SHS Graduate Faculty Development Funding (including sabbaticals)
STATUS: Current Policy Per Provost's Office
DATE UPDATED: 2024
SHS Policies, Procedures, and Practices Suggestions & Requests Form
NOTE: Undergraduate faculty in the DON follow the regular policies and processes for faculty on 9 month contracts.
Faculty Development Funding
School of Health Sciences, Graduate Faculty
Established in 2014, revised 2024
Centralized faculty development opportunities available to SHS graduate faculty
- New Faculty Summer Research Funding: New continuing- and tenure-track SHS graduate faculty are eligible for these funds but at a reduced rate. The funds are meant to pay a stipend when faculty are not on contract in the summer after their first or second year, and to serve as a support to engage in scholarship. These funds are based on the FR&D Summer Fellowship for 8 weeks of paid intensive research, which assumes faculty have at least 8 weeks in the summer (the case for undergraduate faculty, including Nursing). Because SHS grad faculty are on 11-month contracts, the equivalent of a “summer” is 4 weeks, or half the time used for other faculty summer funding awards. Therefore, SHS grad faculty are eligible for half the amount. Unique to the School, SHS grad faculty are allowed to elect to have these funds either as a stipend or as reimbursable funds for research support.
- FR&D Summer Fellowship: SHS grad faculty should be eligible for this award through FR&D. Using the same logic as stated immediately above for the New Faculty Summer Research Funding, SHS grad faculty be eligible for half the amount. This is a summer stipend, not reimbursable funding.
- FR&D Hultquist: SHS grad faculty should be eligible for this award through FR&D, available to only first-year faculty. Using the same logic as stated above for the New Faculty Summer Research Funding, SHS grad faculty are eligible for half the amount. This is a summer stipend, not reimbursable funding.
- FR&D or Post-Promotion Sabbatical: SHS grad faculty should continue to be eligible for sabbaticals. Sabbaticals are intended to release faculty from some portion of their teaching duties, usually half. Therefore, when feasible, regular half-year/full-pay sabbaticals should be scheduled as time during which faculty are released from approximately half of their teaching duties. Full-year/full-pay sabbaticals would release faculty for nine months or one’s full-year teaching load. The funding covers associated adjunct instructional costs, not reimbursable funding.
- FR&D Financial Assistance: SHS grad faculty should be eligible for this award through FR&D.
Centralized faculty development opportunities not available to SHS graduate faculty
- Teaching sabbatical: The teaching sabbatical does not fit the teaching scheduling load of SHS graduate faculty, nor include the necessary funding structures to make it possible for SHS grad faculty. The teaching sabbatical is designed to be one semester of no teaching duties (faculty still retain service and advising duties) during a continuing- or tenure-track faculty member’s probationary period. It is achieved by awarding a two-course release for one semester, requiring faculty to teach the remainder of their course load in other terms. The two-course release is achieved by pairing one departmental reassigned-time with one reassigned-time from the provost’s office.
Because graduate programs in the SHS do not have any departmental course reassigned-times, the necessary funding structure is not in place for this award to be available for SHS graduate faculty.
De-Centralized faculty development support for SHS graduate faculty
- Travel funding: Faculty travel is funded through deans’ offices. The funding is held within a school/college budget, and policies are set within each school/college. The total amount each school/college is budgeted is equivalent; however, because of differences in scale and usage trends, deans may set different standard funding levels to manage their budgets.