[Plsfaculty] Question about grant budgeting and effort

[Brown, Judith K - (jkbrown)]

David,

Briefly, this is one of the suggestions being floated among many by the CALES Budget Committee who will make recommendations in late April, according to a recent email.

Taking 5% salary from grants would result in cost savings in the Common Cost category from where salaries are paid by UA.

At least one unit in CALES has initiated this practice internally.  I mentioned this at faculty meeting as a head’s up. If writing 5% salary into grants ( > than some amount, ex. $250,000 overall budget) becomes mandatory (determined by CALES Administration), a mechanism will be put into place.  In the unit where this practice has become part of their guidelines, the unit made the decision to incorporate the practice, it is not required by CALES.

I imagine we’ll be hearing more about this and other measures to address the budget shortfall.

This is all i know about the topic. Suggest we wait for the April report to become better informed.

Thanks,

Judy

Judith K. Brown
Regents Professor
School of Plant Sciences
The University of Arizona
Tucson, AZ 85721 USA
Office: 520-621-1402
Cell: 520-490-2109
Email: jbrown at ag.arizona.edu<mailto:jbrown at ag.arizona.edu> or jkbrown at arizona.edu<mailto:jkbrown at arizona.edu>


From: Plsfaculty <plsfaculty-bounces at list.cals.arizona.edu> on behalf of "Baltrus, David A - (baltrus)" <baltrus at arizona.edu>
Date: Wednesday, February 28, 2024 at 9:22 AM
To: "Plsfaculty at list.cals.arizona.edu" <plsfaculty at list.cals.arizona.edu>
Subject: [Plsfaculty] Question about grant budgeting and effort

Hi all,

As I sit down to think about grant budgeting...finding myself thinking a bit (confused isn't the right word...) about the line from faculty meeting about writing 5% of salary into the budgets and just wanted to clarify:


  1.  That this refers to non-summer salary (cost share challenges and issues aside...). This would be in lieu of summer salary effort or in addition to summer salary effort?

  1.  What's the incentive for us to do this because:

     *   does this free up money for SPLS to do other things or does this just come off the top for how much CALES pays to SPLS? (e.g. SPLS still gets given our full salary but that money goes into a different pool, or does SPLS get less money for salary if that salary is covered other ways). If the latter, that's a CALES problem and we shouldn't actually do this unless they make us. If it's an SPLS gets more money thing, I think we should have more voice into SPLS money decisions. If SPLS gets more money and we do include this money in the budget, some of us will be voluntarily sacrificing research value for the greater good of SPLS. I say this as someone that's currently in a position to benefit from others doing this, but that doesn't seem fair or equitable across all faculty as currently described.

  1.  3. What's to stop this from ratcheting into us being higher and higher percentages soft money? Once you start, easy to keep going with higher and higher percentages.
4. For real though, what are the clear and tangible reasons for any of us to do this?

-d

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