Giving Less Than 100%

Here is how I think the summer salary (from grants) thing should work:

If I can get some summer salary from a grant, that's great. If I can't or if I need to spend my summer salary on another grant-related research activity, that's fine. No matter what my summer salary situation is during the 3 months when the university does not pay my salary, I advise my graduate students, I advise my undergrad researchers, I write new grant proposals, I go to conferences, I read, I think, I write papers, I discuss Science with various colleagues, and I even occasionally think about what I will teach in the fall. I basically do whatever I think is best for my researchers and our research program and my overall job as a professor. I adore having this flexibility. For me, one of the excellent things about being a professor is that there is an extended interlude in the year when I have a lot of freedom to set my own schedule and priorities.

Here is how my university thinks the summer salary (from grants) thing should work:

If faculty get summer salary from a grant and are paid at their usual salary rate for a specified time period, they can do nothing other than activities related to that grant: no writing of papers unrelated to that grant, no research activities unrelated to that grant, no travel to conferences unrelated to that grant, and certainly not any writing of proposals for a new grant.

During that time, we aren't even supposed to spend significant time with graduate students who are not supported on the same grant that pays our summer salary for that time block. We are supposed to say "Xavier, I'm sorry, but I can't help you with that until next month when I am no longer being paid summer salary" or "Benita, we should discuss that before July 7 because after that I can't talk to you about your research until August 12", but "Omar, yes of course we can meet this afternoon. You and I are being paid on the same grant right now."

And what about graduate students who want to defend their thesis in the summer? They'd better find out the summer funding situations of all their committee members or they are out of luck entirely. It would be better to have a committee comprised entirely of faculty with no summer salary from sponsored grants because these faculty can do whatever they want.

Although one might think it is in the best interests of the university that faculty write grant proposals and give papers at conferences, woe betide faculty with proposal deadlines or conference abstract deadlines in the summer.

And what are we supposed to do about reviewing or editing manuscripts and proposals during this time?

I can see the reasoning behind not paying someone from a particular grant while they are working on another project. I don't like it if the policy is going to be interpreted so strictly as to prohibit legitimate professional activities, but I can understand the principle. What really bothers me, however, is when the definition of the working day is not confined to standard hours and faculty are not even supposed to do other work, including write proposals, in their free time -- nights and weekends, for example. Apparently whatever time we work, whether it is 40 hours or 168 hours a week, that time belongs to the grant that is paying us, and we can work on no other projects, not even in the wee hours of the morning while sitting on the porch with a laptop and some friendly cats. The grant owns all our working time, however much that is.

And in fact, if we are working, we should be working in an "approved site", which does not include homes, cafes, or the various nooks we find to work while our offspring are engaged in enriching structured activities (sports, music etc.).

I don't get that either. Is the assumption that if we are not sitting at our desks, we are likely to be lying on a beach somewhere? If we were allowed to work at home, do the ethicsmeisters fear that faculty would interpret this as permission to do "research" in posh night clubs and resorts (and charge the expenses to our grants)?

A widely held view among physical scientists is that our biomed colleagues would do just that, and, in fact, that without these strict policies, they would all be paying themselves double so that they could support their cocaine habits, even though they force their grad students and underpaid postdocs to manufacture most of their own personal drug supplies in their research labs. {<-- attempt at joke}.

The good news is that we are allowed to attend a conference in the summer if the theme of the conference is related to the grant that is paying our salary at that time. I am confused about this, though. If we attend a conference to present a paper on the topic of the grant that is paying our salary, are we allowed to attend other talks, even if they are off-topic? Can we chat with colleagues about other research? Will we be banned from the poster sessions because they are rife with unethical possibilities for viewing graphic depictions of unrelated research?

The people who tally effort have run amok.

The solution, of course, is to claim effort at <100% during any time period that requires working on multiple projects, advising various students, writing new proposals, or attending a conference.

That's doable. Instead of being paid x weeks of summer salary at 100% effort on a grant, I can be paid at a lower % effort for longer. And then I can have the kind of summer that I want to have, and everyone benefits: my research group, my university, my cats, and me.

Problem solved? Maybe in practice, but the policy that necessitates these accounting games makes me want to gnash my ears.