Reimbursement for Professional Development Expenses

[See the Intranet's Accounting section for additional procedural details.]

Annual Law Faculty Allocation for Professional Organization Membership, Academic Travel, Books and Specialized Computer Equipment and Software
(Effective July 1, 2009)

Membership in bar and other professional organizations is necessary to maintain a high level of academic and professional vitality.* Moreover, because New Mexico is remote from other law schools, academic, governmental, and bar forums, faculty members may need to travel to attend bar and other professional and academic meetings within New Mexico, throughout the United States, and, sometimes, outside the United States. The School of Law encourages faculty to join professional organizations, including the State Bar of New Mexico, and to participate in academic meetings and conferences that will assist them in developing their teaching and scholarship. Faculty members may also need to have access to non-standard computer equipment or software to facilitate their professional development and travel.

*Bar dues for one jurisdiction which is required to teach in the Clinic will be covered by the Clinic budget and will not be charged to individual professional development accounts.

Policy

Because resources are not unlimited, the School of Law must prioritize spending related to faculty professional development. Therefore, each faculty member will be allocated an annual amount to cover such expenditures associated with professional development. This policy shall apply to all full-time tenured and tenure-track faculty, and any full-time legal research and writing instructor. This policy does not affect expenditures reimbursed by grant or contract funding or provided with professorship funds.

Allocation Amount

Qualifying Expenses

Ordinarily each faculty member is in the best position to make a determination of the value of any given expenditure to his or her personal development and the school’s mission. Thus, it will be the decision of each faculty member as to how to spend his/her faculty spending allocation on professional organizations, academic travel, books, and non-standard computer equipment and software. Such expenditures will be limited by the principle that spending be strictly related to the School of Law’s educational and research missions, and any tangible goods or licenses paid for by this allocation will become university property.

Procedures and Guidelines

Expenditures of the nature covered by this policy made by the Law School on behalf of members of the law faculty will be limited to the annual allocation provided to each faculty member for these purposes.

All requests for reimbursement for bar, professional and academic memberships, travel, and books shall be provided directly to the School of Law’s accountant. The School of Law will continue to reimburse travel only at the lowest available coach airfare and housing prices at the meeting (or similar) hotel. Per diem and mileage will be paid at the rate established by the University.

Expenditures on non-standard computer equipment or software must be made through official university purchasing channels to take advantage of commodity pricing contracts and discounts. Purchase of non-standard equipment and software must be initiated by and made through the School of Law’s IT department which will then charge the cost of the equipment and maintenance for one year against the faculty spending allotment. For example, if the faculty member wishes to have a personal printer the IT Department will purchase the printer and enough toner for one full year, so as to better capture the cost of the purchase within current law school budgeting. The IT Department will have discretion to limit equipment and software to ensure compatibility with existing law school equipment, operating systems and networks, and such purchases will, of course, remain university property should you leave the employ of the School of Law. Allowing purchase of non-standard computer equipment or software under this policy should be viewed as a pilot program to provide greater faculty autonomy with reasonable costs to the School of Law.

Account Monitoring

It will be up to each faculty member to monitor his/her funds. An Excel spreadsheet template will be provided to each faculty member to assist them with monitoring his/her allocation balance. If a faculty member is uncertain, he/she should contact the law school accountant for guidance as to remaining funds; however, faculty should recognize that such requests impose a burden on the law school accountant, and faculty members should endeavor not to rely on the accountant to monitor accounts for them. The policy will be easier to continue if faculty members demonstrate understanding about the many burdens already borne by the accountant and are respectful of the increased burdens that are imposed by this “faculty autonomy” model of monitoring professional development expenses.

Faculty accounts are also subject to routine monitoring by the dean and staff to insure that public moneys are expended for public purposes.

Allocations Shall Not Carry Forward

Amounts allocated under this policy do not carry forward from year to year. Balances not spent in one year will not be added to the professional organization and travel reimbursement account in the following year. Faculty members on leave to teach at another institution will ordinarily be expected to get reimbursed for these kinds of expenses from their host schools, and allotments will be awarded only pro rata for their time in residence. For example, if a faculty member spends one semester of the academic year visiting at another school, the faculty member will ordinarily obtain only one-half of a full-year faculty allotment.

The dean understands that unexpected opportunities and needs can arise, and that it is difficult to plan for them particularly when they occur at the end of a fiscal year. A faculty member who exhausts his/her account may seek extraordinary relief from the dean. For example, Congressional committees sometimes invite witnesses on short notice and rarely pay travel costs. Such extraordinary requests will be regarded with strict scrutiny, however, because the annual faculty allotment is allocated on a fair and equal basis. Where requests for extraordinary funding are necessary, faculty are asked to make them as far in advance of the expenditure as possible. Until the faculty member learns otherwise, he/she should presume that the dean’s answer will be negative. Tight budgetary times call for careful stewardship of the School of Law’s limited resources. If such extraordinary expenditures are allowed, the faculty member should presume that they will be deducted from the faculty member’s allotment for the following year.

Kevin K. Washburn
Dean, School of Law

Addendum July 27, 2010

[Addendum policy will remain in force in FY2012-2013 per Dean Washburn]

Dear Colleagues — we are working on a new initiative to promote our faculty’s scholarly work by posting it on the Social Science Research Network (SSRN). Ernesto Longa has been working to guide all of us in this effort and he is willing to work with you directly. Posting our scholarship on the SSRN will make our scholarship more available to other researchers and is consistent with the goals of making our wisdom available to all. Our new initiative will involve a regular newsletter sent to all SSRN law school registrants and perhaps even our alumni.

There are several reasons for doing this. First, our work will be read and cited more and therefore our ideas will have a greater impact on the world. Most of us are performing this work because we want to change the world with the power of our ideas. This will help us do that. Second, the Legislature and Regents are frequently asking about “faculty work load” and I am asked over and over to provide evidence. We are a very productive faculty, in scholarship and in many other ways. We capture some of our productivity very successfully. See, e.g., our bar passage rate! But other productivity is not well documented. We need objective indicia of the importance, quality, and quantity of our scholarly output. SSRN can give us that. Third, we need to work in a systematic way to elevate our scholarly footprint and to let the world know how much important work we are doing. Our school is currently ranked a lowly 134th (!) among law schools on the SSRN, which vastly underestimates our faculty’s scholarly impact. One way of demonstrating scholarly impact is through citations and downloads on the SSRN. We should be able to increase that number.

Now let me offer a caution. The SSRN is imperfect in many ways. And it is only one data point. But it is something. And almost any scholarly essay or book chapter can be posted there. For a couple of examples of items other than formal law review articles, see the following book chapter for Liz Rapaport (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1411288) and the prologue to Chris Fritz’s terrific scholarly achievement American Sovereigns http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1120409. I want to encourage you to participate.

Your participation in this new venture is entirely voluntary. In order to encourage your participation on SSRN by posting your scholarly works there, I am offering a supplement of $250 to your faculty travel/research allocation next year for the first new article you post on SSRN. If you post a second article, I will grant another $250 supplement, up to a total of $500. If you wish to participate and are uncertain as to how to begin, please reach out to Ernesto Longa. He can post your article for you. Thank you for your consideration.

Kevin K. Washburn
Dean & Professor of Law