Guidelines for Reimbursement for Cornell College Grants to Faculty

Finalized by the Faculty Development Advisory Commitee
November, 2006

These guidelines are intended to help faculty prepare proposals for funding and provide reports (and submit receipts) in accordance with Business Office procedures and IRS regulations.

The College cannot always defray the full cost of conference attendance and research-related travel. However, we hope to offer consistent, accessible and minimally adequate support, as transparently awarded as possible. To that end, we have established the following guidelines for all internal funding, including Campbell McConnell Sabbatical Fellowships, other named awards, and faculty travel/improvement funds.

Please remember that all tenure-track and tenured faculty members receive an annual allocation of $400 for professional expenses, including conference travel, membership in professional organizations related to the discipline, and books, etc., available without a proposal process. This annual allocation may be on occasion deferred for one year, beginning in 2005-06, in order that the faculty member receive an allocation of $800 in the second year. Contact the Office of Academic Affairs by the end of the academic year if you intend to exercise this option. Reimbursement occurs following the submission of receipts. There is an extra $100 available annually in addition to the $400 if the recipient of the allocation delivers a paper at the conference; if the $400 is deferred, the recipient may receive $900 in the following year if he or she presents a paper.

Please note that some awards are restricted to various groups, such as junior tenure-track faculty, or tenured and tenure-track faculty. The award memos will stipulate the applicable group. Most awards are available to temporary full-time, permanent part-time on more than half-year contracts, tenured, and tenure-track faculty.

Awards are granted for specific items in the projected budget, and the funds must be used as described and awarded; if particular plans change such that more than $200 must be reallocated, submit an updated request and rationale to the Faculty Development Advisory Committee.

Always save receipts: itemized receipts (not credit card receipts) are required to document expenses. The receipt must show the date, location, amount, description, and the business purpose.

Guidelines:

Housing:

• For short stays (5 days or less), such as conference stays at hotels: It is fine to stay at the conference hotel. Ballpark expenses in advance for the projected budget, but be as specific as you can. Note that you can sometimes find less expensive rates than conference rates by working directly with the hotel or through an on-line service. When making reservations for overnight accommodations, please inform the reservation clerk that you are with a tax-exempt organization. Some hotels do not require an official document in order to grant exemption from state and local taxes; in some cases you will need to show a copy of the tax exemption document. Copies of the College’s tax exemption form are available from the Business Office and the Office of Academic Affairs.

• Extended housing allowance (6 days or more): The College cannot underwrite the full cost of an extended temporary residence for a faculty member and his/her entire family, but we will subsidize the faculty member’s accommodation as we can. A proposal for funding for an extended stay must specify the length of the stay and project costs as accurately as possible. The proposal should include information about other sources of funding for an extended stay.

Food:

• For short trips (5 days or less): Up to $55/day upon submission of receipts in accordance with the guidelines posted on the Office of Academic Affairs website.

• Extended food allowance (6 days or more): Because one would be purchasing groceries wherever one was, the College will not provide a stipend for food for extended research stays.

Travel:

• See Travel Guidelines on the Office of Academic Affairs website.

Equipment and Supplies:

• Equipment is defined as anything that costs more than $500 that can be inventoried and insured. All purchases of equipment should processed through the Purchasing Office. A faculty member may request equipment, but the Advisory Committee may ask the faculty member to find matching funds or go through the regular annual capital request procedure. The request in the proposal must be specific and carefully rationalized; funds awarded must be spent upon the item designated in the proposal. Any equipment purchased with College funds belongs to the College. Please remember that equipment must always be requested through the regular capital budget request process.

• Supplies are defined as anything that is expendable (if you use it up, it can’t be inventoried). Your proposal should include a listing (along with prices) of the supplies you will need to complete the project.

• Who owns what? – If College funds (operating or restricted, such as McConnell, Hewlett or Schaffer) purchase an item, that item is owned by the College. If the faculty member wants to own it and house it off campus, he or she must receive funding for the item from the College in the form of taxable income. Internal monetary awards for travel and research are almost always tied to particular budget projections, itemized in the proposal, and must be receipted; they are thus not taxable income. The exception would be the named professorships and named awards such as the Gaarde-Morton and Ryan-Sklenicka, which include fixed amounts of money, part or all of which may be taken as taxable income. See below.

External-Grant-Funded Purchases:

• Equipment purchased with funds provided by external grants becomes the property of the College, except in extraordinary circumstances that are outlined early in the proposal process and confirmed by the Business Office. Consequently, such equipment may be used by faculty colleagues upon request; access to the equipment will usually be managed and scheduled by the department in which the equipment resides.

• The faculty member who received the grant has primary responsibility for (and consequently primary access to) the piece of equipment purchased with outside-grant funding. This is especially the case throughout the duration of the grant-funded research project itself.

Computer and Technology-Related Equipment:

• College-owned: a monitor, a keyboard, a mouse and a CPU; also perhaps a printer, scanner, and accessories. All tenure-track faculty receive a computer when they are hired at the College. There is a regular rotation for replacement; at the point of replacement, faculty may request a laptop in the place of the desktop, which will be reassigned for use elsewhere at the College. Anything college-owned must be inventoried and insured. Anything college-owned stays at the college and is purchased through IT. Please remember that computers and technology-related equipment should be requested through the regular capital budget request process. Please do not request a computer within a funding proposal.

• Individually-owned: anything purchased by an individual and thus not supported or replaced by the College. There are limitations concerning connecting to the network with individually-owned computer equipment.

• College-owned laptops and individually-owned laptops (i.e., anything that travels off campus and back on) are subject to virus-related restrictions. See the IT Committee policy.

