Released Time

Background

Full-time employees (teaching faculty, administrative faculty, administrators, and staff) may be approved for Grant Released Time from portions of their responsibility to enable their participation in sponsored research or sponsored program activities at the university.

For 9 month faculty, Grant Released Time is generated when a full-time Virginia State University (VSU) employee works on a grant during the academic year (fall and/or spring semester) and accordingly charges a portion of his or her salary to the grant.

Similarly, individuals who have full administrative responsibilities may be released to provide administrative or technical oversight for a research project or sponsored program activity, provided the administrative faculty member or administrator has included his or her percentage of effort and associated fringe benefits in the proposal for the amount of time he or she will participate in the project. Unlike 9 month faculty members, administrative faculty and administrators are eligible for released time during the summer semester. Released time fund requests should include full costs, including fringe, not just adjunct costs, unless an exception has been granted (for example, if the grant guidelines limit salary). Formulas for calculating the dollar amount for faculty and administrator release are outlined in “Calculating salaries and fringe”.

The released time funds remain within Academic Affairs, to be used at the Provost's discretion; however, when a faculty member is granted released time, it is expected that a portion of the funds resulting from the grant released time will be used for instructional faculty to support the work the faculty member left vacant by the grant release time allocated.

Released time eligibility begins at the time the official award notification has been received and the account has been established in Grants and Contracts. However, if the grant is received during the semester, released time may be initiated in the next semester. Grant released time must be approved 60 days prior to semester that released time is desired and the funds must have been requested in the original grant proposal.

Procedure

  1. No less than 60 days before the semester released time is desired, a Released Time Request (RTR) should be submitted to OSRP. At the time of submission, the RTR should have the signatures of the faculty member, as well as their chair, dean, and the Provost.
  2. OSRP will review grant budgets to ensure funds are available to support the released time, and, provided funds are available, creates an A-21 capturing the distribution of the faculty members salary. This A-21 will be routed through the signature chain no less than 45 days prior to the semester released time is desired.
  3. If no RTR is received to continue released time, an A-21 will be initiated to return the faculty member to departmental funding 45 days prior to the end of the semester during which released time was granted.