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Faculty and Staff Introduction

The personnel census is September 30 of each year, when a snapshot of the employee database (PeopleSoft HR) is taken for purposes of official reporting and policy analyses. This Personnel Data File (PDF) includes demographic, educational, and funding information, it is completed and turned in to UNC-GA by November 1.

The dates and definitions are set by the federal government and UNC-GA. The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) operates the Integrated Post-secondary Education Data System (IPEDS). We (NC State University) must submit data to IPEDS in exchange for federal recognition for Financial Aid, Contracts and Grants, and other funding purposes. In the University of North Carolina system, each constituent institution submits unit record data to General Administration (UNC-GA) and then UNC-GA submits the IPEDS survey data on our behalf. The unit record data we submit contains data elements with definitions set by UNC-GA that allow them to meet the rules of IPEDS surveys.

The NCES IPEDS data collected each year is cleaned and put into a database for access by the public. Each data area and set of definitions is called a survey. The collection periods are fall, winter, and spring. After the survey collections are completed there is a 9 to 15 month lag before the data is available in the public database. The database includes an analysis and download tool for selection of institutions, years, and surveys. Some of the data is passed on to other parties such as the AAUP which uses IPEDS faculty information each year to compute salary averages by rank and institution.

Standard Reporting Taxonomy

• Occuaptional Activity (OA) represents the IPEDS definition of job duties for each group of employees (administrators, faculty, professional, technical, etc). These groups are the main way our reports break out employees.
• Job-Category Codes (JCAT) are used at NC State to translate directly to OA codes. These are assigned to each employee based on their appointment.
• There is a proposal at IPEDS to re-align OA definitions with the SOC (Standard Occupational Code taxonomy) starting in 2012. Changing reporting definitions would cause a break in several trend lines when data collected under this new rule is reported. This change is currently waiting OMB approval (as of July 2011).
• Reference for Occupational Activity populations from IPEDS (external link to NCES).

Other Reporting Group Definitions

• Permanent Status : In general, permanent employees participate in the retirement system and receive medical benefits (or are eligible but decline). Time-limited employees are counted as permanent because they receive benefits, but are not subject to reappointment after the term ends. There are other employees in various positions on campus (EG. visiting faculty) who are counted as permanent while not being truly permanent hires. Eemployees at 0.75 FTE or more are eligible to receive benefits.
• Temporary Status : These employees do not receive benefits or participate in the retirement system. They may be on contract, such as supplemental faculty, or they may be regular employees who are less than 3/4 time.
• Full-Time Equivalent (FTE) A standard often defined as the 40-hour work week. Full-time Equivalents (FTEs) are counted in terms of full-time employees and portions of part-time employees.
• Full Time : Employees who are paid 100% of their base salary for a full week work effort. For many this is expressed in terms of the 40-hour work week. .
• Part Time : Employees who are paid some portion of a full-time salary for the same portion of full-time work. A common example might be expressed in terms of a 20-hour work week is a half time employee or 0.5 FTE. It is also possible to be part-time by working as a faculty member 'full-time' on a 1-semester appointment (1/2 of the academic year).
• Academic Appointment : A faculty member on a 9-month appointment works for the academic year and does not have work expectations in the base salary for the summer. Some faculty and most administrators are typically on a 12-month appointment, or a full-year contract. NC State uses a factor of 0.81818181 to prorate from 12 to 9 month salaries.

Reporting Populations, as of Fall 2002 ( IPEDS rules with words to fit NCSU)

• Faculty includes employees on a 9 or 12 month appointment whose primary activity is instruction, research, and/or on-campus extension. The occupational activity code of "20" represents faculty and is the fundamental faculty identifier, it is a part of each person's job attributes. At NC State this is coded in the JCAT 2xx series of codes in PeopleSoft Human Resource system.

The salary must be paid at least 50% from teaching, research, and/or extension funds.

Teaching funding is defined as FTE associated with subhead 101-1310 or 106-1310. Research FTE subheads are 110-1110, 122-1110, and 106-1110. Extension subheads are 131-1110, 132-1110, and 133-1110.

Faculty on leave without pay, librarians, and field faculty are not counted in the IPEDS definition of faculty.

Temporary faculty are not counted in the IPEDS definition of faculty. Retired faculty do not count since they are reported as temporary, non-tenured, part-time employees. Faculty in the phased retirement program do count since they are permanent, non-tenured, part-time employees since they are still receiving benefits.

Visiting faculty may be permanent or temporary, and may be full-time or part-time, it depends on how the department made the appointment. Most visiting vaculty who are full-time are on a fixed-term contract with benefits. Most visiting faculty who are part-time are recorded as temporary.

Faculty reported to IPEDS are actively employed permanent faculty plus permanent faculty on paid leave. The IPEDS faculty are both full- and part-time faculty.

The AAUP faculty definition is IPEDS full-time faculty only, and is used to compute an average faculty salary for comparison with other institutions (see peer pages).

IPEDS calls this whole group instructional faculty, even though funding from administration, research, and extension is allowed.

The IPEDS population is not very useful for internal reports at NC State, the OA = 20 (JCAT 2xx) and tenure status are more useful. There are lots of faculty who do not meet the IPEDS definition and are still reported on NCSU web pages as faculty, and who have instruction as they primary role.

