Discussion: View Thread

Dear all readers and repliers:

Thank you for your comments, opinions, sources, hypotheticals, examples, and questions regarding Virginia Tech's proposed policy to limit outside consulting (moonlighting) to X% of 1 day per week. Personal responses are at the end of this email.

I am a member of the VT Commission on Faculty affairs, which meets on Friday (4/13) afternoon to approve this policy, and hopefully I can influence/change the policy to remove the penalty for success in bringing in soft money.

Probably the most complicating factor in this issue is that the university and the "Feds" (NSF, NIH, etc.) do not recognize the 40-hour work week. A faculty member is expected to devote X% of her professional time/effort on hard money university activities and 1-X% time/effort on soft money funded projects. So a professor on 50% hard money who normally works 80 hours per week is expected to devote 40 hours per week to her grants. As far as I can tell, the feds and the university administrators have concluded that percentage time/effort is what will be counted, not hours per week worked.

Every faculty member I have spoken with thinks this is ridiculous, but it's not up for debate. Also, most faculty members would not want to document every single hour of every day (2 hours preparing class, 1 hour lecture, .25 hours answering students' emails, 2 hours project Y, 1 hour project Z, 1 hour preparing for faculty affairs committee meeting, 1 hour reading journal article, ...).

If everyone believed in the 40 hour work week, we could have a very clean policy that faculty members must spend 40 hours per week doing their university and grant tasks, and that outside consulting could be performed outside of those 40 hours provided that the consulting jobs were reported to the department chair, were deemed not to be a conflict of interest (not diverting normal consulting centers jobs for private gain) and not to be a conflict of commitment (did not interfere with normal 40 hour per week duties).

Since the 40 hour work week does not mean anything, my solution (after synthesizing all of your valuable input and reading some of the UC system document and the federal A-21) is that we let it be known that exceptions to the X% of 1 day per week policy can be granted for outside consulting provided the faculty member submits a plan with her department head explaining how she will meet all the academic obligations of the university and the grant.

I will try to push the Virginia Tech administrators writing the policy to be extra generous to faculty on soft money by allowing them the min of (5timesX%, 100%) of 1 day per week, where X% is the percent of their hard money appointment. This would allow someone on 20% hard money to still consult up to 1 day per week, and someone on 10% hard money to consult .5 days per week.

Extra stuff for those still interested:

A few days ago I asked the administrator pushing the proposed policy, "What does 1 day per week mean?" She was like, 'What do you mean, what does it mean?'

I followed up, "Does 1 day per week mean 8 hours per week? Does it mean 20% of my time? Does it mean one-seventh of my time? If I normally work 60 hours per week, does 1 day per week mean 12 hours?"

The administrator (a retired faculty member, not just a paper pusher) answered, "It means 1 day per week." I got a little annoyed but quickly hid my annoyance because I inferred that her answer really meant, 'I don't know and nobody knows. Nobody has delved that deeply into the situation and frankly we don't want to. We're not trying to punish faculty members. We just don't want to get sued by the Feds.'

Individual responses:

David Francis-Thanks for the A-21 tip. I skimmed it and found that the feds require outside consulting to comply with university policies. To get anything more out of that document would require an expert in accounting and legalese, which fortunately I am not! Can you point to where in the document it prohibits two individuals of the same rank being treated differently based on their funding sources?

I agree that the limit of X% of 1 day per week disincentivizes bringing in soft money.

Michael Chernick-Yes, conflict of interest is important to consider.

Art Kendall-You ask, 'Why should consulting outside of 40 hours be limited at all?' Great question. One answer is that as long as someone is doing their normal job, no limits should be placed on outside work. Another answer is that too much extra work will inevitably impact the normal 40 hour job. I agree with both and would propose something in the middle!

Profs on hard money can get a maximum of 3 months summer salary from grants. Basically nobody can get more than 133% of their base 9-month salary from the university and grants. However, outside consulting could be extra income above the 133%.

Working in a soup kitchen is not a "professional" activity. Saying this, my mind immediately conjures up a situation in which I spent a day ladeling out soup and then another day eating it with the regulars and then another day analyzing the kitchen's books in the back office and doing something statistical to improve their operations. Still, I'm pretty sure I could get away with not having to report to the university or account for any time volunteering in a soup kitchen.

