Office of the Provost

Dear Colleagues, 

 We’re writing to share recent updates to the Policy and Procedures on Consulting for Faculty and Members of the Faculty Bargaining Unit. These were approved by the Board of Trustees on June 29, 2022. 

 Several broad changes were made to the procedures. These include:  

•  A greater ability to provide flexibility for exceptions to sanctions. We encourage you to still always seek pre-approval for consulting activities but hope this will reduce the need for sanctions in cases involving “low conflict of interest risk” activities that are reported shortly after taking place.
• A change in the reporting year, for the Storrs and regional campus faculty only. It will now align with the contract year. The upcoming year will be a transitional year, with FY23 requests spanning July 1, 2022, through to May 22, 2023. From FY24, requests will be approved within a 12-month period beginning on May 23, 2023, and running to May 22, 2024. This should mean that summer activities do not have to be split in two. At the Health Center the fiscal year will remain July 1st – June 30th.
   
• All faculty with faculty affiliated companies (FACs) will now have to submit a request for each entity each year. If there is no effort with the company in a given year, there is now a straightforward process to attest to this fact. This addresses an ongoing audit finding related to oversight of FACs.  

Additionally, the policy and procedures had updates to language and formatting throughout. This should improve readability. All faculty members should now be able to find it straightforward to understand the content of these documents. 

We would also like to give a friendly reminder that consulting requests for ongoing activities are needed for each new fiscal year. If you do have ongoing activities and have not yet submitted an FY23 request for these activities, please do ensure that you submit new requests as soon as possible. Activities for the upcoming year will be submitted into the newly launched InfoEd system. Please ensure you use the correct portal for either Storrs/regionals or UConn Health. 

Reconciliations for the last fiscal year should be completed in our old system. The link to this system for reconciliations can be found on the consulting website.  

As always, if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to your relevant Faculty Consulting Office. The faculty consulting website also has a range of resources, including PDF and video tutorials for InfoEd, FAQs, and guides to information required generally on the form and for different activities under the “getting started” section.  

Best wishes, 

Sarah Croucher, Assistant Vice Provost for Academic Affairs (Faculty Consulting Office, Storrs and regional campuses)
Sarah.croucher@uconn.edu  

Dr. Jody Terranova, Director of Faculty Consulting (UConn Health Center), Assistant Professor of Pediatrics
Jterranova@uchc.edu