Percent Effort on NIH K awards (p.s. to prior post on salary levels)

Some of you have or should have questions about this topic:

(1) Each agency specifies a minimum % full time equivalent (FTE) effort. The K candidate and sponsoring institution are required to agree that this % FTE will be guaranteed as K-related career development and research activities time. The sponsor must agree to hold the sponsoring institution responsible, and to intervene as needed (e.g., if a department chair assigns teaching or service obligations that make it impossible for this requirement to be fulfilled).

To be safe, I recommend stating that the K candidate's FTE will be 5% above the minimum set by the agency.

Somewhere prominent in the application (e.g., budget justification), this type of language can explain If Itthe situation.

Here the example is written with an assumption that NIDA requires 75% and that 5%+ would be 80%

I am able to commit a full 80% FTE to the proposed K01 career development award activities -- that is, 5% FTE more than NIDA stipulates as the minimum. Nonetheless, in fact, I plan to spend 100% FTE at the specified salary dollar amount -- unless there are unforeseen circumstances that require me to add to this salary income (e.g., unexpected family medical expenses). In any event, I can fully commit to the 80% FTE as required by NIDA, even if there is need for this type of salary supplementation.

This approach takes off the table an issue that sometimes surfaces.

(2) How do you get that extra money?

It depends. If you are clinician, you generally can optimize income for the resident % FTE by seeing patients and billing for them. Or, you go find a teaching gig, either within your department at the sponsoring institution, in another department, or in a totally different educational institution. Or, you work as Co-Investigator on some other PI's research project. Or, you become a private consultant, helping others with research and NIH grant writing, etc. (Here, become as clever, but more ethical, than Gurdijieff was when he tricked the Russian Army into thinking that their typewriters required major time-consuming repair and all he was doing was rewinding the typewriter ribbon for about two minutes time and effort. See GI Gurdjieff: "Meetings with Remarkable Men," started as manuscript in 1927, then translated by Orage and published in English in 1963).

More on Gurdijieff, if you are interested:
http://www.gurdjieff.org/owens2.htm 

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