Atrios: For those who don't know: your institution mostly can't ask anything specific from you for those 3 months and it also allows you to include "summer salary" in grant applications to genuinely supplement your income

I see it’s the time of year when some R1 TT faculty with good jobs will say “My employment contract only pays me for 9 months of the year; in the Summer I have to work but am not paid”. That is not the reason people are nominally on a 9mo clock. It’s an accounting fiction that is in fact a benefit.

For those who don't know: your institution mostly can't ask anything specific from you for those 3 months and it also allows you to include "summer salary" in grant applications to genuinely supplement your income

(If they do need you to show up to a meeting or something they will throw some token compensation at you)

For some folks maybe. I don’t get any token compensation for showing up for meetings in the summer.

Ask!

lol. Perhaps, but rarely such luck with our budget model and budget constraints. It would require some leverage which the preceding argument removes (if it’s really a year-long salary, as argued above, then they can claim our time for free).

When I was a TT R1 faculty member not only did they not pay me for my teaching labor in August but my last year there they took my summer research funds and refused to reimburse my research trip.

Seconded. I regularly do university business during the summer and there is no additional compensation. If I asked, I would get laughed out.

if the provost says 'can you be on this special committee that has to meet 3 times over the summer' would you not get a sweetener? i fully understand faculty do plenty of job-related stuff over the summer and not just research

lol no. Although in part because the med school (and other) faculty are on 12-month contracts and so many admins actually just think this entire concept of 9-month contracts is fictional.

Time to stand up to them! (This is what happens at other institutions I am not making this up)

For the record, it's June, and I'm in meetings all. the. time. The norm is to do less admininstrative work over the summer, but I'm increasingly convinced that's just because people travel and it's difficult to find meeting times...

My next meeting is with three grad students, how much money should I ask them for?

Ah just blow them off (joke but admin isn't specifically forcing this)

Lunch, mostly, in my experience. (For a meeting. Larger asks do get a bit more, sometimes. Though not on the one I’m currently handling.) The reality, tho is as the thread describes.

Having just chaired a very taxing two day meeting, I'm sorry to say they do not.

I am on a 9-month tenured contract and I don't think this is true. Our department chair can theoretically ask us to do anything at any time of year and we are expected to do it if it is a 'reasonable request'. I don't understand notional 9-month contracts. They seem like some BS to me.

We’ve had more faculty pushing back on required summer meetings without compensation. Admin has turned it into a corporation, so employees behave accordingly.

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