If the faculty member wants to charge more than 1/6 it should be handled as a Leverage

The release salary from these is distributed per the 2010 update.

Note: Neither FLP nor FSEP may be requested during a sabbatical. The end result of being partially on sabbatical and partially on research funds can be achieved by taking a partial sabbatical and with the remaining time supplemented with research support. Depending on what the research supplement is, the sabbatical would not necessarily have to be in-residence.

Request FSEP

FSEP and FLP Revised Payout Guidelines

Per the discussions at the 7/15/10 Chairs/MSO & 7/23/10 MSO meetings here are the revised payout guidelines for Faculty Salary Exchange and Faculty Leverage Programs.

FSEP

75% of the released salary from the FSEP program is returned to the faculty as discretionary funds.

FLP

Released salary from the FLP is split 75% to the department for temp FTE, 15% to department for administration and 10% to the Dean. The Dean will return the 10% back to the department to help off set the 3% cut to the Department Support Model.

Faculty will no longer be allowed to buy out of two courses in the same quarter, so there will no longer be a 3% release salary split off the top for the sabbatical replacement pool.

These new guidelines make the program payouts look similar and should hopefully reduce the confusion between the programs.

Please let me know if you have any questions.