Faculty Summer Pay Policy

Background

The College wishes to have a summer pay policy that maintains or improves student experiences and course access, ensures salary equity, increases opportunities for graduate students and non-tenure stream instructors, and values expert teaching, while also ensuring responsible management of unit summer funds.

The University has ended the Off Campus Credit Instruction (OCCI) program and has begun a temporary College-managed incremental funding model. Funds have been provided to the College by the Provost’s Office with the following understanding:

With this commitment of funding there is an expectation that you will offer as many seats and sections as you have in the past in the courses that students want and need to take… and activities, offerings, and nonrecurring allocations will be reviewed annually.

Responsible management of summer funds must be anchored by values-enacted decision making so that students, faculty, and academic staff remain a primary focus and so that the College and units can continue to rely on these funds to support teaching, programs, and activities to support student and faculty success.

To this end, the College has formulated a faculty summer pay and staffing process framed by its values of equity, openness, and community.


College Summer Pay Policies

  1. Following university policy, faculty and academic staff on academic year (AY) contracts may not earn more than 3/9 of the previous year’s salary during a given summer.

  2. Faculty and academic staff on full-time, annual (AN = 12-month) contracts are compensated for their summer work as part of their regular annual salary and are not paid extra for summer work.

  3. For more information on the policy in the MSU Faculty Handbook, please see the following link: https://www.hr.msu.edu/policies-procedures/faculty-academic-staff/faculty-handbook/summer_session.html 

College Summer Pay Guidelines

The following values-based considerations are to be prioritized by departments, centers, and programs in the College when making decisions about summer pay and summer course staffing.

  1. Access to summer teaching: Summer teaching presents a valuable opportunity for faculty with greater financial need. Administrators should:
    • maintain a summer teaching rotation.
    • prioritize faculty at the lower end of the pay scale for summer teaching assignments regardless of faculty designation or rank.
  1. Salary equity: Summer instructional pay. All instructors assigned to teach a summer course starting in summer 2024 will receive a per course flat rate determined by the College.

  2. College priority: Enhance research and creative The College recognizes the importance of the uninterrupted time available over the summer for faculty to devote to their research and creative projects. Units should support faculty with research and creative appointments in their need to prioritize this work over the summer. Accordingly, faculty whose majority effort is teaching can best help to meet summer instructional needs.

    To the best of their abilities, chairs and directors should for equity reasons offer faculty members only one course each to teach in the summer.
  1. College priority: Enhance undergraduate and graduate education. When planning and scheduling summer courses, units should take the following into account:
    • offer summer courses that directly contribute to student success, especially time to
    • provide space and time in summer for curricular experimentation and recruiting new
    • allow students opportunity to explore electives in the arts and
    • to the best of their abilities and for fair course access, avoid offering certain courses exclusively during the
    • do NOT require summer courses for majors or minors (in recognition of AY block tuition and other issues)
  1. Course enrollments: Summer courses must meet pre-determined enrollment minimums: 15 level classes; 10 for 300- and 400- level courses.

 

March 15, 2024