The origin of the audit fears are that Yale got punished a few years ago for improper handling of grant money. The urban legend (which I have not verified but believe to be true) is that a professor charged 100% of his time during the month of July to grant Y. The work for grant Y was probably done satisfactorily during the other 11 months of the year, but since it was widely known that this professor spent the entire month of July sailing around the Mediterranean, the university got punished. Policies at universities around the country changed so that no professors are allowed to charge 100% of their salary for any time period to a funded project.

As for the actual audit risk and the proportion of audits revealing misappropriation of funds, I asked these types of questions two years ago when Virginia Tech was changing other policies and the answer was basically, 'Your questions are irrelevant. We are very risk averse at this university and therefore will be changing policy so that we will have 0.0% chance of a negative audit. Federal auditors don't respond to logic and our compliance officers don't believe in statistical thinking.'

William Grant-I think the "meet academic obligations and avoid conflicts of interest" plan is a reasonable model for profs adversely affected by the X% of 1 day per week consulting limit.

Stuart Gansky-The UC document says that the max consulting is 20%, but that departments set their own limit and exceptions can be granted. It sounds like your department (9%) has a more restrictive maximum than that set by the UC system.

Stephen Simon-"You can't serve two masters." True! Well, actually, of course you can. I have 11 bosses (11 different units provide funding for LISA). I also have a few outside consulting gigs. It's a balancing act and so far so good. But of course I do agree with your sentiment. Too much moonlighting is bad and should be regulated.

Pro-bono consulting is different from soup kitchen work because of the professional nature of the consulting. The percentage time policy is really weird in that if one has a 50/50 hard/soft money appointment and normally works 40 hours per week, then 20 hours must be on grants. If the person gives a workshop for the AAAS On-Call Scientists group working to advance human rights and spends 10 extra hours one week preparing the workshop, then that person is working 50 hours a week, which theoretically and legalistically means he needs to work an extra 10 hours on his grants so there is still the 50/50 split. 20 hours normal university work, 20 hours grants, 10 hours professional service, and an extra 10 hours on grants!

Professional service differs from outside consulting at Virginia Tech in that service does not need to be reported. Being president of an ASA chapter would be professional service and would not fall under the outside consulting (moonlighting) category. However, it's still part of one's professional effort and therefore counts toward total percent time/effort. It's crazy but compliance officers expect it! I am grateful I'm not a compliance officer.

I think faculty investigators can be fair to taxpayers by successfully completing tasks promised on grants. I don't think taxpayers would demand that someone getting 50% salary from a grant should work 30 hours a week on that grant. Most taxpayers would be satisfied that 50% = 20 hours, but that's not how Virginia Tech and other universities are writing their policies.

Jane Pendergast-A few weeks ago we revised our conflict of interest and commitment policies for the same reasons you guys did. The item currently up for revision is the faculty handbook's text on conflict of interest and commitment, plus this extra wrinkle of outside consulting gigs. The recently passed policy change does indeed require that every consulting job be reported and approved. The detail that concerns me and has prompted this discussion is the X% of 1 day per week rule. There is some language granting the possibility of exceptions, and I will work to strengthen these exceptions.

Dear all readers and repliers:

Thank you for your comments, opinions, sources, hypotheticals, examples, and questions regarding Virginia Tech's proposed policy to limit outside consulting (moonlighting) to X% of 1 day per week. Personal responses are at the end of this email.

I am a member of the VT Commission on Faculty affairs, which meets on Friday (4/13) afternoon to approve this policy, and hopefully I can influence/change the policy to remove the penalty for success in bringing in soft money.

Probably the most complicating factor in this issue is that the university and the "Feds" (NSF, NIH, etc.) do not recognize the 40-hour work week. A faculty member is expected to devote X% of her professional time/effort on hard money university activities and 1-X% time/effort on soft money funded projects. So a professor on 50% hard money who normally works 80 hours per week is expected to devote 40 hours per week to her grants. As far as I can tell, the feds and the university administrators have concluded that percentage time/effort is what will be counted, not hours per week worked.

Every faculty member I have spoken with thinks this is ridiculous, but it's not up for debate. Also, most faculty members would not want to document every single hour of every day (2 hours preparing class, 1 hour lecture, .25 hours answering students' emails, 2 hours project Y, 1 hour project Z, 1 hour preparing for faculty affairs committee meeting, 1 hour reading journal article, ...).

If everyone believed in the 40 hour work week, we could have a very clean policy that faculty members must spend 40 hours per week doing their university and grant tasks, and that outside consulting could be performed outside of those 40 hours provided that the consulting jobs were reported to the department chair, were deemed not to be a conflict of interest (not diverting normal consulting centers jobs for private gain) and not to be a conflict of commitment (did not interfere with normal 40 hour per week duties).

