Emeritus status - Ladder faculty and some non-ladder instructional faculty may be eligible for emeritus status. This is active employee status for life, including active netIDs and email, normally conferred if one is either retiring from Yale, or leaving Yale and are also retirement eligible. (Refer to the Faculty Handbook, section XXII, Retirement and Emeritus/Emeriti Titles.)
- OFAS staff will transition the faculty member to emeritus status. This includes a bi-annual review of several voting parties, including Yale Corporation each December and June.
- The “default” FTE for an emeritus faculty member is 15% FTE. This does not have any official allocation of effort.
- Emeritus faculty retain University systems access and privileges, including email, NetID, and library and other online resources.
- Some Emeritus faculty may still be active on campus, and will receive regular compliance and training notifications via Workday Learning. If an emeritus faculty member receives a training notification, but informs the department that they are retired but not active, please forward that communication to learning@yale.edu, and the appropriate team member will respond.
“Retired” vs. “Retired - Active” in Workday
Employees – staff or faculty – who are “Retired” are inactive and do not have active netIDs, email, or Yale ID cards. The “Retired” status means that they are eligible for retiree benefits.
Employees who are ”Retired - Active” have been terminated, provided with retiree status for the purpose of enrolling in retiree benefits, and rehired for part-time work thus becoming active employees. Retired - Active should not work more than half-time (50% FTE). Else they risk loosing their retiree benefits.
Emeritus Benefits
If the Emeritus faculty member is 50% or greater FTE, they are no longer eligible for retiree health benefits and must enroll in active benefits. They will also not be able to take out-of-service withdrawal from a 403(b) if applicable, in-service withdrawals only. Raising the FTE of a retired faculty member is essentially taking them out of retirement and placing them back as an active employee with benefits.
Paying an Emeritus Faculty Member to Teach a Course
Sometimes an emeritus faculty member is asked to teach a course at Yale on a short-term basis to cover a vacancy in a given department. To do this, they do not need a secondary appointment to teach as their emeritus primary appointment will suffice; but they should be sent an official letter indicating the course, term, and compensation for this work. After receiving the letter, department administrators will need to adjust their compensation in Workday.
Procedure:
1) Search for the faculty member in Workday.
2) Review the FTE, Annual Work Period (AWP), and Disbursement Plan Period (DPP) to determine if they align with the teaching period.
a) If any of these need to be changed, submit a Job Change. Reference the Workday guide, Job Changes for Academics, section titled, “Change Other Appointment Details”. The Job Change will also allow adding or changing the compensation as the last step.
b) If these items align, but the compensation is either empty or incorrect, submit a Request Compensation Change. Reference the Workday guide, Manage Compensation (Academic).
Paying an Emeritus Faculty Member from 9-over-9 funds
Emeritus faculty may use 9-over-9 funds for summer or academic year salary, subject to the annual maximum of up to three months of salary, and only as long as they are research active and externally funded. Use of 9-over-9 funds after retirement is not automatic and requires an annual request.
Approval Process:
- Requests must be approved by the department chair and the school dean.
- Final review and approval by the Vice Provost for Research is required: vpr@yale.edu
- Requests are reviewed annually alongside:
- Research program review to confirm research activity
- Research Professor or Senior Research Scientist reappointment (as applicable)
- Space assignment (if applicable)
Procedure (payments from 9-over-9 only):
To pay funds from the 9-over-9 account, payments may be made via “Period Activity Pay” via the Summer Compensation Process.
No job / FTE changes are needed in Workday for this case.
(If there is additional funding / grant funding in addition to the 9-over-9, contact OFAS for guidance)