Here is the list of specific rules to place faculty in IPEDS and AAUP populations.

1. Must be an EPA employee.
2. Must be active and currently employed.
3. FTE must be greater than 0.97.
4. Appointment period must be 9 months or more.
5. Must not be replacing faculty on-leave-with-pay and must not be on-leave-without-pay.
6. Must not have multiple positions (EPA and SPA both).
7. Must not be a clinical position.
8. Must have Occupational Activity (OA) code = 20.
9. Must have at least 50% funding from teaching, research, or extension sources.
10. If the first 7 conditions are satisfied and the person is determined to be a departmental chairperson (by title) then OA and funding tests are ignored.
11. If all conditions except FTE > 0.97are met, then this is a part-time employee and belongs in the IPEDS population, but not the AAUP.

Short descriptions of faculty populations:

• IPEDS is OA 20 (JCAT 2xx) who are permanent, full-time plus part-time, and paid for instructional, research, and extension purposes. This includes faculty on scholarly leave with pay, and excludes faculty on leave without pay. In IPEDS reports this group is called instructional faculty.
• AAUP is the same group as IPEDS but only full-time are included. This group is used for salary averages published by AAUP in spring issue of ACADEME.
• Tenured and On-Track Faculty looks at OA 20 and tenure status. This is the largest subset of IPEDS population.There are no 'temporary' tenured and on-track faculty. Some reports ask for tenured administrators to be included with tenured faculty in analyses.
• All Faculty includes all OA 20 (JCAT 2xx) employees and will count off-track full-time and temporary faculty as well as the tenured and on-track faculty.
• Common Data Set (CDS) definition starts with the IPEDS definition and then calculates a faculty-to-student ratio that excludes "stand-alone graduate programs" such as Veterinary Medicine. At NCSU, the MBA program and others are not considered stand alone, but Vet Med is considered stand-alone. The US News and World Report uses CDS faculty-to-student ratio in their rankings.

• Staff represents all EPA and SPA employees who are not classified as faculty by the definition above. This is all active employees with JCAT other than 2xx. The Occupational Activity / JCAT codes for staff includes administrative, professional, technical, clerical, maintenance, and trades employees. Note that Staff will include tenured administrators while they are in an administrative appointment. If they return to faculty status, then they cease being counted as administrator and start again counting as faculty.
• EPA includes all employees (academic and non-academic) on the university payroll that are not subject to the State Personnel Act.
• SPA includes all employees on the university payroll that are subject to the State Personnel Act.

• Graduate Assistants includes all graduate students who have either a teaching or research assistantship. Graduate assistants are not counted as faculty or staff. The PeopleSoft job codes included are:
  • A138 - Graduate Teaching Asst
  • A148 - Graduate Research Asst
  • A168 - Graduate Univ Research
  • A178 - Graduate Teach & Research Asst
  • A188 - Graduate Univ Research Supplemental
  • A198 - Graduate Services Assistants
  
  

Note: In fall 2011 the county expentsion agents and staff members will be reported to UNC-GA as NCSU employees.

Alternative Populations

These reports include other populations of employees who are excluded from the standard reporting population. These are made available to answer questions and are not subject to the same strict definitions as the PDF populations are. They do not meet the test of on-campus and permanent benefits-receiving employees.

• Contract Employees include anyone who has worked on campus on a limited contract between October 1 of last year and September 30 of this year. This is an unduplicated headcount. These contracts are reported on a 1099 tax form at the end of the year. This includes anyone in PeopleSoft with a Pay Run ID of 2, found by running public query "*Temp Contract Pay Run ID".
• Field Faculty are Cooperative Extension Services employees who work off-campus. All those with a rank of 7 in PeopleSoft as of September 30 of this year.
• No-pay Employees include all those who are working on campus without compensation through our payroll system on census day. Typically these people are using the no-pay appointment as an entry in the system to gain access to campus services. Some of these are paid from off-campus sources (USDA, USDI, ROTC, etc). They are identified by an employee class of N in PeopleSoft.
• Post-docs include all those working in a post-doctoral capacity on census day. The PeopleSoft job codes included are:
  • C795 - (Post Doc) Fellow
  • C738 - (Post Doc) Intern
  • C849 - (Post Doc) Research Associate
  • C849P - (Post Doc) Research Asso-PR
  • C864 - (Post Doc) Resident
  • C915 - (Post Doc) Teaching Assoc

  Starting in 2010 the post-docs were reported to UNC-GA in their own category, just like graduate assistants. In the years before that, post-docs were included in the EPA population as EPA professionals. For the summary table the job codes listed above were pulled out of the EPA population and listed separately. Some post-docs are paid from sources external to NCSU, and are recorded in PeopleSoft as No-Pay Employees. This extra report unifies those two groups.

• Hourly Temps -- All those on hourly temporary assignment on campus on census day. They are usually hourly pay assignments hired on an as-needed basis. This population, classified in PeopleSoft with an Employee Class of E (EPA Temp) or S (SPA Temp), is determined by running public query "temp active" in PeopleSoft/HR with effective date set to September 30.