Since the 40 hour work week does not mean anything, my solution (after synthesizing all of your valuable input and reading some of the UC system document and the federal A-21) is that we let it be known that exceptions to the X% of 1 day per week policy can be granted for outside consulting provided the faculty member submits a plan with her department head explaining how she will meet all the academic obligations of the university and the grant.

I will try to push the Virginia Tech administrators writing the policy to be extra generous to faculty on soft money by allowing them the min of (5timesX%, 100%) of 1 day per week, where X% is the percent of their hard money appointment. This would allow someone on 20% hard money to still consult up to 1 day per week, and someone on 10% hard money to consult .5 days per week.

Extra stuff for those still interested:

A few days ago I asked the administrator pushing the proposed policy, "What does 1 day per week mean?" She was like, 'What do you mean, what does it mean?'

I followed up, "Does 1 day per week mean 8 hours per week? Does it mean 20% of my time? Does it mean one-seventh of my time? If I normally work 60 hours per week, does 1 day per week mean 12 hours?"

The administrator (a retired faculty member, not just a paper pusher) answered, "It means 1 day per week." I got a little annoyed but quickly hid my annoyance because I inferred that her answer really meant, 'I don't know and nobody knows. Nobody has delved that deeply into the situation and frankly we don't want to. We're not trying to punish faculty members. We just don't want to get sued by the Feds.'

Individual responses:

David Francis-Thanks for the A-21 tip. I skimmed it and found that the feds require outside consulting to comply with university policies. To get anything more out of that document would require an expert in accounting and legalese, which fortunately I am not! Can you point to where in the document it prohibits two individuals of the same rank being treated differently based on their funding sources?

I agree that the limit of X% of 1 day per week disincentivizes bringing in soft money.

Michael Chernick-Yes, conflict of interest is important to consider.

Art Kendall-You ask, 'Why should consulting outside of 40 hours be limited at all?' Great question. One answer is that as long as someone is doing their normal job, no limits should be placed on outside work. Another answer is that too much extra work will inevitably impact the normal 40 hour job. I agree with both and would propose something in the middle!

Profs on hard money can get a maximum of 3 months summer salary from grants. Basically nobody can get more than 133% of their base 9-month salary from the university and grants. However, outside consulting could be extra income above the 133%.

Working in a soup kitchen is not a "professional" activity. Saying this, my mind immediately conjures up a situation in which I spent a day ladeling out soup and then another day eating it with the regulars and then another day analyzing the kitchen's books in the back office and doing something statistical to improve their operations. Still, I'm pretty sure I could get away with not having to report to the university or account for any time volunteering in a soup kitchen.

The origin of the audit fears are that Yale got punished a few years ago for improper handling of grant money. The urban legend (which I have not verified but believe to be true) is that a professor charged 100% of his time during the month of July to grant Y. The work for grant Y was probably done satisfactorily during the other 11 months of the year, but since it was widely known that this professor spent the entire month of July sailing around the Mediterranean, the university got punished. Policies at universities around the country changed so that no professors are allowed to charge 100% of their salary for any time period to a funded project.

As for the actual audit risk and the proportion of audits revealing misappropriation of funds, I asked these types of questions two years ago when Virginia Tech was changing other policies and the answer was basically, 'Your questions are irrelevant. We are very risk averse at this university and therefore will be changing policy so that we will have 0.0% chance of a negative audit. Federal auditors don't respond to logic and our compliance officers don't believe in statistical thinking.'

William Grant-I think the "meet academic obligations and avoid conflicts of interest" plan is a reasonable model for profs adversely affected by the X% of 1 day per week consulting limit.

Stuart Gansky-The UC document says that the max consulting is 20%, but that departments set their own limit and exceptions can be granted. It sounds like your department (9%) has a more restrictive maximum than that set by the UC system.

Stephen Simon-"You can't serve two masters." True! Well, actually, of course you can. I have 11 bosses (11 different units provide funding for LISA). I also have a few outside consulting gigs. It's a balancing act and so far so good. But of course I do agree with your sentiment. Too much moonlighting is bad and should be regulated.

