Category Archives: Business

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Input on Miami’s upcoming strategic plan

From Vaishali, who is a member of the newly-formed university strategic planning committee (thank you!):

President Crawford has formed a steering committee to create a comprehensive, mission-driven, and sustainability-centered strategic plan for the next five years for Miami. The strategic priorities are: academic excellence, excellence in research and scholarship, transformative student experience, diversity and inclusion, financial sustainability, and a national university. See here for more information.
If you have any input about any of these priorities, and specifically about research and scholarship (a subcommittee that I am co-chairing), please let me know.

Important deadlines upcoming

There are several annual deadlines upcoming of which you should all be aware. Please plan ahead if you are considering pursuit of any of the following, and let me know of your intent as soon as possible.

Student Technology Fee (October 12 to CAS): This should also have appeared in your MyMiami, and more information can be found here. If you plan to submit a proposal for equipment, software, etc. from this annual competition, please notify me asap and plan to have it ready by October 5 to be prepared for the CAS deadline.

CFR grant proposals (October 19 to OARS): The University Senate Committee on Faculty Research (CFR) offers several funding programs for summer research, GA support, publication/presentation subsidies, etc. This deadline is particularly for the faculty research grants. Although applications are submitted directly to OARS, please let me know if you plan to submit and I can help advise (especially if you are requesting GA support).

Leave requests (November 1 to CAS): Any faculty who are considering taking a research leave next year (2019-20 AY) should let me know. This includes both one-semester (ARA) and year-long (FIL) leaves, including those from junior faculty who get an “automatic” leave but still must apply. Please have your applications to me at least a week in advance so that I can provide feedback and then provide the required ranking of applications to CAS. By the way, if you are contemplating a leave, you might want to take a look at the Cattell Sabbatical Fund which is a national competition for support to psychology faculty during leaves.

 

New departmental honors coordinator

Amy Summerville will be taking over as the new departmental honors coordinator starting with the class of 2020. Interested but non-declared students should contact Amy, although currently-declared honors students are still being supervised by Heather Claypool. Please join me in thanking Amy for taking this on and to Heather for her years of excellent service in this role!

Important messages from Academic Personnel

From Celia Elison, Academic Personnel:

Salary Breakdown for 2018-19 

About one-third of our faculty are paid their academic-year salary August through May (and do not choose the 12-equal-payments option).  The assumption is that the August and May payments will each be “a half-check” (half of one-ninth of the full salary).  The actual amount paid in August and May is a function of the calendar/specific number of work days in the month.  (Are you bored yet?)  In many years the payment is 50/50.  For the upcoming 2018-19 academic year the breakdown is closer to 40/60.  To lessen the surprise factor, I would like you to share this calculation with the faculty.

For faculty who receive their salary spread over the academic year:

The salary paid in August 2018 will be 43.48% of 1/9th of the academic-year salary.

The salary paid in May 2019 will be 56.52% of 1/9th of the academic-year salary.

Reminder:  The percentage of the 2017-18 salary for the May 2018 payment is 60.87%

 Permission to Perform Outside Service

Please remind your faculty and unclassified staff that a request form should be filled out any time during the year that the needs arises.  The form is available from the Academic Personnel website, under “My Career,” then “Ethics Compliance.”

The site also includes a list of common activities and whether or not permission is required.

Academic affairs meeting, Dec 06

This month’s academic administrators’ breakfast provided some updates on Faculty 180, accreditation, and other matters. There was a presentation by Jen Franchak, the new Asst. VP in the career center (with a psych degree!), who is exploring initiatives such as career advisors from the center assigned like academic advisors. The provost announced reminders for the following awards:

I will post minutes from this and other meetings with the new Team Drive structure. Then I can simply point to highlights, as warranted, here once a month.

Leave requests due Oct. 27

Any and all faculty who are considering one-semester (Assigned Research Appointment) or full-year (Faculty Improvement Leave) leaves for the 2018-19 academic year need to submit materials to me by the end of business October 27. From the dean’s office, on process:

Like last year, I would like to ask that the leave requester add a 50 – 60 word abstract to the beginning of their 1-3 page summary of their request. They also need to attach their vita and a leave report if they have been granted one in the last 10 years. Please make sure that any of your faculty applying for leave are aware of the new abstract requirement.

The leave request form can be found on the Academic Personnel website in the forms library (Leaves & Time Off).

Faculty who are considering a leave request should consult with me prior to developing your request. Note that I need to ensure that a leave can be accommodated, and rank these when sending them to the dean. A brief discussion with each of those submitting will not only allow me to do so, but also to help you determine the best way to use this opportunity to maximize your professional development.

 

New budget templates for grants

OARS has developed new budget templates with updated fringe benefit rates for FY2018. The NSF budget template is used for all NSF grant proposals. The eSPA budget template is used for all other grant proposals; both files can be found in this departmental Drive folder. From OARS:

No outdated budget templates will be accepted and the FY2018 templates are not available online, so please take a minute to download and save the attached templates and delete any outdated ones you may have saved.

If you plan on submitting a grant this year, please adhere to this. OARS is short-staffed with Tricia’s departure and every little way we can help will be appreciated.