Guidelines for Endowed Chair Funds

If you are a faculty member who has funds dedicated for your specific use (e.g., an endowed chair or a postdoc with funding), the Dean of Faculty’s office (DOF) will fund your requests for travel, research, small equipment, etc. from those earmarked monies first. After you have spent all the funds in your allotted stipend, you may ask for funding from the general funds available for all faculty. Most endowed chair stipends do not roll over from year to year and must get spent during the year for which they are allocated; consequently, using chair funds first ensures that you spend all your allocated money before asking for money from the pool of funds available for other faculty members to share.

All expenditure of your funds must conform to the guidelines on “Faculty Travel and Research Support” found in the “Red Book,” which is available on the Dean of Faculty (DOF) homepage. The DOF office and the Business Office will not cover expenses that violate college guidelines regardless of the source of the funding.  We encourage you to read these guidelines so that you will not be surprised by the policies.

All expenditures must be approved by the DOF office prior to spending the money. This ensures that the request is in line with College and DOF policies and that funds are available in your account to cover the expenditures. 

Approval for Travel

The “Red Book” has detailed information on the guidelines for the use of professional travel and research support funds. Use of endowed chair funding falls under those guidelines, so please take the time to read them. If you have any questions, please contact your Associate Dean of Faculty.

All requests for travel support  (for trips for any purpose, including conferences, research trips, or workshops) should be made to the Associate Dean using the online Travel Request form found on the DOF homepage. Even if you know you have funds available, we ask that you do this in order to check that your trip meets the college guidelines for mileage, meals, etc.  If the estimated costs of your trip(s) are more than the amount available, you may ask for additional funds from the general travel fund. Or, if your funds are gone and you want a trip from the regular faculty trip funds, you may request that.  We cannot guarantee there will be sufficient money available to grant additional requests from the general DOF funds.

Travel arrangements for approved trips may be made through our travel agency BTI and charged to the Dean of Faculty account or paid for by you and reimbursed with a receipt showing payment has been made. Within thirty days of the end of your trip you will need to attach your receipts to a Travel Expense Report and send it to Tom (tdonofri@hamilton.edu) here in the DOF office. Hamilton’s tax-exempt number must be used for travel within New York State.  We do not reimburse for sales tax on lodging in New York State (to avoid this sales tax, you should present this NYS sales tax exemption form when you check in).

Research Expenses

If you have expenses for research that you would like funded, please first complete this online Faculty Research Support Request Form. To ensure that you are clear on what can be reimbursed, you might want to speak with the DOF office if you are planning complicated research trips (e.g., trips longer than the 7 days normally covered by per diem expenses, trips to countries where receipts are not a part of everyday life, unusual purchases, etc.).

Should you hire someone outside of Hamilton College (with approval from the Dean of Faculty) to do some task for you (e.g., indexing, translating), we will need paperwork that verifies and outlines the agreement around the work, such as an email exchange describing what will be done by whom and for what cost.  In addition, we will need a W-9 form, an Independent Contractor Questionnaire, and an invoice (with the word “invoice,” a date, address, amount, and a tax ID#) from the worker once the task is done.  You, as the initiator of the transaction, will also need to complete an Independent Contractor Checklist and attach it to the other paperwork before you submit it. (For vendors who have previously been paid by the college within the past two years, only the invoice is necessary; the other paperwork should already be on file.)

For approved purchases of equipment or services from vendors who require purchase orders, you may need to submit a Purchase Requisition Form to Nicolas de la Riva (who will endorse the purchase and forward the form to the Purchasing Department, in Auxiliary Services). When you receive the invoices from the vendors (including those who do not require purchase orders), forward them to Nicolas.

Computers, Printers, iPads, and such

Computers, printers, and iPads can be purchased only after submitting the Computer Purchase Approval form and after getting approval from both the DOF office and ITS.  Computers purchased with college money, including the money in endowed chair accounts, belong to the college and must be entered into the ITS database.  Remember that we do not reimburse for New York State sales tax on purchases over $50; you can show the NYS sales tax exemption form when you buy the computer, but we prefer that you work with ITS to make the purchase.

STUDENT WORKERS

Details about hiring student workers may be found on the student employment website. Please speak with Nicolas de la Riva (Assistant Dean for Academic Finance and Resources, mdelariv@hamilton.edu, 315-859-4611) if you have questions about hiring someone to help with your research.

SMALLER EXPENSES

Smaller expenses can be grouped together and put into a general request (using the online Faculty Research Support Request Form), organized by category, such as books, small equipment, etc. for approval.  Not too much detail is needed to request these items (e.g., something like:  “I plan to spend $120 on books, $100 on a scanner, etc).”  Once this is approved, just attach the receipts to a check request form and send it to To D'Onofrio (or you can send in two or more check requests forms, if you make various purchases at different times over the course of the year).