PTF Spring Contract Maintenance

Purpose:

To outline the college’s process for managing professional-track faculty (PTF) contracts that are expiring or beginning in the Spring semester of an academic year; i.e., typically relates to instructional faculty.

For general information about these contracts--their purpose, function, and related definitions and processes--please see the Professional-Track Faculty (PTF) Mass Transactions UT Workday webpage, especially the Overview, Important Reminders, and Workday processing sections, as they contain valuable information about contract maintenance, not just for mass processes.

Because of a significantly lower transaction volume in Spring versus Fall, COLA is reserving use of the Mass PTF processing for Fall semester only. Therefore, units are responsible for routing BPs in Workday to properly maintain their professional track faculty for the Spring semester.

The three main processes with which staff will engage are “renewal,” “inactivation,” and “reactivation.” Staff are responsible for ensuring that all affected faculty are either renewed, inactivated, or reactivated.

Relevant Definitions (for Spring process)

Contract Maintenance: the process of ensuring faculty who will be teaching in the Spring semester have the correct contract in place; and/or ensuring that faculty who taught in Fall, but are not teaching in Spring, are moved into the appropriate job profile.

Professional-Track Faculty (PTF): Formerly known as non-tenure-track (NTT) faculty; per HOP 2-2010 Faculty Titles, appointments to these faculty titles are (unless otherwise indicated):

not on the tenure track;
may be “short-term, two- or three-year fixed term, or two- or three-year rolling term;
“may be full- or part- time”; and
“shall terminate upon expiration of the stated period of appointment without notification of nonrenewal.”

Contract: in Workday, the mechanism which defines the time period of a professional-track faculty member’s active employment at UT

Contracts vs Offer Letters: In our common discourse, “offer letters,” are considered “contracts,” and we often use the two interchangeably. However, it is important to remember that in Workday, a contract is a specific component of managing professional track faculty appointments. Workday provides an opportunity to upload an offer letter as part of the contract process, but, in Workday, contracts and offer letters are distinct rather than interchangeable. (Standard offer letter templates.)

Expiring Contract: for the purposes of this process, a contract ending on 12/31/YY

Reactivation: the process of returning an inactive faculty member to active teaching, with a contract beginning on 1/1/YY

Renewal: the process of extending a faculty member’s contract from Fall through the Spring semester.

Inactivation: the process of transitioning a faculty member who taught in Fall, but is not teaching in Spring, into a new, inactive (F-INA) job profile.

Termination: Workday definition; the person has no plans to teach again at UT or the unit has no intention of having the person teach for them again within the next three years/indefinite future.

RPT0976: “Faculty Positions Missing Contracts – RPT0976”; Workday report that determines if any faculty are missing a contract

RPT0240: “Faculty Contracts Mass Process Template - RPT0240”; Workday report; useful for identifying expiring contracts for a given sup org/subordinate orgs (i.e. the whole college or department, etc.)

RPT0813: “Faculty - Not Active Jobs - RPT0813”; Workday report used to identify current inactive faculty for a given sup org & its subordinate orgs.

Modified Service: Hiring a retired faculty member to come back to teach.

Process:

There are three sets of actions units will need to take to maintain their professional-track faculty; each unit should work through all three processes, but they will be separated here for ease of explanation.

Deadline for submitting Renewals and Reactivations: December 1

Deadline for submitting Inactivations: December 31

Checking Contracts for Professional-track Faculty:

COLA HR will run RPT0976 for the college. For faculty with missing contracts, COLA HR will work with units to ensure one of 3 outcomes:
1. the appropriate contract is added (if active and continuing)
2. the faculty member is inactivated (if not active and continuing)
3. the faculty member is terminated (if not active and not continuing)

Check for Expiring Contracts:

