External Fellowships and Leave Applications

External fellowships are a mechanism that can allow a faculty member to take a leave outside of the Junior or Reynolds Leave mechanism. Being awarded an external fellowship is a significant professional accomplishment and is encouraged by the College.  However, many fellowships do not cover a faculty members full salary for a semester or a year. As stated in the above sections, faculty members seeking full year Reynolds Leave will receive two-thirds of their salary, while those seeking a full year Junior Leave will receive half salary. Therefore, faculty members are encouraged to coordinate the timing of a leave application with an external fellowship application so that they might cover their full salary during a year-long leave.

Effective July 1, 2019, faculty must use the Cayuse system for routing and approval of fellowship applications before submission to the sponsor. See the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs website for more information about this system.

In the event that a faculty member is awarded an external fellowship that coincides with a Junior or Reynolds Leave, the University and faculty member agree that the external fellowship will be used to supplement leave salaries up to 100% of the faculty member’s nine-month salary, inclusive of benefits. Additionally, the first $5,000 of any fellowship award received which cannot be applied to summer salary and which would take the faculty member beyond 100% of his/her nine- month salary will be set aside as an internal grant to the faculty member for direct (non-salary) research expenses.

Important: Any faculty member seeking funding in the form of an external fellowship should first contact the Office of the Dean of the College (marshap@nullwfu.edu and brownal@nullwfu.edu) and the Office of Research and Sponsored Programs regarding the distribution of the fellowship funds, as well as implications to their benefits (medical, dental, vision, life). All external fellowship approvals require that a Routing Form be submitted in advance. (See ORSP website regarding external fellowship funding and approval guidelines.)


Leave Without Pay

Faculty members may also apply to the Dean to take an unpaid professional leave at a time when they do not have a University-supported leave. Faculty with tenured appointments will normally be eligible for unpaid leaves of absence after having completed three continuous years (i.e., six continuous semesters) of teaching. A leave of absence without pay will not be counted toward eligibility for future University-supported leaves.

Faculty contemplating an unpaid leave should first discuss these plans with their department chair. Aside from teaching and departmental obligations, they should consider the implications such a leave could have in relation to their employee benefits. Human Resources can assist the faculty member with questions specific to their current benefits. If the department chair approves of the unpaid leave plan, the faculty member should email a request for unpaid leave, noting support from the chair, to the Senior Associate Dean of Faculty, copying Anna Henley. If the request is approved, the chair will be copied on the approval letter from the Office of the Dean of the College.

Should the department need resources to cover the teaching load of the faculty member taking leave without pay, the department chair should follow the process for Requesting a Faculty Position after the leave has been approved.