Announcing the Faculty Reinvestment Program

March 12, 2010

Members of the Rutgers Community:

As Rutgers seeks to achieve its highest ambitions in education and research, the university must face the challenge of balancing experience and self-renewal in a difficult budget environment.

In order to continue to advance our teaching, scholarly, and service missions, maintain our attractiveness to the most capable students, and compete effectively for research support, we must constantly invest in our faculty, bringing new disciplinary perspectives, approaches, and methodologies to our schools and departments. Unfortunately, the global economic difficulties and severe cutbacks in state support, including the recent midyear rescission in our state funding, have substantially reduced our resources and greatly curtailed our ability to recruit the very best new faculty to the university.

To help alleviate this difficulty, the university, in agreement with the Rutgers Chapter of the AAUP-AFT, is establishing a one-time program on all campuses that will offer some of our longest-serving faculty members a lump-sum payment in exchange for voluntarily relinquishing their positions at the university. This program, which will be offered for a specified period of time, holds the potential to facilitate the hiring of new and additional faculty on all of our campuses.

The Faculty Reinvestment Program is available only to faculty who meet all of the following criteria: they must be tenured, full-time faculty; they must be members of the Alternate Benefit Program; they must be at least 65 years of age and have at least 25 years of service to Rutgers as of June 30, 2010; and they must not have already signed a written agreement to resign or retire. Rutgers faculty who participate in the PERS state pension system are not eligible to participate in this program. Eligible faculty who elect to relinquish tenure and vacate their position effective July 1, 2010, will be provided a lump sum equal to 2 percent of their annual base salary for every year of service up to 25 years, plus 5 percent of their annual base salary for every additional full year of service. (As an example, a faculty member with 40 years of service would receive a payment equivalent to 125 percent of that individual’s base annual salary.) Every faculty line that is vacated in this program will be made available for the respective school to fill with a new full-time faculty member, as resources permit.

There will be up-front costs as Rutgers makes these lump-sum payments; however, the program will in time save us money while these lines are vacant and where senior faculty are replaced by junior appointees. Most important, the Faculty Reinvestment Program will enable Rutgers to reinvest its resources in new faculty members who work on the emerging boundaries of their disciplines and will bring new expertise to the university.

Over the next several days, information regarding this program will be sent to all eligible faculty. Additional details about this program, including answers to frequently asked questions, will soon be available on the University Human Resources website. University Human Resources will also arrange for representatives of TIAA/CREF to be available for financial counseling; information on scheduling appointments will be posted on the University Human Resources website. Should you have questions about the program, please contact your dean. Faculty may also contact the AAUP-AFT for further information.

Thank you for your interest in the Faculty Reinvestment Program.

Richard L. McCormick
President
Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey