Personnel

Personnel are BSC employees (faculty, librarians, and staff).  Colleagues or assistants from other schools or organizations working on your project will appear elsewhere in your budget as "consultants" or "participant costs" or "other personnel." If a substantial portion of the work is to be done by employees of another organization (e.g., by faculty and staff at another university), then a subcontract may be needed. See the sections below on consultants and sub-awards. 

Salaries and Wages for Faculty

For BSC personnel, certain conditions apply.  Most importantly, the compensation should be reasonable and based upon employment practices already in place on campus.  Faculty pay is generally based on the faculty member's current annual salary, pro-rated on a monthly basis, or as an equivalent to teaching or developing a course or other kinds of  "special projects" for which faculty can earn additional compensation.

Please check with OGSP to determine which method to use to calculate faculty compensation, as the proper approach to use varies depending upon the kind of project, the timing of the work, and the guidelines of the funder.

Faculty Salaries (Summer): Charges for work performed by faculty during summer will usually be made at the rate of 1/9 of the annual base salary per month. Remember that the monthly pay most faculty receive is based on a nine-month salary. Thus to figure the amount to charge for one month of full-time work, divide your academic year salary by nine.

Release Time/Course Release:  Sometimes it is not the faculty applicant/Principal Investigator who receives compensation, but a visiting lecturer who replaces one or two of the Principal Investigator's courses, allowing him/her time to do the proposed work.  These "course releases" are budgeted based on a formula established by BSC which OGSP can provide.  Course releases require the approval of the faculty member's Chair, Dean, and Provost, and all costs (salary and fringe benefits) must be paid for by the grant.

Faculty Overload Time: Faculty members may, with appropriate approvals, perform contract work or grant work as an overload to their regular teaching duties. Be sure the sponsor, your chair, and your dean know about the intended overload and are willing to approve it.

Compensation calculated as an "equivalency" to other methods of additional compensation: Sometimes, for short-term projects requiring several hours per week of work, it makes sense to budget compensation based on an "equivalency" to other similar forms of faculty overload such as course development grants, or the supervision of honors thesis.  Click here to see one such table, describing grants for faculty/librarian professional development: 

http://www.bridgew.edu/Depts/AcAffairs/professional_development.cfm

Other such tables providing guidelines for compensation can be found through CART, the graduate school teaching, and the Office of Undergraduate Research. Please consult with OGSP to determine the proper model for calculating additional compensation.

Salaries and Wages for Administrators and Administrative Staff

Administrators and Administrative Staff: Grants can sometimes be used to compensate the college for staff working on grant-funded projects.  This time can be entered on either an hourly basis or as a percentage of overall work time.  Multiply the number of hours by the employee's regular hourly salary or by the percentage of their overall work time.  Sometimes staff are limited in the number of hours they can work without violating state labor laws.  Check with the OGSP before entering into any new agreements with staff.

 Salaries and Job Descriptions for Other Staff: Hiring individuals for a project must be done according to standard BSC procedures and they must be paid according to standard BSC job titles and descriptions. These restrictions apply to full time employees (e. g., 37.5 hours/week) for any length of time, but are also recommended for part-time employees. If none of the titles and job descriptions in the existing personnel system fits your needs, then you may identify an appropriate title, job description and salary range based on similar work required in the professional field.  If no similar job description can be located, please contact OGSP to explore alternate procedures.

Salaries and Wages for Students

Undergraduate Student Assistants: The use of student assistants is strongly encouraged because it provides work experience and income for students. Students are not permitted to work more than 20 hours per week on campus during the academic year.  

There are established hourly rates for student pay.  Check with OGSP to determine the proper hourly rate for the kind of work being performed.

Graduate Research Assistants and Graduate Assistants: Graduate students typically are hired to work for a full academic year on a part-time basis, with the number of hours and rate of pay varying according to the title (GRA or GA).  Please consult the pay rates and working hours for Graduate Research Assistants and Graduate Assistants.

Fringe Benefits:  

Administration (Full-time)................................. 26.42%

Administration (Part-time)................................ 1.38%

Faculty (Full-time).............................................None

Faculty (Adjunct/Visiting Lecturer).................... 1.38%

Student (Undergraduate).................................. None

Student (Graduate)...........................................None (during academic year)

Student (Graduate)...........................................1.38% (during summer; considered part-time, hourly employee)

Consultants

It is appropriate to pay people as consultants when they are not BSC employees and when they are performing highly-skilled, specialized, and focused tasks without close supervision for short periods of time.  Show the compensation for a consultant in terms of days or hours to be worked multiplied by the daily or hourly rate to be paid.  You must be able to document that this rate is reasonable and appropriate to your field.

BSC will not pay College employees for any services on a consultant basis. Services to be obtained from BSC employees (staff or faculty) should be shown in the "Personnel" category, usually with compensation shown as a percentage of their regular salaries and always with fringe benefits included. This requirement holds even for small commitments. Sometimes when the work to be performed is not highly specialized or requires a good deal of supervision, BSC Human Resources Department will prefer that these non-BSC personnel be hired as hourly, part-time employees.

Last Modified: July 31, 2009