2025 Summer Pay Plan

January 7, 2025 / Faculty/Staff Highlights

I write today to share the 2025 Summer Pay Plan and some background that informed the plan.

VCCS Policy Section 3.8.2 – Nine-Month Faculty Summer Pay includes the following statement:

The college president has the authority to develop optional summer pay plans which, 1) compensate faculty at a proration of the normal summer salary rate when a given course does not meet minimum enrollment standards as defined by the college; and, 2) limit to less than ten (10) the maximum credit hours or equivalent assignments to be paid at the full-time faculty summer term salary rate. Optional plans shall specify any proration calculations to be used and any limitations to the maximum teaching assignment to be paid at the full-time faculty summer term salary rate. Credit hours or equivalent taught beyond the limitations specified in the institutional plan shall be compensated at the adjunct rate. Optional summer pay plans shall be developed in consultation with the faculty.

As a guideline, no more than seventy-five (75) percent of the credit hours taught at a college during the summer term should be paid at the full-time faculty summer term salary rate. 

As indicated by policy, the 2025 Summer Pay Plan was developed in consultation with the faculty through the Ad Hoc Summer Pay Plan Ad Hoc Committee, co-chaired by College Senate Chair Professor Jack Lechelt and AVP for Human Resources Charlotte Calobrisi. I thank the ad hoc committee for its work and recommendations.

In its recommendations, the ad hoc committee put forward the “course funded ratio” (CFR) as its preferred guideline for decision making on the viability of summer sections. Historically, VCCS has provided colleges with CFRs by discipline to indicate the enrollment required for course sections to be viable financially. The CFRs for several colleges, including NOVA, were increased by a system “efficiency” factor.

As I shared with the ad hoc committee co-chairs, according to NOVA’s Office of Strategic Insights (OSI), CFRs have not been updated since 2021, and it does not appear that VCCS plans to update them. After asking my VCCS colleagues about their use of CFRs, I learned that many, if not most, of the colleges do not use them in decision making related to academic schedules. I was advised by my colleagues that their colleges schedule to cover the cost of scheduled classes and that the colleges have developed their own cost metrics. 

Therefore, to provide a common, shared basis for the provosts and academic deans’ decision making on academic schedules in Summer 2025 and going forward, I have asked the provosts to work with OSI, the Budget Office and the Academic Deans Working Group to create a CFR-like metric that is NOVA-specific and can be updated on an annual basis.

This metric and its methodology are due in February, and at that time, both will be shared with the NOVA community and College Senate, and also published to the OSI website to support full transparency. The NOVACFRs will be used in decision-making about the academic schedule beginning with Summer 2025, and for the purposes of the response to the Summer Pay Plan recommendations, this metric is referred to as NOVACFR.

With this background, the 2025 Summer Pay Plan will:

  • compensate faculty for up to ten (10) credits at the full-time faculty summer salary rate, pending schedule availability. The remaining three (3) hours will be compensated at the adjunct rate (per VCCS policy).
  • set the minimum enrollment threshold for all modalities of a summer class at 70% of the NOVACFR.
  • set the minimum enrollment expectation across a discipline offering multiple sections and/or courses at 75% of the NOVACFR for that discipline, including all campuses and modalities.

All exceptions to the minimum enrollment threshold must be approved and documented by the campus provost and will be allowed only when a low-enrolled course:

  • is required by a defined cohort of students for graduation in Summer 2025; or
  • is required because of teach-out; or
  • represents the only section of a course in which any open seats remain; or
  • will not reduce the overall discipline expectation of 75% NOVACFR.

In addition, the following parameters will hold:

  • Summer NOVA Online classes below the 70% minimum NOVACFR may be prorated to reflect enrollment.
  • Full-time faculty, if needed due to course cancellation, may add one course taken from one adjunct faculty to their existing summer schedules, with the following provisions: the full-time faculty member must be in good standing, have selected a summer schedule in a timely manner and lost a minimum of one course from their assignment due to low enrollment. No NOVA adjunct faculty member shall lose more than one class due to this process.

Again, I extend my appreciation to the ad hoc committee for its work and recommendations on the 2025 Summer Pay Plan and for its commitment to supporting shared governance at NOVA.

Kind regards, Anne