Faculty Professional Development and Endowed Professorship Fund Guidelines

Full-time faculty members are assigned a fund that will operate like a savings account for professional development dollars. We are essentially changing the way that we distribute professional development funds, allowing you to use your dollars to make the most of them. Business Services and the Deans’ Council worked together on these guidelines.

Endowed faculty are also assigned an endowed professorship fund. This fund operates similarly to a professional development fund, with a few key differences. Unless otherwise noted, all guidelines applicable to professional development funds are also applicable to endowed professorship funds.

Transferring Funds

1. Dollars can be transferred from the provost, dean and department chair professional development funds to your individual professional development fund.
2. Monthly budget reports showing account balance (if more or less than $0) will be sent to individual faculty. Faculty are considered fund managers for their own professional development funds, and are responsible for managing their fund according to these guidelines.
3. Dollars can be transferred into your professional development fund from units like HASP for incentives/rewards and from (future) Center for Teaching and Learning and other professional development incentive funds as this practice develops in the Hope College culture.
4. Faculty cannot be given an option to either receive pay (e.g., Over & Above payments) or receive professional development dollars. They are separate and must remain so, due to IRS guidelines. These professional development dollars cannot be in lieu of compensation for work you’ve performed. To be clear, if a leader offers professional development funds as incentives for participation, the only option will be to receive the professional development funds as the incentive.
5. External grant funding may not be placed in professional development funds.
6. Faculty CAN place money from endowed funds, start-up funds and Nyenhuis (summer research) internal funds into their professional development.
7. Provost’s Office Award dollars will be placed in professional development funds in the future rather than being awarded as stipends.

Permitted Expenditures

1. Travel expenses related to professional purposes — for research (e.g., research project trips, archival research, etc.), professional development seminars/conferences (e.g. leadership workshops), academic conferences, collaborations with colleagues at other institutions, etc. 
2. Technology related to professional work (CIT needs to be consulted to purchase items)
3. Software license for research or teaching (CIT needs to be consulted to purchase items)
4. Webinars
5. Professional equipment/research supplies
6. Books
7. Professional membership dues
8. Tuition/fees for your own additional, relevant education (eg., a Ph.D. at University of Michigan) (in consultation with dean)
9. To pay student research assistants for research or other related activities
   

Additional Guidelines

1. Individual accounts end at resignation/retirement/termination and may not be “cashed out.” Professional development funds remaining at the end of employment will return back to the college.
   
2. Technology will belong to the college if faculty leave Hope College; thus, the college would follow the typical steps of asset retirement with the item. Please note that books and personally utilized equipment of nominal value (under $50) purchased with professional development fund dollars should not be returned. If the item is over $50, please ask Business Services.
3. No consumables (except those intended for research and those incurred within travel expenses such as food, gas, etc).
4. Professional development funds that are overspent at fiscal year end must be reimbursed by the fund manager to the college.

Endowed Professorship Funds

1. Funds will be transferred to endowed professorship funds annually. No other transfers into the fund are permitted without Business Services’ approval.
2. Unlike professional development funds, endowed professorship funds do allow the faculty to take a stipend payment from the fund. The only exception is if the specific endowed fund has a donor restriction on it not allowing this. Please confirm with Philanthropy whether or not your specific fund allows for compensation to be paid out.
3. Endowed professorship funds are specific to the professorship, not the professor. In other words, once the endowed faculty is removed from the endowed professorship, whether for retirement, the professorship not being renewed, etc., they no longer have access to the funds.
4. An annual report is due to the Provost’s office (provost@hope.edu) detailing how the funds were utilized for the year. This report is based on the fiscal year (July 1 to June 30). Please contact the Provost’s office with questions regarding the annual report.