Description of Assignment Groups

Basis for Procedure

This document describes the assignment groups used for persons who receive salaries or wages to perform services for the Research Foundation (RF). This document does NOT describe AmeriCorp, Fellow, Retiree, or Volunteer assignment groups.

Procedure Summary

Information about people who have working relationships with the RF are entered into the "People File" of the computerized business system. Anyone who has an assignment, including employees and nonemployees, is entered as an internal person. An assignment is used to appoint RF employees to the RF payroll. Costs associated with an assignment are distributed to one or more accounts via a labor schedule.

A person's assignment is a combination of the following information:

• organization
• job
• grade
• location
• employment category (e.g., full-time regular, full-time temporary, not an employee, part-time regular, and part-time temporary)
• assignment status (including, e.g., Active Assignment, SUNY, and SUNY Extra Service), and
• group.

  The group in the computerized business system defines the specific relationship that an internal-type person has with the RF. The Assignment Group is a significant component of the group information.

Assignment Group

The People Group flexfield in the computerized business system comprises three fields of information: Operating Location, Assignment Group, and Effort Reporting Status (i.e., exempt, nonexempt, or no effort reported). All internal people, both employees and non-employees, have an Assignment Group. Each assignment group used for persons who receive salaries or wages is described in more detail in the following blocks.

Employee Regular Related Policy

A regular RF appointment is a full-time or part-time assignment that is not a summer-only or extra-service.

Most RF employees are within the Employee Regular assignment group. They may cover short periods of time or may have open-ended termination dates.

Employee Summer Related Policy

Summer-only assignments are established to

• recognize the academic work schedule of colleges and universities,
• comply with the SUNY Board of Trustees' policy on academic year obligations, and
• comply with OMB Circular A-21 "Principles for Determining Costs Applicable to Grants, Contracts, and Other Agreements with Educational Institutions."

Conditions for Use

The summer-only employee is an employee whose appointment period is within the "summer period" as defined by the campus academic calendar, but also must be between May 1 and September 30. A summer-only appointment can only be used when all of the following conditions are met:

• The position is being established to reflect an operating location’s special needs during the summer months or for use in compensating an academic-year
  employee for sponsored program activity outside of the academic year.
• The employee is not currently employed by the Research Foundation in an ongoing position.
• There is no expectation that the position will continue during the academic year.
• The employee is not on the RF payroll in a regular appointment prior to the proposed summer-only appointment with the exceptions described under "Prior
  Regular Appointees" below.

Prior Regular Appointees

An employee appointed to the RF payroll through a regular appointment prior to the proposed summer-only appointment may be appointed to the summer-only appointment only if the appointee is a(n)

• SUNY faculty member on sabbatical whose partial SUNY salary is supplemented by a regular appointment on the RF payroll during the spring semester.
• SUNY employee appointed to extra-service on the RF payroll during the spring semester.
• RF student employee appointed to an Employee Undergraduate or Employee Graduate assignment group during the spring semester who is no longer
  eligible for a student assignment during the summer.

Appointment Length

A summer-only assignment is limited to four months. Summer-only assignments for SUNY faculty members with academic year obligations may be further limited by SUNY policy to a two-month appointment, except when approved for up to three months by the campus president or designee, provided that

• the period of proposed employment does not overlap any part of the academic-year obligation, and
• sponsor policy does not otherwise restrict or limit such employment.

Employee Undergraduate Related Policy

A full-time SUNY student employed on sponsored programs relating to his/her field of study. The student must be registered and actively engaged in a program of study leading to a degree.

Employee Graduate Related Policy

A full-time SUNY student employed on sponsored programs relating to his/her field of study. The student must be registered and actively engaged in a program of study leading to an advanced degree.

SUNY EE for IFR Related Policy

Income Fund Reimbursable (IFR) assignments are used for State University of New York (SUNY) employees who perform services on RF-administered sponsored projects while remaining on the State payroll. The IFR process enables the Research Foundation to reimburse SUNY for the costs of services performed by SUNY employees on RF-administered sponsored projects while the SUNY employees remain on the State payroll.

Those IFR people within the SUNY EE assignment group are SUNY employees, not RF employees, and are therefore not subject to Research Foundation policies and procedures.

Definitions

None

Related Information

Assigning Extra Service

Forms

None

Change History

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