[Plsfaculty] Grant budgeting follow-up

[Arnold, Betsy - (fungi)]

Dear colleagues,

Dave, thanks for the good questions.

I wanted to learn more about this point as raised in the faculty meeting. I consider such matters relevant in part to faculty advancement, which is my purview until my position as Associate Director for Faculty Advancement ends on March 15 per my notification yesterday from our Interim Director.

Therefore, I asked our CALES leadership for more information. In our changing budget climate, it is often hard to understand if new policies are enacted or are only under discussion.

As a reminder and to share with faculty who could not attend, we received a suggestion in the faculty meeting that we consider including ('writing in') 5% of our salary in our budgets for grants. The question arose: does this mean...


  1.  'during summer, for example, as supplementary salary for those of us on nine-month appointments,' which is an accepted practice (indeed, agencies such as NSF allow up to two months of support for this purpose, though often we know this is cut when budgets are approved for awards and / or some PIs choose to allocate equivalent amounts of such personnel funds instead to students, postdocs, or staff)....or
  2.  'as a replacement for 5% of our institutional salary, as during the academic year.'  This would be a new policy and it was the interpretation of many faculty in the meeting that this was a proposed new change in policy.

I received the following information:

• Writing in summer salary and such is certainly encouraged when possible, per sponsor rules.

• At this time it is not the policy of CALES that we write in 5% (or any amount) of our institutional salary per (2) above. However, some sponsors allow this and this can be discussed on a case-by-case basis in pre-award. My understanding is that Jon Chorover and team also can answer faculty questions.

• A budget group at in CALES is exploring future recommendations.

• While various agencies/sponsors may have different rules, the NSF policy is clear on this point, and I share it here as an example.

Thanks Dave and all who have raised questions on this point.

Best regards,
Betsy



https://new.nsf.gov/policies/pappg/23-1/ch-2-proposal-preparation



NSF regards research as one of the normal functions of faculty members at institutions of higher education. Compensation for time normally spent on research within the term of appointment is deemed to be included within the faculty member’s regular organizational salary



________________________________
From: Plsfaculty <plsfaculty-bounces at list.cals.arizona.edu> on behalf of Baltrus, David A - (baltrus) <baltrus at arizona.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, February 28, 2024 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?
  2.
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.
  3.
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

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <https://list.cals.arizona.edu/pipermail/plsfaculty/attachments/20240229/41293580/attachment.htm>