All members of the Duke community who are serving in any paid capacity on a project must be listed as project personnel. The budget should clearly describe the proposed effort of every person, or position, for which salary is requested. Sponsors may ask that effort be described either in terms of academic, summer, or calendar-year months. Others want effort described in percentages. When instructions are not explicit, such as in some foundation applications, the budget justification should clearly describe the contributed effort of every salaried project staff member.

Requested salaried must be supported by basic salary information. However, generally speaking, a strong justification will focus on how the project will be accomplished with the proposed personnel.

Only Duke personnel may appear as salaried persons in a project budget. Those not on the Duke payroll may be consultants, recipients of honoraria, or affiliated with an institution which will be receiving a subaward from Duke if the project is funded.

If personnel are contributing effort to the project for which they do not expect to be reimbursed, they should still be listed as project personnel. Their effort should be described just as the effort of paid personnel, and their contributions clearly described in the budget justification.

Faculty : Postdoctoral Associates : Professional and Technical Staff : Graduate Students : Undergraduate Students :
Administrative and Clerical Staff : Supplementary Pay for Faculty and Monthly Staff

Faculty Members
Faculty members may request academic year salary support or supplement their nine-month salary with up to three months of summer support. For each summer month, they may seek funding for one/ninth of their nine-month salary based upon the salary of the previous academic year. Summer salary supplements may be paid for work performed in May, June, July, and August.

If a faculty member is working on several sponsored projects, care must be taken to ensure that no more than 100% of effort is committed to the aggregate of all projects and other university responsibilities.

NOTE: Some agencies place restrictions on the amount of time they will support a faculty member during a given year and on the amount of salary they will pay. For examples, generally, NSF will only support two summer months, rather than three and no academic months, and NIH caps the total salary a faculty member may receive.

Post-doctoral Associates
Post-doctoral associates may be hired on research grants on a full-time or part-time basis.

Professional and Technical Staff
Other professionals such as technicians or programmers may be hired on a full or part-time basis.

GAP 200.310

Graduate Students
Graduate students may be hired on research grants as full-time or part-time research assistants. The compensation of graduate students on a research project must reflect an employer-employee relationship. Consequently, all payments are considered wages and are taxable income. Tuition and fees may not appear as separate line items on a research project. See GAP 200.310 (above) for a discussion of tuition and fees on research grants.

Fellowships and Training Projects: As stipulated by the sponsor, stipends, tuition, and fees may be requested.

NOTE: NIH has issued guidelines which restrict payments to graduate students to an amount equal to the maximum amount allowed for a first-year postdoctoral employee at the same institution performing comparable work.

Undergraduate Students
Undergraduate students may work on grants and are usually hired as bi-weekly employees. Undergraduate workloads are necessarily limited to less than 20 hours per week and effort is usually described in hours.

Administrative and Clerical Staff
Administrative and Clerical Staff may be supported by sponsored projects under very limited circumstances.

Supplementary Pay

Faculty: Normally, faculty members should not receive supplementary pay, that is, remuneration for additional work performed during their regular, 9-month appointment term, since they are already being paid for full-time service (100% effort). Payments for additional work during that period will usually be substitutive rather than supplementary.

In unusual circumstances, particularly when a department other than the principal investigator's primary appointment is involved, he or she may request permission from the Provost, with the approval of the appropriate dean, to receive reimbursement from grant funds above his or her regular salary. This policy has been invoked when faculty are involved in special training programs for non-Duke scientists conducted on campus.

Monthly Staff: Grants may not be used to augment the salaries of Duke staff. Policy does allow monthly employees to receive supplementary pay if they perform short- term tasks, conducted outside their work schedules, which are not related to their primary jobs, although this rarely occurs as part of funded projects.