The underlying theory of release time, as interpreted under A-21 should
underly any specific plan for dealing with "salary savings".

SALARY SAVINGS DO NOT EXIST UNLESS YOUR FACULTY ARE ASKED TO DO EXTRA WORK
FOR NO ADDITIONAL SALARY!

A faculty member has a full time job: 100 % effort.
If that faculty member now ADDS duties on a grant funded project, either
she is now working more than the amount that was previously considered
100%, OR the person must be relieved of toher duties, so the total workload
remains the same.  This latter situation is what's called "release time":
time released from other teaching/advising/academic duties to undertake
project duties.

If you just load extra work on them, you'd better tighten the head on the
drum beating the stroke for your galley slaves.

But if you really use the release time concept, the faculty member taking
up project duties HAD TO DROP OTHER DUTIES, for example, teaching salary
accounting 101.  Who is going to perform these duties?  Why, an adjunct
faculty member, of course!  Woops!  How are you going to pay him?

You pay Sally Regularfaculty, who earns $100,000/yr full time, $25,000 from
the grant account for 25% effort.  Now the chairman, or the dean, or the
provost has $25,000 unspent salary funds.  YOU CANNOT LET THEM REVERT TO
THE GENERAL FUND, OR YOU CANNOT PAY Joe Adjunctfaculty.

Now the neat thing is that Joe Adjunctfaculty will teach the class Sally
Regularfaculty released for $15,000.  Did you actually create a saving?
Well, not really.  Joe does not have the same skills as Sally, so a little
of her work has to get done by someone else -- but the money is available.
Or maybe you had to cost share 5% of Sally's time to get the grant, so her
25% project effort can only get $20,000 from the grant account.  You still
have $5,000 unused.  Quickly get a temporary budget revision to change
those funds into GTA or GRA salary, for this year only.

If departments are small, "release time accumulations"  (NEVER say "salary
savings"!) may best be accumulated by the dean, or even the provost.  That
way, $ can be assembled into $$, which can be used effectively.

THIS IS NOT SUCCEPTABLE TO ACCOUNTING TO THE NEAREST $1 OR 1% EFFORT, but
only because any professional's job includes lots of little things not in
the job description.

You'll have to figure out the budgeting/accounting  to fit your situation.

Good Luck!!

Chuck

At 11:30 AM 9/4/98 -0400, you wrote:
>Here at Bloomsburg University salary savings accrued when faculty receive
release time on grant funded projects revert to the general fund at the end
of the year.  I have seen several systems for handling grant funded release
time salaries and, in my opinion, this is by far the worse.
>
>I have been asked to write a *white paper* on how to handle this issue and
I am looking for examples of various systems. If you have a brief
description of how you handle reassigned time salaries that you are willing
to share, or if you can point me to online descriptions of policies, I
would appreciate it.
>
>Jim Matta
>Office of Research and
>   Sponsored Programs
>Bloomsburg University
>xxxxxx@huskey.bloomu.edu
>
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