by Ashley
…I’m kicking ass and taking names.
Isn’t it so funny how things sometimes work – my life is falling to shit in one area, but at least another area is alive and thriving!
I’m so grateful to have a job where I feel so much personal fulfillment, I’m fairly compensated, I have a flexible schedule, I have great colleagues-turned-friends. I mean, just all around I like what I do, I’m good at it, and it feels meaningful and rewarding.
Good thing I like it so much, because I’ve been doing a lot more of it, too!
I was recently awarded this “Fellowship” thing.
That’s how I describe it to people because it feels so pretentious otherwise, lol.
Long story short, I got a high-ranking administrator to agree to fund a program I’ve designed (and will oversee), and he decided I needed a title to make it official so I’m a “fellow” now. 🙂
The problem is…..I’m not actually going to earn any more money for it. The administrator’s office will be paying for course releases (1 Fall, 1 Spring) so I have time to dedicate to the program, and the office will also pay for the direct costs related to the program as well. But I didn’t actually ask for any additional income for myself. I don’t even know how I’d approach that.
The thing is, I’m still an “early career” faculty member. And I’ve never had a real, true mentor. I mean, I had advisors in graduate school: people who I worked with on research and whatnot. But no one has ever been a more general “career guide” to help me in things like negotiations or making big decisions, etc. I’ve always just flown solo on that (and I feel like I’ve done pretty well, but it’d be nice to have a sounding board or someone with more life and institutional knowledge to help me out sometimes).
Sooooooo, I’ve committed to oversee and run this program for the 2018-2019 academic year. But if the program gets renewed for another year….I want to ask for more money, right? The weird thing is that I don’t think it can be salary. My salary is paid by my home department and this project is for another unit on campus. So my direct boss (my department head) isn’t going to give me a raise for work I’m doing for another unit. I think it’d have to be “supplemental compensation” or something???
Here’s the deal. I don’t even know! And I don’t have anyone to ask.
Right now I’m just crowdsourcing opinions from the BAD community. Anyone with higher ed experience? Maybe doesn’t even have to be higher ed experience. Just some better skill and know-how when it comes to negotiations and such. Is this a “thing” at public universities? And what would I even ask for? I already got course-release time. Would I continue that AND ask for more money? Should I ask my departments’ business manager?? Like, I literally don’t even know where to start. Any advice?
Hi, I’m Ashley! Arizonan on paper, Texan at heart. Lover of running, blogging, and all things cheeeeese. Freshly 40, married mother of two, working in academia. Trying to finally (finally!) pay off that ridiculous 6-digit student loan debt!
I work in academia managing a series of government sponsored projects. I report effort (time spent on each project) quarterly because my salary is funded through government grants. As project needs change, my effort gets adjusted accordingly, but my salary stays the same.This may not apply to your situation at all though if your salary and project are paid for by private funds.
I used to work in HR at a large public institution, and there were definitely situations where a professor had a home department (their base salary was associated with that), but also did work for another department and would receive supplemental income for that work – it was not considered permanent or part of their base compensation, but most certainly was paid to them. I would look to see if there is any information on compensation on your university’s HR site, because that might help you know what is in the realm of possibility. Good luck!
You’re at ua right? Talk to Tom Miller, vice provost of faculty affairs. Your former classmates at other institutions are also a good resource to figure out what is normal for your field (start an alum group on Facebook if there isn’t one already).
You can definitely get extra $$ by doing more work in another department that’s paid from that department — it’s not a salary increase, it’s just paid out like a bonus. But in this case it sounds like that is kind of happening — in the sense that you’re getting a teaching release in your home department. I’d be a bit surprised if you could both get the teaching release AND more money. That said, you could always ask!
At my institution in the northeast, you would probably not get a teaching release, just extra salary from the department you are doing the extra work for. At this point, my thinking is: by next year you will have the new program up and running…I’d go back to my normal teaching load and make sure the extra department was paying you fairly for the new program you’ve developed.
Make sure you track your hours so that you can have some fair estimate of the work you’ve been putting in!
I’m the budget officer for a department at a large university. I’d definitely start with the person in your department, as they will know how those things work. I’m relatively new to this concept, but from what I’ve seen, our campus calls it faculty overload, and the department you’re doing the work for would create a payment, or series of payments, for that work.
At my institution, you would get release time or extra pay, but not both. In my case, because I oversee a large component of assessment, I get a certain number of hours release time. If I choose to teach more hours than required, I get extra money paid at the overload rate. So–I usually take the release time and teach another course as an overload. This semester, I am teaching 20 hours and have 3 hours release time, so I get paid as if I have 23 hours. I work at a state college, so I am teaching only (no research) and full load is 15 hours. I have 12 hours on-load, 3 hours release time on-load, and 8 hours of overload. We are capped at 24 hours of “load+overload” This was not always the case–one semester I had 27 hours of “load + overload” but I was young and desperate for tenure.
I work in academia at a public state university. What we have is called an “administrative supplement.” For example, we have a faculty member who is a physician, and gets paid their clinical salary. But this person also manages the medical resident program. For this, she gets an administrative supplement. Our chair gets paid several administrative supplements for various things.
Do you have an internal HR person in your department? You could inquire there, or go to the business manager and inquire. Just say you have no idea how any of this works, and ask them to walk you through it.