Release Blocks for Travel, Curriculum Development and Research:

• Release blocks are available through a proposal process. Departments should indicate in this process whether or not a replacement is needed (replacements are universally budgeted at $3,500). At the moment, we have up to two release blocks to be awarded annually to non-sabbatical, tenure-track and tenured faculty. All half-year sabbatical recipients will be expected to teach three blocks.

• Faculty who desire to take a block of unpaid leave may do so, following consultation with the dean and department. One block of such release equals one-ninth of the person’s salary. Benefits remain in effect during this leave time; however, benefits tied to salary will be prorated accordingly.

Salary Replacement Requests:

• Faculty travel and research funding, such as the McConnell, may not be used to purchase course release. We need receipts in order to reimburse faculty for expenditures related to conference attendance and research activities; thus these monetary awards are not taxable income (and will not precipitate a faculty member into a higher tax bracket).

• Faculty named awards, such as a the Ringer and the Small Professorships, and the Ryan-Sklenicka and the Gaarde-Morton Faculty Awards, may be taken as taxable income up to a stipulated limit but may also be received in their entirety as reimbursement upon submission of receipts (in this case, the award is not taxed). All of these named awards have fixed amounts and do not require detailed budgets in the application process, although anticipated use of the funds should be included in the application.

• In the case of a faculty member who takes a full-year sabbatical (which comes at half-pay), that faculty member may request McConnell funding for a writing or project completion stipend. This stipend will be awarded in the form of a flat amount of $5,000 and is considered taxable income.

Release Blocks for Half-Year Sabbaticals:

• Half-year sabbaticals should be understood to entail a three-course teaching load. As always, anyone with external funding or the willingness to relinquish one-ninth of his or her salary, may buy back a block, following consultation with the department and the dean. Leave for family or health reasons is, of course, a different matter and understood as part of the benefit package. See the HR website for guidelines and procedures if such a leave is necessary.

Changes to the Budget:

• Any change in the use of awarded funding as described in the proposal must be approved in advance by the Advisory Committee and the Dean. This requires the submission of a new budget and a rationale for the change in plans.

External Funding:

• Given our limited resources, we will help an applicant seek funding from external sources, and we will expect an overview of all funding received (or anticipated) for a proposed project within the proposal. If a college-funded budget item is subsequently funded externally, we will need to recoup that money for other worthy proposals.

• All purchases made with external funding must be made in accordance with the grant award and through the College’s regular purchasing procedures.

• A portion of the overhead or indirect costs will go to the College to defray institutional expenses; the remainder will be set aside as a pool of money to be allocated at the discretion of the Dean upon receipt of requests for projects associated with external funding (to the Principal Investigator for continuation or wrap-up of the project, to the sponsoring department, to other faculty engaged in the development of grant proposals, etc.).

Prior College Support:

• Given our limited resources, we will seek to distribute college faculty development funds in such a way that as many worthy proposals as possible receive some internal assistance; we will also be cognizant of those who have received little college funding in the past. Recent or significant prior support does not preclude internal funding, but new proposers with meritorious proposals deserve priority access to our limited faculty development funds. We will try to spread the wealth.

Start-up Funding:

• Start-up funding must be expended in full within the first three years of the faculty member’s tenure-track appointment.

• Start-up funding, which is not considered compensation, may be used for college-related expenses helpful to the faculty member’s development as a teacher and scholar. These monies are intended to fund such things as memberships in scholarly societies related to disciplinary or interdisciplinary fields, professional travel, and purchase of books, journals, instructional/research equipment and supplies. Purchases must be made through the College’s regular purchasing procedures. All funds should be expended by the end of the third year at the College; they will not roll over beyond the end of the third year.

• Start-up funding will be taken into account when determining college support for travel and research. A faculty member should use the start-up funding before requesting additional college funding, if the start-up is appropriate for the project.

• Start-up funding needs to be roughly budgeted out in the first year of the new faculty member’s tenure-track appointment in the new person’s conversations with his or her chair and with the dean.

• All tenure-track faculty receive a computer when they are hired at the College. There is a regular rotation for replacement; at the point of replacement, faculty may request a laptop in the place of the desk top, which will be taken away for use elsewhere at the College. Anything college-owned must be inventoried and insured. Anything college-owned stays at the college and is purchased through IT. Start-up funds cannot be used for the purchase of a second computer, as the college wishes to manage its equipment inventory.

Monetary spans of various awards:

Faculty Travel/Improvement: $400 annual allocation, with an additional $100 awarded to those who are invited to serve on panels or present papers. Faculty who do not plan to use their annual allocation may request that their $400 allocation roll over to the next academic year (for a total of either $800 or, if the faculty member is presenting, $900).

Hewlett Fund for Faculty and Curriculum Development: Awards range from $500 to $3,000

Gaarde-Morton Junior Faculty Award: $1,000

Hewlett Planning Grants for Departments and Interdisciplinary Programs: $50/day/participant for summer stipends or out-of-pocket expenditures

McConnell Travel Fund: Awards range from $100 to $2,500

Ryan-Sklenicka Faculty Award: $3,000

Summer Student-Faculty Collaborative Research Projects: Awards of $4,500 include a salary stipend of $3,000 for the student research assistant, a faculty stipend of $1,000 and project costs of $500. (Alternatively, faculty may elect a stipend of $500 and $1,000 in project costs.)

Campbell McConnell Fellowships - $15,000 maximum; half-year sabbatical proposals may go up to $15,000 but are more likely to have a scope necessitating $7,500 or less. Sabbatical awards must be fully expended within the semester or the year. Sabbatical awards cannot be set aside to fund activities occurring after the sabbatical has passed.

Proposals are weighed on their merits; College funding is not guaranteed. Proposals may be partially funded. Partial funding occurs either because the project is interesting but dubious or because the Advisory Committee, confronted with an array of equally worthy proposals and limited funding, wishes to distribute resources across the pool of applicants.