Pro-bono consulting is different from soup kitchen work because of the professional nature of the consulting. The percentage time policy is really weird in that if one has a 50/50 hard/soft money appointment and normally works 40 hours per week, then 20 hours must be on grants. If the person gives a workshop for the AAAS On-Call Scientists group working to advance human rights and spends 10 extra hours one week preparing the workshop, then that person is working 50 hours a week, which theoretically and legalistically means he needs to work an extra 10 hours on his grants so there is still the 50/50 split. 20 hours normal university work, 20 hours grants, 10 hours professional service, and an extra 10 hours on grants!

Professional service differs from outside consulting at Virginia Tech in that service does not need to be reported. Being president of an ASA chapter would be professional service and would not fall under the outside consulting (moonlighting) category. However, it's still part of one's professional effort and therefore counts toward total percent time/effort. It's crazy but compliance officers expect it! I am grateful I'm not a compliance officer.

I think faculty investigators can be fair to taxpayers by successfully completing tasks promised on grants. I don't think taxpayers would demand that someone getting 50% salary from a grant should work 30 hours a week on that grant. Most taxpayers would be satisfied that 50% = 20 hours, but that's not how Virginia Tech and other universities are writing their policies.

Jane Pendergast-A few weeks ago we revised our conflict of interest and commitment policies for the same reasons you guys did. The item currently up for revision is the faculty handbook's text on conflict of interest and commitment, plus this extra wrinkle of outside consulting gigs. The recently passed policy change does indeed require that every consulting job be reported and approved. The detail that concerns me and has prompted this discussion is the X% of 1 day per week rule. There is some language granting the possibility of exceptions, and I will work to strengthen these exceptions.

Dear all readers and repliers:

Thank you for your comments, opinions, sources, hypotheticals, examples, and questions regarding Virginia Tech's proposed policy to limit outside consulting (moonlighting) to X% of 1 day per week. Personal responses are at the end of this email.

I am a member of the VT Commission on Faculty affairs, which meets on Friday (4/13) afternoon to approve this policy, and hopefully I can influence/change the policy to remove the penalty for success in bringing in soft money.

Probably the most complicating factor in this issue is that the university and the "Feds" (NSF, NIH, etc.) do not recognize the 40-hour work week. A faculty member is expected to devote X% of her professional time/effort on hard money university activities and 1-X% time/effort on soft money funded projects. So a professor on 50% hard money who normally works 80 hours per week is expected to devote 40 hours per week to her grants. As far as I can tell, the feds and the university administrators have concluded that percentage time/effort is what will be counted, not hours per week worked.

Every faculty member I have spoken with thinks this is ridiculous, but it's not up for debate. Also, most faculty members would not want to document every single hour of every day (2 hours preparing class, 1 hour lecture, .25 hours answering students' emails, 2 hours project Y, 1 hour project Z, 1 hour preparing for faculty affairs committee meeting, 1 hour reading journal article, ...).

If everyone believed in the 40 hour work week, we could have a very clean policy that faculty members must spend 40 hours per week doing their university and grant tasks, and that outside consulting could be performed outside of those 40 hours provided that the consulting jobs were reported to the department chair, were deemed not to be a conflict of interest (not diverting normal consulting centers jobs for private gain) and not to be a conflict of commitment (did not interfere with normal 40 hour per week duties).

Since the 40 hour work week does not mean anything, my solution (after synthesizing all of your valuable input and reading some of the UC system document and the federal A-21) is that we let it be known that exceptions to the X% of 1 day per week policy can be granted for outside consulting provided the faculty member submits a plan with her department head explaining how she will meet all the academic obligations of the university and the grant.

I will try to push the Virginia Tech administrators writing the policy to be extra generous to faculty on soft money by allowing them the min of (5timesX%, 100%) of 1 day per week, where X% is the percent of their hard money appointment. This would allow someone on 20% hard money to still consult up to 1 day per week, and someone on 10% hard money to consult .5 days per week.

Extra stuff for those still interested:

A few days ago I asked the administrator pushing the proposed policy, "What does 1 day per week mean?" She was like, 'What do you mean, what does it mean?'

I followed up, "Does 1 day per week mean 8 hours per week? Does it mean 20% of my time? Does it mean one-seventh of my time? If I normally work 60 hours per week, does 1 day per week mean 12 hours?"

The administrator (a retired faculty member, not just a paper pusher) answered, "It means 1 day per week." I got a little annoyed but quickly hid my annoyance because I inferred that her answer really meant, 'I don't know and nobody knows. Nobody has delved that deeply into the situation and frankly we don't want to. We're not trying to punish faculty members. We just don't want to get sued by the Feds.'

