The Graduate School
Faculty Development Program
The Faculty Development Program is part of the organized research program of The University of Texas at Austin. It provides semester-length leaves for tenured faculty members, and summer session leaves for tenure-track assistant professors. Funds for the Faculty Development Program are appropriated by the The University of Texas Board of Regents, and are administered in the Office of the Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies.
Faculty Research Assignments and Summer Research Assignments are awarded through a peer review process. Workshops are held each year to provide guidance in completing application forms for these awards.
Note: There is another mechanism for release time for tenured and tenure-track faculty. This is the Dean's Fellows Program, which is administered by the Executive Vice President and Provost. Any questions you have about the Dean's Fellows Program should be directed to your department chair.
We encourage you to check out these and other resources for faculty support at the university.
FACULTY RESEARCH ASSIGNMENTS (FRAs) provide tenured faculty members with the equivalent of one semester's salary (based on their academic base rate during the year of the award) so that they can devote full time to research. Only tenured associate and full professors may apply for FRAs.
SUMMER RESEARCH ASSIGNMENTS (SRAs) provide tenure-track assistant professors with the equivalent of two months' salary (based on the academic base rate during the year of the award) to enable the recipient to concentrate on research and writing during the summer session. Only tenure-track assistant professors are eligible for these awards. Applications from others will be returned.
Faculty Research Assignments and Summer Research Assignments provide ONLY salary for the applicant. They do not provide other types of support, such as wages for research assistants, research associated travel, equipment, supplies, etc. Those types of funds may be provided by Research Grants and Special Research Grants, which are available through the Office of the Vice President for Research. For further information about those grants, contact the Office of the Vice President for Research.
Complete printed applications that include the announcement of the competition; deadlines; description of the program; eligibility information; purpose of awards; relation to outside awards; amount, tenure and terms of the awards; method of payment; instructions for preparing your application; and a copy of the application can be obtained by contacting Maggie Keeshen (mkeeshen@mail.utexas.edu or 512-232-3608), or by visiting the individual links within this site. The actual application portion of the packet can be found by visiting the link called "Application forms" at http://www.utexas.edu/ogs/fdp/forms.html where the individual pages of the application are available in .pdf format.