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ɫ����’s Office of the Executive Vice President for Research (EVPR) has announced a new Faculty Service and Development Fund (SD Fund) designed to cover up to 5% of salaries for research faculty who are funded 95% or more on sponsored support. The new SD Fund will take effect in August and is designed to cover individuals' time as they participate in service to the Institute and their research communities, develop new research programs, or engage in professional growth activities. 

“Historically, it has been a challenge for research faculty to undertake career development activities because those hours were not billable to their sponsored salary funding,” said Assistant Vice Provost for Research Faculty Maribeth Gandy Colemen. “This new approach to Institute funding will not only benefit individuals’ professional trajectories but will also empower our research faculty to give back to an even greater extent.”  

Individuals whose salaries are 0% funded by Institute general operations or Departmental Sales and Services (DSS) will have 5% of their salary covered by the SD Fund. Individuals whose salaries are between 0.1% and 4.9% general operations or DSS will receive the difference to get them up to 5%.  

The EVPR Finance team has established a report that will identify employees who meet the approved criteria. Each unit will receive an allocation in August from the EVPR’s Office. These funds will be allocated to identified research faculty in the amounts described in the calculations above. Units are not permitted to repurpose these funds in any way. The EVPR Finance team will run a report in April of each fiscal year to ensure that the funds have been allocated appropriately.  

“The creation of this fund has been in the works for some time and speaks to ɫ����’s commitment to the professional growth and career longevity of our research faculty,” said Vice President for Interdisciplinary Research Julia Kubanek. “The SD Fund exists due to the contributions of many, including Rusty Edwards, senior director of Financial Administration, and Rob Kadel, senior research scientist and senior director of Research Program Administration. We took a page from GTRI’s successful approach to enabling research faculty to bill a portion of their time to these kinds of essential activities and adapted it for the academic and research units.” 

The SD Fund is designed to support research faculty in resident instruction only. GTRI research faculty will continue to receive this type of funding through GTRI’s existing process. The fund is applicable to full-time, permanent employees. Part-time, limited-term, and employees with retired-but-working status are not eligible. If an employee's allocation of effort must remain at 100% soft money (for example, if they have committed all their efforts to existing projects and are precluded from reducing those efforts per the terms of their sponsored agreement), the funds will be returned to the SD Fund. 

Writer: Brittany Aiello, Faculty Communications Program Manager, Organizational and Academic Communications, Institute Communications