Salary Savings & Leave Information Overview

Owned by Aaron Wilson
Last updated: Oct 15, 2024 by Erin Szela
5 min read

Types of Formal Leaves:

Sabbatical

  • Departments do not receive SalSav returns for faculty sabbaticals. Faculty are typically eligible for a sabbatical at the start of their 13th consecutive semester after achieving tenure. These leaves should be considered when the department is making their budget decisions. 

    • Faculty are fully paid for their one semester sabbatical leave. 

    • Faculty are paid 50% for their AY or Calendar Year (CY) sabbatical leave—these savings are returned fully to the Dean. 

    • Faculty are required to return to active duty after a sabbatical leave for one year per BOT guidelines. In some cases, research leaves would apply as active duty.

  • Sabbatical dates are based on pay periods and not the Grad payroll dates like AY Effort and Course Buyouts are. 

    • Fall Dates are from 8/23/22 to 2/22/23; Spring Dates are from 2/23/23 to 8/22/23; AY Dates 8/23/22 to 8/22/23; CY Dates are 2/23/22 to 2/22/23 

Fellowship/Research Leaves

  • Fulbright Fellowships run through the U.S. government joint with the Council for International Exchange of Scholars and other institute

  • NEH fellowships that are remitted to SPS and managed by your CLAS Grant Management contact

  • Prestigious Fellowships and other research opportunities around the world

Other Leaves

  • Voluntary Schedule Reduction Program

  • Medical

  • Unpaid Personal Leave

 

Faculty activities that generate Salary Saving returns*:

  • Salary Savings is the 2L salary and fringe returns from various faculty research related activities that compete with their expected teaching load. The return comes from coding a faculty’s salary to one of their grants, the stipend returns for a faculty fellowships, and academic year effort.

  • Unless otherwise noted, the split for salary savings for the activities listed below are 30% to the Dean and 70% to the department, the department may choose to split the 70% further between the faculty members.  

Course Buyout

  • Course Buyouts – coded to a 5/6L grant or Foundation account (not the same as an internal buyout: i.e., adjunct rate)

    • No salary savings if the faculty supplement their salary from theirs/department’s salary savings account. 

    • Course buyouts run from 8/23 to 1/5 for Fall and then 1/6 to 5/22 for Spring (varies by year depending on the Grad contract dates). 10-month and admin supplemental employees are only coded through 9-month appointments for the minimum buyout rates below based on their 9-month salary.**

    • Minimum Buyout Rates: 

      • Faculty with a course load of 4 courses (e.g., Social Sciences, Humanities, MATH, STAT, LING): 12.5% of their AY salary and fringe per course. 

      • Faculty with a course load of 3 courses (e.g., Psychological Sciences): 17% of their AY salary and fringe per course. 

      • Faculty with a course load of 2 courses (e.g., Biological Sciences, Chemistry, Marine, Earth Sciences, Physics): 25% of their AY salary and fringe per course. 

      • NTT Buyouts are a minimum buyout rate is 14.3% of their AY salary per course (as of 10.16.19), based on the CLAS normal load of 7 courses regardless of department. 

Academic Year Grant Effort

  • Academic Year (AY) Effort – still results in SalSav but they may be teaching all their courses and also dedicating time to their grant(s). 

    • The distinction between a course buyout and AY effort is important as not all departments split the funds the same depending on the coding purpose. 

      • For example, Public Policy gives all the SalSav returns directly to the faculty member for AY Effort, while a Course Buyout SalSav is returned to the department. 

Fellowship/Research Leaves

Typically treated as Active Duty to the University

  • Fellowships can greatly differ and are handled on a case-by-case basis. Due to this, all faculty need to submit the CLAS Fellowship form in Kuali Build located on the CLAS Dean’s Office Procedures and Guidelines page. A direct link to the CLAS Fellowship form can be found here.

  • The main things that impact this are:

    • Can the funds be remitted to the department?

    • If not, review of salary & stipend allotted from the awarding institute may lead to a partially paid research leave.

  • Both of these situations can result in salary savings to the department.

Additional Information:

  • Salary Caps for Grants: 

    • Certain Federal grants have a salary cap percentage that a faculty member cannot go over when buying out of a course or coding AY Effort. 

      • DHHS/NIH/NEH/AHRQ/SAMHSA/CDC/HRSA/USDA  

      • CLAS Policy currently is to allow cost sharing on the department’s instruction account, the faculty member is not required to cover the cost from other sources. 

        • The SalSav return remains only the percentage coded to the grant. 

  • Faculty members do not receive SalSav returns if they are coding themselves to a different 2L account (e.g., their personal SalSav account), the department will still receive the buyout funds

  • **Example: faculty member’s 9 month salary is $100k, their 10 month/admin supplement salary is $11,112 and they teach 4 courses, they are only required to buyout of 12.5% of their AY salary regardless of semester taken which is a total of $25k salary/fringe.

Salary Savings Processing Details:

  • Sabbaticals, medical leaves, course buyouts, AY effort, unpaid leaves, Admin positions outside of CLAS (dates, etc.)

  • GMS and Department Admin both submit funding changes

FAQs:

  • Question: If someone is on a research leave – can they can still earn their full three months in the summer? (Assuming they are not maxing their 12/12ths from somewhere else)

    Answer: Yes, research leaves are considered active service/a workload adjustment of sorts, so are only applied to the contract period, so the employee would still be considered “off contract” in summer and have available effort to earn summer salary (assuming that the terms of the research leave don’t also include effort and pay in the summer, which I believe we’ve seen in rare instances in CLAS).

  • Question: Is this still the case if someone is on a voluntary or a personal leave?

    Answer: Usually, when an employee is on a personal leave, they are not meant to have any active effort through the university as they’ve said that they need to take a fully unpaid leave of absence from their university role. It may be contradictory to then employ them on special payroll during the time period of a personal leave. If you have a specific case upcoming here, reached out to the Business Center. Typically, we wouldn’t expect an employee be hired on SPAR while on a full unpaid personal leave.

*If you ever have specific questions, please reach out to Erin Szela at erin.szela@uconn.edu and Amanda Noble at amanda.noble@uconn.edu!