CSSH Course Buyout Policy

Faculty members receiving grants or fellowships that require a substantial portion of an academic semester or year should read and review CSSH’s Course Buy-Out Policy below.

Externally Funded Research in the College of Social Sciences and Humanities

The College of Social Science and Humanities provides a wide array of support to faculty and graduate students who are seeking external support for their research. The following summarizes the course buy out policy developed by the Office of the Dean. All of these initiatives will be reviewed annually and may be altered to improve their effectiveness.

The Course Buy Out policy encourages faculty to buy out of one or two courses and discourages buying out of all teaching responsibilities. We believe that, in most cases, faculty should be teaching at some point during each academic year. Toward that end, the College’s course buy out policy for research active faculty with a four-course load is:

*All these amounts must include fringe benefits

Course Buy Outs are intended to support faculty research. All course buy outs must be paid for from external funds provided by research grants or externally funded fellowships. Faculty members may not buy out of courses with personal funds.

All faculty requests for course buy outs must be approved in advance by the Department Chair and the Office of the Dean.

Faculty members who receive multi-year career grants that provide for multiple course buy outs (2 or more per year) will return to the College a proportion of their annual salary that is equivalent to the level of commitment on the career grants. For example, if a faculty member receives a career grant that covers 75% of his/her annual salary, then s/he will return 75% of his/her annual salary to the College for each year of the career grant.

Please see the 2023-2024 Rate Sheet for Grant Budget Preparation for current rates.