Guidelines for Faculty Offset Research Credit Hour Program

The Faculty Offset Research Credit Hour (FORCH) Program is an incentive program that is optional for any CSU faculty members who attract external grants to support their scholarly work. This program is available to all faculty members inclusive of those on 9-month contracts as well as 12-month contracts. The program allows a faculty member to receive a supplemental payment for research offset on top of their regular contract salary.

Any CSU faculty member may select to charge an externally-funded grant for assigned research workload credit hours.

Conditions

• (a) Participation in the FORCH program does not change faculty current workload and participation in the program cannot be used as a reason for a reassignment of the current workload and/or for the future workload negotiation. The colleges will assign faculty workload according to their approved workload guidelines.
• (b) the faculty will receive a FORCH payment in addition to their institutional base salary
• (c) the FORCH payment will be proportional to the number of credits that faculty release. A maximum of 6 credit hours can be purchased per academic year.
• (d) the FORCH payment will be proportional to the faculty member’s base salary.
• (e) the FORCH payment is not a part of faculty base salary and cannot be used for calculation of summer salary or any other calculations of benefits based on base salary.
• (f) the request for FORCH program must be submitted every semester/year; there will be no automatic continuations. (g) department chair and college dean must certify that research credit hours are available for buyout.
• (h) the FORCH program must be confirmed and approved by the Office of Research.
• (i) research credits used as cost share on external grants cannot be used for FORCH program.
• (j) FORCH program can be used independently or in parallel with course release program. There is no FORCH payment for course releases.
• (k) Faculty will receive 75% of the released salary as a FORCH payment.

Submitting a Request & Timeline

To submit a request, send an email to sprscontracts@csuohio.edu with the subject line “FORCH Program.” The email should contain:

• Your name
• Grant account number
• Semester the faculty is requesting payment
• Number of Research Credit Hours you are buying that semester

The deadline for Fall semester is November 15, and the deadline for Spring semester is April 15.

Questions regarding the program should be directed to either Roman Kondratov, AVP for Research, r.kondratov@csuohio.edu (216-687-5171), or Teri Kocevar, Director of SPRS, m.kocevar@csuohio.edu (216-687-3675).