We expect faculty to seek outside funding to support their (partially) paid
leaves (sabbaticals).   I have talked with NSF program officers who agree
that this is an allowable expense but one that the program may not be able
to afford; they advise putting it in the budget recognizing that it may not
be fully funded if the grant is awarded.  Faculty members have reported
that some program officers have said that they definately DO NOT want to
see requests for academic year leave salary.   Occasionally the program
officer even puts that in writing (email).

There is a Catch 22 here because I know of cases where faculty were advised
not to budget for academic year leave salary but ended up charging such
salary to their funded grants (there is often surplus salary line funding
because of optimistic budgeting for students and for possible salary
increases that did not occur).

I would like to see a definitive policy on whether NSF will fund academic
year LEAVE salary.  It seems that this is an area where program officers
have a lot of control over proposal budgets but the spending of grant funds
is governed by overall cost standards (which allow such expense).

Franci Farnsworth

Frances Vinal Farnsworth
Coordinator of Sponsored Research
Grants Office - Forest Hall
Middlebury College
Middlebury, VT  05753

Tel:  802-443-5889
Fax:  802-443-2083
email:  xxxxxx@mail.middlebury.edu