EMS salary guidelines for summer and online courses

POLICY’S INITIAL DATE: 1 April 2015
THIS VERSION EFFECTIVE: 11 July 2022

PURPOSE:

To establish full-time faculty salary expectations and standards across the College, while allowing Departments to further refine their policies to suit their specific needs. The strategic goal is to incentivize increasing the number of summer student credit hours offered by EMS and to offer more online courses in the fall and spring semesters while maintaining fairness and adherence to university compensation policy. EMS leadership wants to encourage faculty to add to their teaching load by supplementing their salary for teaching above the standard annual load.

CAVEATS:

The University already has policies that control/limit salary compensation on a variety of topics. The policy here does not allow those University policies to be overridden and any consideration for compensation will have to fall within those policies as well. For those on 36-week appointments, the normal annual teaching load could be scheduled to include summer teaching by reducing the fall or spring assignments, but that summer teaching would not be supplemented. Online teaching during the fall and spring semesters that is part of the normal annual teaching load would also not be supplemented. This policy does not address extra compensation for online course development. It is recommended that online course development be handled in a similar manner to what this policy outlines for teaching the same course online; final determination will be made by the sub-unit head.

UNIVERSITY POLICY AND SUPPLEMENTAL SALARY PAYMENTS:

Base Salary:

University payroll policy requires that the base salary be equally divided into 12 monthly payments beginning in July of each contract year and ending on June 30 of the following year. In EMS, for example, for a 36-week appointment, this equates to 3 weeks of base salary to be paid each month. Dependent on the faculty member’s work contract, the actual effort expended could be more or less than the 3 weeks paid in any given month. However, over the course of the 12-month contract year, pay and effort will balance by June 30.

Supplemental Salary Payments:

Supplemental payments will be in addition to the 1/12 base salary payment each month. Supplemental compensation is handled as regular income for all tax and retirement calculations. Supplemental salary will be paid in the month it is earned. The maximum amount of supplemental salary available each month will be dependent on the faculty member’s 36-week base salary, approved work contract, and maximum weekly salary rate. The maximum weekly salary rate is calculated as the base salary divided by the number of weeks appointed; e.g., for 36-week appointments, divide the base salary by 36. The monthly maximum supplemental salary that may be earned and paid in any given month is calculated by multiplying the weekly salary rate by the number of supplemental weeks available in that month as provided on the approved work contract. A maximum of 12 weeks of supplemental salary may be earned and paid during the contract year for a 36-week appointment. For anything other than a 36-week appointment, the maximum number of weeks available of supplemental salary would be 48 minus the weeks of the appointment. As noted earlier, faculty must work the full contract year to be eligible for the full 12 weeks of salary supplement or time release. (NOTE: A maximum of 48 weeks may be paid out in a fiscal year, so any supplement salaries can only total up to 48 weeks, i.e., 40-week appointment, only 8 weeks of supplemental pay.)

In most cases, faculty members will be paid 11% of their annual base salary for teaching a course either during Summer Session (whether face-to-face or online) or online during any semester provided this course is beyond the normal annual teaching load. For a course that has credits different from 3, the formula could be modified to increase or decrease the compensation rate proportionately by:

(No. of credits/3) times 11% base salary = 7.3% for a 2-credit course
or 14.6% for a 4-credit course

If teaching two or more sections of one course in a single summer session (regardless of how instruction is delivered, i.e., online, face-to-face, or a combination):

the faculty member will be supplemented at 17% of their base salary (basically 1.5 times the one section rate).

If teaching two or more sections of one course that is merged into a single summer session offering (as is frequently done to combine a World Campus section with a University Park “Web” section when the demand at those individual locations is not great enough to warrant a dedicated offering):

the faculty will be compensated for teaching one course (i.e., 11%).

If teaching separate sections/courses during each of the two summer sessions:

then an 11% supplement is provided for each session.

If teaching a LEAP course:

the faculty are paid some by the Summer Session Office. This compensation would be augmented using Summer Session Incentive Funds (SSIF) to yield an 11% total supplement.

NOTE: Summer Session Incentive Funds (SSIF) are provided to academic units by the University based on the number of student credit hours (SCH) generated by each academic unit. The college then distributes SSIF to departments in proportion to each department’s SCH generated.
While faculty compensation is typically covered by SSIF, this does not mean the faculty member should not be paid at the time when the work is performed. SSIF are not reimbursed to the departments until they are released back by the University in early fall. Based on the $182/SCH distribution rate from Summer Session Incentive Funds in 2014, to break even, this would require the following supplements and enrollments in a 3-credit class: for a $60,000 base salary ($6600), 12 students and for a $100,000 base salary ($11,000), 20 students. An estimation of enrollment would need to be completed prior to the course start to determine if the course should be held or cancelled unless a compelling business reason is made to hold the course regardless of cost/loss to the University.
Additionally, the more SCHs generated across the College, the greater the payout rate by which we divide in this calculation and so the lower the break-even enrollment per course. Supplemental Compensation can be prepaid on General Funds or the 1002 Clearing Account for the months of May and June. To prepay on Supplementary Compensation, you must change the indicator for prepaid to “Y”.

Supplemental Salary Requests and Approvals:

All Supplemental Salary Request Forms must be approved by the faculty member’s sub-unit leader and the Dean’s Office. Funding from units outside the faculty member’s home department or the College, must be approved by the funding unit’s budget administrator as well as the faculty member’s sub-unit leader and the EMS Dean’s Office. Supplemental Salary Request Forms must be used to request all payments and obtain required approvals. For teaching that is part of a research project, the faculty member’s signature on the Supplemental Salary Request Form certifies the amount of effort she/he will expend on the grant and the time period that effort will be expended. A separate form must be completed for each different supplemental funding source. However, multiple month requests may be made on the same form if the funding source is the same. All Supplemental Salary Request Forms must be forwarded to the College’s Financial Office or Human Resources Office for processing.

The 30-Day Rule:

Every effort must be made to pay supplemental salary payments in the month it is earned. As it is required for audit purposes, a letter of justification will be required for supplemental salary payment requests that go back more than one monthly pay period (30 days). The letter of justification should certify that effort was, in fact, expended during the time period for which payment is being requested and provide an explanation as to why the supplemental salary was not requested at that time. To expedite the processing of supplemental salary requests in these instances the faculty member should attach the letter of justification to the Supplemental Salary Request Form.

ENDOWMENT SUPPLEMENTAL AND SABBATICAL PAY:

EMS recognizes that some endowment guidelines do allow for the use of income for supplemental salary with the Dean's approval. However, we count on endowed faculty to seek external funds to supplement their research and that of our graduate and undergraduate students. One incentive, of course, is supplemental salary that comes with those awards.

Although ACG 15 does allow, with the Dean's and the funding agency's permission, the use of funds from a grant or contract during sabbatical, there is no provision for stipend from endowment income; clearly the objective of the reduced salary proportion schedule as one progresses from a semester to a full-year sabbatical is to reduce the use of university funds for the longer sabbaticals. Providing endowment income as stipend is inconsistent with that objective.

For these reasons, EMS does not allow the use of endowment income to compensate for reduced base salaries (typically, 36-, 40-, or 44-week) on sabbaticals of 6-12 month duration and will only approve the limited use of endowment income to support summer (supplemental) salary, on a case-by-case basis.

DEPARTMENTAL POLICY:

Department policies must conform to the restrictions set forth in this policy but may be further refined/adjusted within the confines of this policy to meet their specific needs.

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