COLA HR will run RPT0240 for the whole college, post an edited version to Box, and make it accessible to department staff.
Unit staff will use MS Excel Online to access RPT0240 and indicate whether their faculty with expiring contracts will be renewed or inactivated.
1. The exception to this is faculty on modified service. Because modified service faculty are in a fixed term job profile, they must be either renewed or terminated; inactivation is not an option.
Unit staff will complete the appropriate BP in Workday for each faculty member with an expiring contract:
1. Renewals: Will either use Add Contract or Change Job process.
  1. If only changing end date: use Add Contract process.
    1. Obtain signed offer letter.
    2. Upload this to the faculty’s Workday profile
      ptf faculty profile
      1. Go to Personal section>Documents
        Workday Documents tab
      2. Click on Add button:
      3. Select the signed offer letter for upload and include a descriptive comment, such as “Spring 20YY offer letter.”
    3. Then follow the Maintain PTF Faculty Contracts WIG.
      1. Note: Although this will result in uploading the offer letter twice, having the contract added first to Documents appears to be the only way COLA HR can view the contract during WD approvals process.
  2. If changing SWH or compensation: use Change Job; Renew Non-Tenure Track Faculty WIG
    1. Attach the signed offer letter to the first “page” of the BP.
2. Inactivation: Follow the WIG instructions.
  1. Per above, cannot be used for faculty on modified service.
3. If appropriate: Ending Job: (if job is not primary) Follow WIG instructions; or Termination: 1) Termination WIG; 2) Complete Termination Questionnaire WIG

Check on Inactive Faculty:

COLA HR will run RPT0813 for the college, post an edited version to Box, and make it accessible to department staff.
Department staff will use Excel Online to access RPT0813 and indicate whether their inactive faculty will be reactivated for appointment beginning 1/1/YY. All of these faculty will either be reactivated, remain inactive, or need to be terminated/have job ended.
1. Reactivation (Workday “Change Job” BP required);
  1. When reactivating faculty, Workday will unfortunately allow you to route forward the BP without updating to the appropriate job profile or updating the scheduled weekly hours. Routing your BP forward without making these updates will result in the BP being returned.
  2. Be sure to attach the signed offer letter to the first “page” of the BP.
2. Remain inactive: no action required!
3. Termination (Workday BP required).
  1. Proceed with termination when there is no reasonable expectation that the inactive faculty member will return teach for UT; if you know they will be teaching for another unit in the upcoming semester (but not yours again), wait till the other job is in place in Workday and then process a Switch Primary Job and End Job for your dept.

General Follow-up:

Staff ought to review the remainder of their roster [look at the Members of unit’s top-level JM sup org (Manager should be Chair/Director)] for other faculty who might need changes to their contracts or appointments and proceed with the appropriate business process as above.

Related Policies and Key Reminders:

COLA Offer Letter/PTF Appointment Requirements:

Should use approved SWH/FTE appointments [listed below]
Offer letters must specify teaching assignments corresponding with these guidelines.
Deviations from these guidelines must have approval via the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs on file.
- In most situations, deviations from these guidelines must be specified and explained in offer letters.
Compensation for appointments above 3 courses or 12 contact hours, or appointments that would otherwise bring an employee above a total of 40 SWH across all jobs, requires an approved Instructional Overload Form. (see wiki page)

SWH/FTE appointments for professional track faculty:

**Note: Classroom contact hours and FTEs refer to a single semester

3 to 5 classroom contact hours: 13.32 SWH/33.3% FTE

6-8 classroom contact hours: 26.68 SWH/66.7% FTE

9-12 classroom contact hours: 40 SWH/66.7% FTE

Tips:

To view existing contracts in Workday, from the faculty member’s profile page, select “Actions,” and choose “Employee Contracts” from the drop-down menu.
In most instances, when you are completing these BPs, the last step that will launch is the “maintain contract” sub-process, and it will give you the option to “open” or “skip.” Open it!
- There will be instances when no changes are needed. In these cases, follow the instructions that are provided in bold, within the sub-process, to cancel the contract step. For example, if someone has a contract for 8/16-5/15, and you are increasing SWH effective 1/1, no changes to the contract would be needed, because you are not adjusting the contract at all, just the terms of the appointment within the existing contract (As mentioned, in Workday speak, an active contract is primarily a simple indicator that a faculty member is actively teaching). So in this example, you would follow the instructions provided as part of the contract step to cancel the sub-process.
- When you know that no changes are needed, “skipping” rather than “opening” the contract is an option, but it denies you the opportunity to review the contract to ensure things are as they ought to be. Best practice is, therefore, to “Open” the “maintain contract” sub-process, and then cancel it if no action is needed.
- Important Note: when no changes are necessary, you must ensure that “maintain contract” WD sub-process is either canceled or skipped, otherwise it creates errors for the Business Process.

Liberal Arts Resource Center