Standard 9-month faculty resignation dates are December 31 or June 30.
Please see the following semi-annual reminder of standard resignation dates for 9-month faculty members. Please make sure to share this with your teams and make sure your area’s administrators are well-versed on these dates.
Standard 9-month faculty resignation dates are December 31 or June 30.
Why are these standard dates important for 9-month faculty to use?
If employment is terminated between July 1 and August 15, any salary and associated portion of benefits received is a prepayment for the upcoming Academic Year and the 9-month faculty member will be required to reimburse the University for all prepayments received.
If a 9-month faculty member resigns between August 16 and December 30, besides reimbursing a proportionate amount of the prepayment salary, a portion of retirement benefits matched by the University may also require repayment. This is due to a payout formula that does not ‘catch up’ until December 31.
By informing faculty members of these dates regularly, and securing timely resignation letters, it may alleviate a hardship on the faculty themselves and help mitigate ill feelings of when the faculty members are surprised to find out that they are expected to reimburse the University.
The recovery of overpayments to any employee is an involved, sensitive, and reportable consequence. These instances require central offices of the campus (i.e Payroll, Benefits, Academic Affairs, etc.) to handle notification and collection of overpayments, leaving negative impressions about our institution.
The process involves collecting not only the overpayment of salaries but contributions made to insurance, matching State retirement, Social Security, Federal and State taxes, and additional optional retirement plans (e.g. 401K). Each must be recalculated and communicated with the hope of full repayments to the University. If/when the repayment comes through, there is the matching set of actions to apply the changes. If the reimbursements are not made to the University, colleges and departments suffer the loss of funds.
9-Month Faculty Contract Terms
As outlined in a standard section of our faculty contracts, “9-month faculty members are paid in annualized, equal, semi-monthly payments for the 12 month period from July 1 to June 30. July 1 through August 15 paychecks are prepayment for the upcoming Academic Year. May 16 through June 30 paychecks are post-payment for the preceding Academic Year. Faculty whose employment ends after June 30 but prior to the end of the Fall Semester (December 31), have received Prepayments and are required to reimburse the University for a proportionate amount of the Pre-Payments.”