Resignation Letters

[jerseyjay]

Properly functioning places like a two-week notice minimum and might even hold a small going away party.

Iffy places from which people are fleeing tend to call security upon receipt of the notice, have security watch the resignee pack personal items, take all keys, and turn off computer access before COB.

The distinction is not faculty/staff/administrator, but instead institutional practices.

Giving two weeks' notice is a cultural norm. I guess it comes from the two-week pay period and also the fact that it is long enough to wind down your current job without causing too long a delay for your new job.

I am not sure that any of this matters for an academic job. Academic jobs are already neatly broken down into semesters. It would be rare (not unheard of, but rare) for a full-time professor to leave in the middle of a term, even with two weeks' notice, or more. For finding a replacement, two weeks is not enough to get a line and run an academic search, and usually longer than needed to find an adjunct to cover your classes. (In my departments, people have gotten fellowships, moved to administration, or got various course releases, requiring the chair to move around schedules, sometimes in the last few days before the semester.)

My experience is that people in general tend to overestimate how hard it will be to replace them. Yes, finding somebody with years' experience and institutional knowledge can be a problem, because it will probably require years' of training. But finding somebody who can muddle through a particular position and keep the trains running usually is not that much of a problem. At some jobs I have seen, supervisors tend to panic when somebody resigns, but then pretty quickly figure out a way to deal with it, for better or worse. In my current position, I think that my chair would be unhappy if I left, and might scramble to find people to cover my classes. But the lasting angst would come from the fact that it would be almost impossible to get another line for at least several years, and maybe ever.

All this is to say that you should give your notice at a time that works best for you. I am currently working in academia, but my last job was not. I had got an offer, and even signed the contract for the fall term, but kept working until late summer because I needed the paycheck. If you were certain that you would get health benefits over the summer (I don't get paid over the summer in any case), it might make sense to resign sooner rather than later. But if you would not get benefits over the summer, I would wait. And, of course, never resign until your job is guaranteed. Most contracts I have signed have a proviso about "pending budgetary approval"--given the situation, that might not be boilerplate now.

[Vkw10]

There can be a little bit of overlap due to odd pay periods and such. But it should only be days, not weeks or months.
I arranged this with my previous employer because I took a week to travel across the country, and wanted to be covered until I knew my present employer started up. They were willing to do that. As Polly said, at some point you really do have to involve HR of both places, not that either needs to know what the other is doing.

As ruralguy says, you can have some overlap. Universities typically have policies saying that you have to request permission to take on any additional work while you're under contract as full-time faculty. Enforcing these policies is difficult at any time, but impossible when you're in transition between jobs. After all, how would your soon-to-be-ex-employer penalize you for violating policy? A month of overlap is about the limit.

[greensweater]

Thank you, everyone, for these plentiful and richly detailed responses.  But for the record, I was inquiring about the content of the resignation letter, not how to resign. 

PI: I signed a while ago and informed my chair, so it's a known things here.  My fall courses will not be offered, which will massively inconvenience students in our department, but that's another story.  And yes, I plan to move this summer, pandemic or not.  The particular trajectory of my move will not involve traveling through any current hot spots or major urban areas, but you never know and we'll take plenty of precautions.   

It is very unlikely that I'll need a future recommendation from the recipient of this letter or any of my superiors.  That doesn't concern me.  I've certainly documented the problems here, as have others, but I still feel that some sort of final statement is necessary.  One colleague suggested submitting a short & sweet resignation letter, but writing a longer letter to the chairs of the faculty council.  I'm considering that right now.

[Ruralguy]

No, we got it. That is, we understood you were talking about a letter.

The reason why that morphed into "how to resign" is because we were warning about the range of content in the letter and how that might trigger earlier dismissal that intended or other forms of petty retribution. Sometimes threads will meander well past what the OP requested.

Returning to the letter, especially the concept of discussing problems with your school  I think it might work better if you discussed that in person first, then write an official letter.

I am now leading a committee that in some sense is similar to the one to which you plan to write a letter.  If a faculty member who I only barely know sent me a letter mentioning the bad stuff about the school that needs to be corrected, I'd be taken aback if that was the first I heard from the faculty member. I wouldn't be completely dismissive, but I might be a little reluctant to take it seriously. If that person spoke with me before hand, then at least I'd know the point of the letter and might even have some ideas for correcting some of the problems (assuming I and others on committee agreed that any of the issues were problems). Also, avoid talking to people, especially faculty and staff who have been there a while,
as if they don't know what they or you are talking about.

[mamselle]

As stated above, the fora offer information for many other folks besides those who post their original question.

In the name of due diligence, someone might over-answer the question at hand to make sure those who happen on a thread and need to know more have a chance of getting it.

Superfluity as grace.

M.