Faculty Research Incentive

Purpose

The purpose of the plan is to encourage faculty to compete for externally-funded research, scholarship and sponsored program projects, and reward them for their successes. The plan will enhance recruitment and retention of outstanding faculty and will encourage entrepreneurial behavior that will result from competing for external funding. Faculty will receive a portion of the release dollars for research or scholarly needs.

Eligibility

Eligibility for the plan requires a faculty member to include all or a part of his/her base salary and fringe benefits in a grant/contract budget. This funding must create academic year course release funding for Nine-month faculty or one month of calendar year support for twelve month faculty. To be eligible for the incentive plan, a grant or contract may not include provisions for voluntary cost sharing or voluntary in kind matching.

Policies

1. The salary and fringe benefits paid from grant/contract funds must replace salary and fringe benefits that would otherwise be paid from state general funds. The incentive paid cannot be received by offsetting salary from one grant/contract account to another grant/contract.
2. The incentive plan does not apply to external funds obtained from gifts, service contracts, or fees for service.
3. The compensated effort that the investigator devotes to research must be offset by an equivalent reduction in effort in the areas of teaching, clinical, service and/or administration.
4. Individual awards may cover the cost of a computer package and may also include travel, data collection, library research, salary for a research assistant, books and access to original manuscripts, audio visual/computer equipment and software. The funds cannot be used to pay faculty salaries either in the form of release time during the academic year or as extra salary in the
   summer term.
5. Funding for this research incentive is contingent upon available funding.

Procedure:

1. There is no need to submit an application for these funds or to justify how the funds will be used.
2. Each semester as funds are released, a calculation will be used to determine the funds to be transferred to the faculty member. The released amount will be reduced by $5000 for each course release/month (12 month faculty) as replacement cost for courses or to cover funding to offset other departmental duties or college requirements. These funds will be retained by the Dean to cover the part-time needs of the college. The balance will be distributed 85% to the college and 15% to the faculty member.
3. Faculty Incentive funds will be directly deposited into a fund established at the university for the faculty member. Release funds are state funds. They must be expended by May 15 each year.

Examples