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A faculty member who receives external funding to cover part of their regular salary (usually to do research), and that funding is routed through UT Austin, will need to be 'released' from the Instructional Budget (a.k.a. Release Time). A faculty member’s Release Time request is final-approved at the college level (COLA). There are different leave types that may include a partial or full release from the instructional budget; you can navigate to the appropriate leave type to see the applicable leaves process. This page only pertains specifically to when and how to release a faculty member from the Instructional Budget.
Relevant Definitions:
Instructional Budget (IB): for purposes of this process, the IB is the budgeted account (s) from which tenured or tenure-track (TTT) faculty salaries for the an academic unit (s) are paid.
Return Rule: A requirement related to certain research-related faculty awards (e.g. CRFs) in which a faculty member is released from teaching but remains on the instructional budget; specifies that when the faculty member’s award period is over, they will return to their normal work hours and teaching load in COLA for a required amount of time: 2 semesters of 'normal service’ are required for every 1 semester of award time given.
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