Summer Salary for Tenure-Track Faculty

Tenure-track faculty on 9-month appointments (9ths) do not accrue any vacation. Strictly interpreted, a faculty member may not take vacation during the academic year (August 16 - May 15). Faculty on 9-month appointments take the normal university holidays*. Vacation is during the summer.

Faculty on 9ths are encouraged to pay themselves during the summer. The normal expectation is that a faculty member pays her/himself from grants for either 2/9ths or 2.5/9ths summer salary, this follows the university guidelines. The remaining time (2 weeks) is vacation. Faculty on summer salary take the normal university summer holidays**.

Summer salary is to be paid from the faculty member's external grants, as well as some other limited sources of funds listed on the Summer Salary Processing form found below. Funding from summer session teaching is also approved for summer salary. If faculty are being paid by summer session they cannot also be paid summer salary during the same weeks. Unless approved previously by the director or dean responsible for the funding source, per university policy, no summer salary is to be paid on Smith/Lever, Hatch, College allocations, or State funds. No summer salary is to be paid from Federal or State legislative items. CALS does not approve summer salary from start-up accounts (as this funding is college-allocated). Summer salary is allowed to be paid from salary recovery accounts, as they are tied to grants so this funding is considered within the university policy.

A faculty member who wishes to pay him/herself 3/9ths is assumed to take no vacation. This is outside of university policy, so a waiver is required from the Senior Associate Dean via the university's summer salary attestation form, found on tab 2 of the Summer Salary Processing form found on this page. The attestation form states that the faculty member will not take vacation for the three months of summer, and faculty do not have vacation during the academic year as explained above. Due to these constraints, CALS expects these requests to be rare and does not automatically approve; a meeting with the faculty and unit chair or director may be required. Faculty should not request three months of summer salary two years in a row. These requests must be submitted by the unit chair/director to the SrAD office at least two weeks prior to the summer salary deadline. 

Policy effective March 2011. Page updated May 2024.

 *Normal university holidays during the academic year: Labor Day, Thanksgiving (2 days), Winter Break (6 days), and Martin Luther King, Jr. Day
**Normal university holidays during the summer: Memorial Day, Juneteenth, Independence Day.