Faculty Thresholds

This page discusses faculty thresholds and how they are established when a faculty moves forward to a new fiscal year.

Time Thresholds

Time thresholds for outside professional activities are established by the Academic Personnel Policy (APM-025, APM-671) and represent the maximum amount of time a faculty member may spend on outside professional activities during a fiscal year. Campuses and departments may set lower thresholds based on local guidelines.

Standard policy maximums include:

• Academic-year faculty: 312 hours (39 days)
• Fiscal-year faculty: 384 hours (48 days)
• Health Science faculty: 384 hours (48 days)
• Exceed Time Threshold: If you exceed your time threshold, you will need to submit an Exceed Time Threshold prior approval form. 

Important: Your applicable time threshold may be lower than the policy maximum, depending on your campus or department’s requirements.

Earnings Thresholds

Earnings thresholds are established by the Academic Personnel Policy (APM) and represent the earnings a Health Science faculty member may earn on an outside professional activity during a fiscal year. 

Standard policy:

• Earnings: Maximum annual threshold up to $40,000 or 40% of the fiscal year base salary (scale 0), whichever is greater, based on the individual faculty member's rank and step.
• Exceeded Earnings: Faculty will need to deposit all income that exceeds the earnings approval threshold into the Plan (see APM-671-8-c) with the exception of income earned from Category III activities (see APM - 671-10-a-(3) for a description of Category III activities) and certain other activities listed in APM - 671-10-b.
• Exceed Earnings Threshold: Faculty may request to increase their earnings threshold by submitting a request to the Exceed Earnings Threshold form.

Important: Your applicable earnings threshold may be lower than the policy maximum, depending on your campus or department’s requirements.

Threshold Copied to the next Fiscal Year

When you advance to the next fiscal year for the first time, UC OATS automatically carries over your current time threshold. A confirmation message appears to let you know this has occurred. Your time threshold may be updated later by your campus UC OATS administrator when refreshed faculty data is uploaded into the system.