Individual responses:

David Francis-Thanks for the A-21 tip. I skimmed it and found that the feds require outside consulting to comply with university policies. To get anything more out of that document would require an expert in accounting and legalese, which fortunately I am not! Can you point to where in the document it prohibits two individuals of the same rank being treated differently based on their funding sources?

I agree that the limit of X% of 1 day per week disincentivizes bringing in soft money.

Michael Chernick-Yes, conflict of interest is important to consider.

Art Kendall-You ask, 'Why should consulting outside of 40 hours be limited at all?' Great question. One answer is that as long as someone is doing their normal job, no limits should be placed on outside work. Another answer is that too much extra work will inevitably impact the normal 40 hour job. I agree with both and would propose something in the middle!

Profs on hard money can get a maximum of 3 months summer salary from grants. Basically nobody can get more than 133% of their base 9-month salary from the university and grants. However, outside consulting could be extra income above the 133%.

Working in a soup kitchen is not a "professional" activity. Saying this, my mind immediately conjures up a situation in which I spent a day ladeling out soup and then another day eating it with the regulars and then another day analyzing the kitchen's books in the back office and doing something statistical to improve their operations. Still, I'm pretty sure I could get away with not having to report to the university or account for any time volunteering in a soup kitchen.

The origin of the audit fears are that Yale got punished a few years ago for improper handling of grant money. The urban legend (which I have not verified but believe to be true) is that a professor charged 100% of his time during the month of July to grant Y. The work for grant Y was probably done satisfactorily during the other 11 months of the year, but since it was widely known that this professor spent the entire month of July sailing around the Mediterranean, the university got punished. Policies at universities around the country changed so that no professors are allowed to charge 100% of their salary for any time period to a funded project.

As for the actual audit risk and the proportion of audits revealing misappropriation of funds, I asked these types of questions two years ago when Virginia Tech was changing other policies and the answer was basically, 'Your questions are irrelevant. We are very risk averse at this university and therefore will be changing policy so that we will have 0.0% chance of a negative audit. Federal auditors don't respond to logic and our compliance officers don't believe in statistical thinking.'

William Grant-I think the "meet academic obligations and avoid conflicts of interest" plan is a reasonable model for profs adversely affected by the X% of 1 day per week consulting limit.

Stuart Gansky-The UC document says that the max consulting is 20%, but that departments set their own limit and exceptions can be granted. It sounds like your department (9%) has a more restrictive maximum than that set by the UC system.

Stephen Simon-"You can't serve two masters." True! Well, actually, of course you can. I have 11 bosses (11 different units provide funding for LISA). I also have a few outside consulting gigs. It's a balancing act and so far so good. But of course I do agree with your sentiment. Too much moonlighting is bad and should be regulated.

Pro-bono consulting is different from soup kitchen work because of the professional nature of the consulting. The percentage time policy is really weird in that if one has a 50/50 hard/soft money appointment and normally works 40 hours per week, then 20 hours must be on grants. If the person gives a workshop for the AAAS On-Call Scientists group working to advance human rights and spends 10 extra hours one week preparing the workshop, then that person is working 50 hours a week, which theoretically and legalistically means he needs to work an extra 10 hours on his grants so there is still the 50/50 split. 20 hours normal university work, 20 hours grants, 10 hours professional service, and an extra 10 hours on grants!

Professional service differs from outside consulting at Virginia Tech in that service does not need to be reported. Being president of an ASA chapter would be professional service and would not fall under the outside consulting (moonlighting) category. However, it's still part of one's professional effort and therefore counts toward total percent time/effort. It's crazy but compliance officers expect it! I am grateful I'm not a compliance officer.

I think faculty investigators can be fair to taxpayers by successfully completing tasks promised on grants. I don't think taxpayers would demand that someone getting 50% salary from a grant should work 30 hours a week on that grant. Most taxpayers would be satisfied that 50% = 20 hours, but that's not how Virginia Tech and other universities are writing their policies.

Jane Pendergast-A few weeks ago we revised our conflict of interest and commitment policies for the same reasons you guys did. The item currently up for revision is the faculty handbook's text on conflict of interest and commitment, plus this extra wrinkle of outside consulting gigs. The recently passed policy change does indeed require that every consulting job be reported and approved. The detail that concerns me and has prompted this discussion is the X% of 1 day per week rule. There is some language granting the possibility of exceptions, and I will work to strengthen these exceptions.

