Faculty supplement salary from grant

[Vid]

All,

I have a quick question. I just moved to a new institution where I am on a 12-month faculty position and I was trying to pay myself from my prior NSF grant (transferred to this new institution). My department said we cannot pay your salary supplement and they said " A person's 12-month salary is all one can make in a given year except if the University were to have bonuses as they have had on rare occasions in the past. These dollars are not supplemental salary to add to one's annual salary. "

My question: Is this for all 12-month faculty? I just don't know how I am going to justify this ($0 salary for the PI) to NSF and other fed agencies when I apply for grant. I am just a bit confused by this terminology.

Anyone has any insight? what to do?

Thank you,

Vi

[mleok]

All,

I have a quick question. I just moved to a new institution where I am on a 12-month faculty position and I was trying to pay myself from my prior NSF grant (transferred to this new institution). My department said we cannot pay your salary supplement and they said " A person's 12-month salary is all one can make in a given year except if the University were to have bonuses as they have had on rare occasions in the past. These dollars are not supplemental salary to add to one's annual salary. "

My question: Is this for all 12-month faculty? I just don't know how I am going to justify this ($0 salary for the PI) to NSF and other fed agencies when I apply for grant. I am just a bit confused by this terminology.

Anyone has any insight? what to do?

Thank you,

Vi

Do you have the possibility of asking for funding for a course buyout? This wouldn't increase your take-home salary, but would free up time for research.

[Puget]

This is one of the reasons why most places have faculty on 9 month contracts (even if paid over 12 months), allowing them to draw summer salary off a grant. If you are already at 100% effort on your contract, how can put effort on a grant? Most research universities generally will allow you to buy out of some of your teaching it with the grant, so that may be a solution. Unless you are someplace very not research oriented, it seems weird your department would be encountering this issue for the first time.

[Vkw10]

You can't earn more than twelve months salary from your employer in a twelve month period. The exception is a fee earned for a specific task, such as the $1500 my university will pay for co-teaching a section of University 101 in addition to your regular teaching load.

You may be able to buy course releases with grant funds. However, you may also be in a soft money position, where you are expected to bring in all or part of your own salary through grants. If that's the case, the NSF is effectively paying the university for you to spend part of your time on NSF research priorities.

It's time to make an appointment with the post-award grant specialist who works with your department. I suggest making an appointment with them to review your budget. Tell them that you particularly want to review salary portion, as you weren't on 12-month contract at previous institution.

The NSF program officers work with other 12-month faculty, so this isn't new to them. Your local grant specialist and the program officer can help you work out budget for next grant.

[Vid]

Thank you all. I don't have teaching appointment. I have a 75% research and 25% extension appointments (my extension activity isn't related to my research area they just wanted to pay part of my salary from Extension).

Do you think I offer them to buyout Extension?

Thank you, all,

Vi

[onthefringe]

Thank you all. I don't have teaching appointment. I have a 75% research and 25% extension appointments (my extension activity isn't related to my research area they just wanted to pay part of my salary from Extension).

Do you think I offer them to buyout Extension?

Thank you, all,

Vi

Some places like that will allow you to take some salary as something like "release time", use the money from your grant to pay a month of your salary, and then convert (some of) the money they saved into a research  fund you can utilize later

[Hibush]

Thank you all. I don't have teaching appointment. I have a 75% research and 25% extension appointments (my extension activity isn't related to my research area they just wanted to pay part of my salary from Extension).

Do you think I offer them to buyout Extension?

Thank you, all,

Vi

Like others have said, with a 12-month appointment you can't supplement your salary as you can on a 9 month appointment. But you can use the funds previously budgeted for summer salsry to hire someone to do stuff that frees up a lot of your time to do stuff you want to do.

[Vid]

Thank you, all. I like 9-month contract. I feel you have more flexibility with 9-mon contract.

what you all think?

Vi

[fizzycist]

This is a very bizarre problem to have. Every research institution I am familiar with would be bending over backwards to restructure your terms so they can let NSF pay some of your salary instead of them.

As others have alluded, maybe there is miscommunication going on here.

[Vkw10]

I'm surprised a grants officer hasn't contacted you yet to discuss budget and management. You really need to talk with them about what's possible at your university. Schedule time soon.

The three places I've worked all had guidelines for buying release time. One let you buy anything as long as you scheduled four office hours a week. Another strongly discouraged buying release time. You need to ask locally.

[Ruralguy]

And if there isn't a grant officer just ask someone in your schools business office or whatever it's called...the people who deal with any kind of restricted account. That may have to come after speaking with a Dean.

[polly_mer]

Why wasn't this part of the negotiations when you took the job?  Surely, much paperwork was done to transfer the grant and that was the time to discuss how the grant funding would work here.

Why do they want to pay you out of extension money?  If you're doing tasks that no one else can do, then you can't buy out of that nearly as easily as one can buy out of teaching.

How long will this grant last and will grant funding you acquire be a standard part of your salary going forward?  If you weren't expected to find your own funding because you are being paid off other people's grants at 75%, then that's another discussion to have about how the job you have doesn't work the way you expect.  I can already picture a couple PIs I know who would be livid that the new hire as support staff is figuring out how to work on something else instead of doing what they were hired to do.  Those PIs would be happy to cowrite grants for the PI's projects with support staff, but would not want someone hired to oversee one area working in something else.

What is your actual job and does this grant support what you are supposed to be doing?

[hazelshade]

I agree that it's really weird that this wasn't handled during the transfer--you normally have to adjust the budget during that process, and this is exactly the sort of thing that step is meant to catch. Anyway, it wasn't and here you are. It sounds like you have a couple of options:

• Stop receiving any salary support from the grant. If you go this route, you should talk to your program officer, because it's going to look like you're reducing PI effort, and that requires prior approval that you, your sponsored programs office, and the PO will need to sign off on.
• Try to buy out some of your time, whether it's teaching or extension. I don't think there's any reason you can't propose to buy out some or all of the extension time (the NSF certainly doesn't care), but obviously your institution might. It may make sense to have a backup plan if they won't go for your preferred option. Note that at a lot of schools, there are some financial advantages to the institution to letting faculty buy out teaching time (the buyout should be budgeted as a % of the PI's salary, but the replacement cost may be a cheaper adjunct, or perhaps the teaching doesn't even need to be replaced).

You should absolutely talk to a sponsored programs staffer at your institution (I'd do this in parallel to speaking to a dean), since they should know what the relevant policies and past practices are at your institution.

[mamselle]

Yes, and maybe ask around quietly to find out who it is in those offices who actually gets the work done.

Sometimes all the accountants but one have degrees in stonewalling and procrastination, and a bunch of the OSR folks will sit there all day and tell you they're going to do something, then don't.

So don't waste time learning who to work with: ask carefully, one of those accountants might be someone's wife or husband...but try to find out.

And DIN (Do It Now).

M.

[Ruralguy]

One problem at my school is that since its teaching centered, it can be difficult to get Dean's to agree to course buyouts. Its not that they are grant ignorant or grant averse (though some have been), its that they know they'll never find an external replacement for certain fields out here in the hinterlands. They *might* find an internal replacement if the amount of the buyout is small (say, one course). Also, at a teaching school you need to teach to be evaluated on your teaching!

So, keep in mind these restrictions, OP, since it sounds like this "extension" stuff might have similar sorts of restrictions. if they hired you to deal with extension matters (whatever the heck that means), then agreeing to get you bought out does them no good. Yeah, sure, they get some money to launder and take their cut, but they don't have someone to do the job they needed to get done.

As I've said before "Its all about the publications and grants...unless it isn't!"