Time and effort on grants should accurately reflect a faculty member’s commitment to that grant. To achieve this, the UW School of Medicine and Public Health has adopted the following procedures and guidelines for faculty effort and salary on sponsored projects, consistent with the University’s policy on cost sharing and recent change to project-based payroll certification. Where allowed by the granting agency, anything less than direct correspondence of percent salary to percent effort amounts to cost-sharing, i.e., State support of a sponsored project, which must be approved by the faculty member’s department and Dean. As a general rule, cost-sharing is strongly discouraged as State funds should not be allocated to sponsored research and cost-sharing reduces the indirect cost rate for federal grants.
- Tenured or tenure-track faculty should not exceed 95% effort on grants, since all faculty members have responsibilities outside of research in teaching, service or other academic activities. The distribution of faculty effort should be an accurate representation of the effort devoted to each of these endeavors.
- The percent effort for all personnel included in a project budget must accurately represent the effort required to complete the work.
- Unless specifically prohibited by the granting agency, faculty are required to seek compensation as percent of University salary that is identical to percent effort dedicated to the project, e.g., 50% effort on a grant would generate 50% of University base salary and fringe benefits.
- Typically, principal investigators will dedicate a minimum of 35% effort to their first (primary) extramural project and a minimum of 50% combined effort to two extramural projects. Principal investigators with more than two extramural grants must negotiate total effort with their chair or director. Irrespective of the number of projects in which a principal investigator participates, 50% time and effort on grants is a minimal expectation of the SMPH.
- Faculty effort and salaries on sponsored projects will be considered when awarding discretionary dollars to departments and individual faculty. Departments with significant faculty salaries on grants will also have more discretionary funds to recruit new faculty. Department implementation of this policy will result in greater support from the Dean’s office for faculty recruitment and retention. However, lack of adherence to these procedures and guidelines could result in reduction of School allocations to department or center budgets and/or suspension of faculty recruitment activity.