Two weeks ago in this CNSL eGroup we discussed the policy change at Virginia Tech to further limit faculty with soft-money from performing outside consulting (moonlighting). The old policy was that faculty members can consult on non-university projects for up to 1 day per week and no more than 5 days in any 5-week period. The proposed new policy is that faculty can consult for up to X% of 1 day per week and X% of 5 days in any 5-week period, where X% is the percentage of hard money (university funds) supporting the faculty member's salary.

I serve on the Virginia Tech Commission on Faculty Affairs, which approves policy changes affecting faculty at VT. I was about to write "guides" or "advises" policy changes, but "approves" is the more appropriate word. Actually, this commission "resolves" to recommend that the University Council (similar to the Academic Senate at other institutions) approve the policy changes, subject to final legal approval by the Board of Visitors.

During our meeting almost two weeks ago I argued that this new "X% of 1 day per week" rule was a disincentive for some faculty to get additional grant money. I used the example of my colleague Dr. Chris Franck, the assistant director of LISA (Virginia Tech's Laboratory for Interdisciplinary Statistical Analysis). Chris has a contract that is 100% hard money. His main job task is to collaborate with faculty members in the bioinformatics institute and the new medical research institute. After 1.5 years on the job he's been very successful, as measured by several co-authorships and the fact that he has approximately 50% of his salary paid by soft-money grants.

Under the old policy, Chris, a young statistician who earned his PhD in 2010, could work on outside consulting projects up to 1 day per week, a nice way to get more experience in statistical consulting, to learn new applied statistical methods, and for staying current with the statistical needs of clients outside academia.

Under the new policy, because he has been successful in collaborating with researchers and being written into their grants, his opportunity for outside consulting will be cut in half. In a few years he might be successful being the principal investigator on grants of his own, and his hard money might dwindle to 20 or 10%, severely limiting his ability to maintain a professional statistical consulting presence.

The Virginia Tech administrator hired to push through the policy disagreed with my characterization that the new policy was a "disincentive" for getting soft money. I restated my point that the more a faculty member gets funded on grants, the less time (beyond his regular job duties) he can devote to outside consulting jobs, hence, it's a disincentive for getting more grant money.

The response was that without soft money, research faculty members wouldn't have any jobs at the university, so I can't say that this policy is any sort of "disincentive" for getting soft money, because getting soft money is what they're here to do.

The rest of the commission agreed with this administrator.

Before I had a chance to discuss other parts of the policy I thought were wrong headed or needed more clarification, the chair of the commission called for a vote. With only one dissenting voice (mine) the new policy passed.

What bugs me the most about this issue is that I felt that I raised reasonable objections to the policy, but that everyone else on the commission either A) didn't understand my arguments (otherwise they would have agreed with me!), B) did understand, but felt that faculty shouldn't really be doing much if any outside consulting anyway, C) may have secretly agreed with me but had an ulterior motive to pass the policy through the governance process anyway, or D) I've misread the situation.

Two final points before I briefly respond to Art and Michael's comments:

1. I learned a valuable lesson, not about politics or about people on committees that don't understand or don't care about discussing issues, but about how I ask questions. I tend to be very direct and ask questions in as succinct a way as possible. One example was when I asked the administrator pushing this policy, "What does 1 day per week mean? Does it mean 8 hours, 12 hours, 20% of my time, one-seventh of my time?" It was a legitimate question that I wanted answered, but I could have asked in a much better way. The response I got to my direct question was, "One day per week means 1 day per week."

I have since started practicing "softening" my questions. I think I would have gotten a better response had I asked, "Please excuse me, but I'm trying to understand all the implications of this policy and how faculty will be applying this in practice. One thing I'm unclear about is: What does 1 day per week really mean? Does it mean 8 hours in a week? Is it contingent on the number of hours one normally works in a week? Is it actually based on a percentage of time, such as 20% of our time, or even one-seventh of a faculty member's work week? So, how does the administration define, '1 day per week?'"

A student of mine told me that a great piece of advice he got about statistical collaboration from a former LISA lead collaborator was, "Enter the meeting thinking you're the dumbest person in the room. Ask lots of questions and make sure, by golly, that you aren't the dumbest person when you leave the meeting."

2. Maybe the solution to this new outside consulting policy, the cutting of the Gordian Knot, is that since the administration is leaving "1 day per week" open to interpretation, we should interpret however we want. That might mean to me that a faculty member on 50% hard money is free to consult on outside projects for 50% of 24 hours per week.

Responses to Art Kendall and Michael Chernick: You guys make great points and of course I agree with most of what you say! I apologize for not responding in detail.