Upcoming Deadlines & Dates

QEP Faculty Workshop

Emory’s Quality Enhancement Plan: The Nature of Evidence is offering the third Faculty Workshop for Evidence-Focused First-Year Seminars in May 2017. The workshop is open to all faculty planning to teach a first-year seminar in 2017-2018. Participants receive a $3,000 honorarium for their participation and assessment assistance.

A call for applications was sent to all College faculty on Nov. 2; a reminder will be sent mid-December. Applications are due Jan. 9, 2017. Acceptance notifications will be sent by Jan. 18. Any questions can be sent to Dr. Tracy Scott, QEP Faculty Director, at qep.director@emory.edu.

T&P Workshop for Assistant Professors Dec. 9

The Office of Faculty will host a workshop from 3-4:30 p.m. this Friday, Dec. 9 in Chemistry 260 for assistant professors to learn more about the review process and new expectations for tenure and promotion.

Three members of the current Tenure and Promotion Committee in the College – professors Gary Laderman (Religion), Bill Kelly (Biology), and Ellen Idler (Sociology) – will join Carla Freeman, senior associate dean for faculty, in offering guidance and answering questions on an informal panel. Chairs (or a senior mentor in your department) are encouraged to attend with your assistant professors.

Temporary Faculty and Leave of Absence Requests

Requests for temporary faculty for the 2017-18 academic year are due Friday, Jan. 27, 2017. Applications for leaves of absence (including associate professor completion leaves) and course release during the 2017-18 academic year are due Friday, Jan. 27, 2017. Requests should be sent to Susan Lee, Emory College of Arts and Sciences, 400 Candler Library or emailed to her at slee05@emory.edu.

Canvass Migration

Faculty are reminded that they must migrate their course materials into Canvas before the summer. The University’s Blackboard license will expire in August 2017. To learn more about Canvas and available training classes, visit http://it.emory.edu/canvas/index.html

UPDATE: Proposed FLSA Changes

Impact of Postponed Implementation

A federal judge filed an injunction to postpone the Dec. 1, 2016 implementation of the proposed FLSA changes that would have required employees to be compensated $47,476, at minimum, to remain in an exempt, monthly-paid status. Because we do not yet know if the proposed FLSA changes will be implemented or whether different changes to the current FLSA will occur, the University has decided to postpone the University implementation plan.

The Emory guiding principle in determining how to respond to the proposed FLSA changes has been that pay practices would remain consistent across the university. This means that the College, like all other Emory divisions, will be following the University’s postponement stance regarding raising staff salaries to the proposed new FLSA exempt minimum.

A final ruling on whether the Emory staff FLSA-related increases will occur is connected to the ultimate verdict with the proposed FLSA changes. If the final verdict is that the proposed FLSA changes are abandoned by the federal government, then the College will conduct an equity/market review of the positions that are currently in the “postponement” state to determine if, unrelated to FLSA, there is justification for salary adjustment. If such justification can be found, College HR will work with supervisors to make those adjustments.

Postdoc Salaries and the NIH’s New Starting Stipends

Although a federal judge has filed an injunction to stop the implementation of the proposed FLSA changes, the Federal National Institute of Health (NIH) has announced that, regardless of the injunction, they will raise the starting stipends of Postdoc salaries to the $47,476 threshold effective December 1, 2016.

The NIH also has offered a one-time supplement for NRSA grant recipients to meet the pay difference, although no specific guidance has yet been provided regarding pay for postdocs funded through non-NRSA avenues.  

Given this NIH stance, the University will move forward with increasing all full-time Postdoc salaries to $47,476. The College HR office will process those salary increases and include the College supplement where it has been requested. This is currently only relevant to Biology, Chemistry, Environmental Sciences, Mathematics and Computer Science, Physics and Psychology; however, all new fulltime postdoc hires will need to be hired at the new minimum so this change applies to all College departments and programs.

Because of the FLSA change postponement, we will be able to leave part-time postdocs in the monthly-paid status. Part-time postdoc status may change in the future depending upon the final ruling on the proposed FLSA changes. 

Emory Alerts & Inclement Weather

Stay Safe

Recent events at Ohio State University and the tornado warning last week remind us that our campus is not immune to threats of all kinds, and we need to take the Emory Alert system seriously. We count on you and your staff to be leaders in showing the students by example that we value the Emory warning system and will follow the recommendations when alerts are provided.

Inclement Weather

Please remind your department about the Emory Closing information/inclement weather hotline, 404-727-1234. Closings and delayed openings also will be posted to the main Emory web homepage, www.emory.edu. Please discuss with your department how you will distribute closing information throughout your staff should a closing occur. For more information regarding emergency preparedness and response, please see the Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response (CEPAR) website: http://emergency.emory.edu/

Holiday Schedule

The University will be open Dec. 27-29. In keeping with our College practice, chairs may decide whether it is reasonable to close your department during this time. If you decide to close your department, it is expected that someone from your department will check departmental messages — phone and e-mail — at least daily, so that anyone trying to reach your department can receive timely assistance.

Should you decide to close your department, each member of your staff must either take vacation leave, or work from home, meaning, in particular, that they must be accessible, and responsive to any appropriate requests. Anyone who will not be available must take vacation time. (Actual University holidays are: Friday, Dec. 23, Monday, Dec. 26, and the New Year’s Eve holiday Friday, Dec. 30.) If you have questions about this practice, contact Laura Papotto for assistance.

Holiday Wellness