The deadline for faculty to decide whether they wish to request additional funds for their retirement packages has been extended from Dec. 14 to Jan. 30, Provost Peter Lange confirmed Monday.
Lange announced Oct. 23 that the University would create a central fund that deans can include in retirement packages of faculty who meet the Rule of 75—their age and their years of service must sum to at least 75—who commit to retiring by June 30, 2011. School of Medicine and School of Nursing faculty are not eligible for central funds.
“The deans have said that given the number of faculty and the nature of the conversations, they would like the deadline to be extended to the 30th of January,” Lange said.
The funds would come from the operating budget and would be loaned to the deans. Schools can repay the money over five years, Lange said.
Eligible faculty who choose to retire will discuss their options with their deans to determine the details of their packages and the amount of additional funding they will receive, he said. Central funds will be distributed in a lump sum with the packages.
Lange said the move is “not fundamentally budgetary,” and instead hopes to allow faculty to retire whose plans had been derailed by the recession.
The new incentive will also allow schools to recruit and hire new faculty members, he added.
The University’s average turnover rate has dropped from about 15 percent annually to about 8 percent, Executive Vice President Tallman Trask said in previous interviews.
As of last week, 23 Trinity College of Arts and Sciences department chairs could not identify anyone in their departments who may be interested in retiring or had expressed interest in the incentive.
Also last week, Tom Katsouleas, dean of the Pratt School of Engineering, Bruce Kuniholm, dean of the Sanford School of Public policy, and George McLendon, dean of the faculty of Arts & Sciences, said they had not yet discussed the incentive in depth with members of their faculty.
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