Your department is allocated $350 per tenure-line and ongoing instructor position in the department, excluding faculty in endowed positions who have discretionary funds available to them from endowments to cover professional travel and other such expenses.
Departments may allocate departmental travel funds in ways that best meet the professional travel needs of faculty in that department. Some departments treat the annual allocations as belonging to individual continuing faculty members. Other departments pool some or all funds to support particular faculty travel needs in a given year, including support of visiting faculty, or to support departmental travel needs such as faculty recruitment or attendance at a curricular conference.
The annual travel fund allocation is loaded in account line 91210 of the department operating budget (40xx). Funds are then transferred to the Dept Travel carryover project (1841xx). This is reflected as an expense in the account line 91210 of the operating budget and revenue in the account line 90210 in the Dept Travel carryover project.
Funds are not allowed to accumulate in excess of three times the annual allocation. The process will work as described below for a department of five continuing full-time faculty members for a current budget year:
Budget year 1 = two years prior to current budget year
Budget year 2 = prior budget year
Budget year 3 = current budget year
Baseline: 5 x $350 = $1,750 for budget year 1, plus 5 x $350 = $1,750 for budget year 2 = $3,500 for both years.
Scenario 1: If the accumulated travel funds at the close of budget year 2 are $3,500 or below, the full amount from the department’s faculty travel transfer account #91210 for budget year 3 will be credited to the designated travel fund (SpeedChart) revenue account #90210. In this example, 5 x $350 = $1,750.
Scenario 2: If the accumulated travel funds at the close of budget year 2 are above $3,500 (example: $4,000), the amount credited to the department’s faculty travel transfer account #91210 for budget year 3 will be the difference between the funds already accumulated and the ceiling of the sum of the three most recent annual allocations (in this example, 5 x $350 + 5 x $350 + 5 x $350 = $5,250), so the designated travel fund would receive $1,250 ($5,250 - $4,000). Any funds remaining in the budget for the department faculty travel transfer account #91210 (in this example, $500) will be transferred to University Enrichment Committee (UEC) program funds to support faculty departments.
Because of the impact of COVID-19 on travel, the three-year annual allocation was temporarily increased by $200 per faculty member in 2021-22 and that temporary additional funding carries forward in 2022-23 and 2023-24.
Code (charge) all travel expenditures to the designated travel fund (SpeedChart) using the 64xxx series of accounts. Do not code travel expenditures directly to your departmental budget since the entire budget, subject to the above caps, are transferred to your designated travel fund.
Academic operating funds from other portions of the budget should not be diverted to support faculty travel.
The staff in the Office of Finance are available to assist faculty with questions about travel, grant, and donor gift funds. For more information please contact us at finance@pugetsound.edu or the Associate Academic Dean’s office.