Revised 12-6-2024

What is the Incentive Program for Researchers (IPR)?

  • A program to provide tenured and tenure-track faculty, who are successful in obtaining extramural funding, with financial incentives to encourage their grant seeking activity to continue to grow the research program.  The IPR mechanism provides extra pay for faculty working on a grant during the academic year, and should be used for all TT faculty to be paid from a grant whether or not they are PIs or Co-PIs.
  • IPRs will serve as a reward for faculty who bring in sponsored research dollars and will encourage others to participate in competing for sponsored.

 

Who is eligible to participate in the research incentive program?

  • Tenured or tenure-track faculty who are conducting academic year work on an external grant.
  • Participation in IPR is not mandatory.

 

How does the IPR program work?

  1. A faculty member chooses to write a portion of his/her Academic Year (AY) salary (as well as summer salary), into the grant application, as allowed by the funding
    1. To qualify for the IPR, the grant/contract must have funds which are budgeted for Academic Year salary.
    2. Incentive payments will be 100% of the net amount recovered and available for distribution (i.e. if you charge your grant $10,000 for the research portion of your appointment in AY24, you will receive an incentive of $10,000 spread across your monthly paychecks). Note that if you’re using grant funds for a course release, the cost of course coverage will be subtracted from the total charged to the grant to determine the net recovered and amount of incentive.
    3. Faculty may receive incentive pay up to 25% of their MSU base salary (this includes IPR and any additional compensation from private sponsored grants).
  2. The grant is funded (yay!) and the faculty member is given the opportunity to participate in the IPR program.
  3. Discuss your proposal with the Project Development and Grants Specialist (Elizabeth Bird) when planning a grant proposal which includes IPR payment, whether or not you intend to use grant funds for course release(s) (see course release policy).
  4. Note that in planning your budget, payroll will also charge your grant the proportional benefits (i.e. if you charge the grant 20% of your appointment, your grant must also be able to bear 20% of the benefits of your salary). Benefits when salary is charged to grants are typically around 42% of faculty salaries.
  5. One month (ideally) before you want the grant to start being charged for your salary, work with Elizabeth Bird to complete the IPR forms. These forms and policy information can be found on the MSU Office of Sponsored Programs website.
  6. Dr. Bird will work with the departments' Business Operations Managers to complete the paperwork required to charge the grant for your salary and institute your IPR payments.
  7. Receive payments with each pay period as planned each semester.

  8. If the grant budget was written in good faith anticipating past average raises (generally 2%) but the PI's raise exceeds that which is budgeted, or the replacement cost exceeds 10% of their base salary, the PI may use their budgeted course release figure.  However, faculty unable to cover the full replacement cost (current NTT salary + 10% administrative fee), are unable to take any IPR salary from the grant.

 

Incentive Program for Researchers Example Calculations - No course release example; grant effort at 15%:

AY base salary = $70,500

$10,575 in salary charged to the Grant. This equals $10,575 in State salary savings.

$10,575 returned to you across your regular biweekly paychecks over the time period covered byt the ipr.

 

Course release example; grant effort at 20%, which can be equivalent to 2 course releases if you wish:

AY base salary = $90,000

One course release = 10% of base (EHHD policy, applicable to external grants), so you budget $9,000 each because in this instance you want and have permission for 2 course releases.

For the 2 course releases, $18,000 in salary is charged to the Grant in FY2022. This equals $18,000 in State salary savings.

Department deducts the cost of a replacement instructor, at $16,296 for 2 courses ($8,148/course).  [Note: this amount rises each year and includes 10% of the instructor cost added for transaction/hiring costs.]

 

  $18,000

- $16,296

=   $1,704

 $1,704 returned to you across your biweekly paychecks.