2025-26 RSCA AT Update

Sent: January 21, 2025

From: Vincent J. Del Casino, Jr., Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs and Marc d'Alarcao Interim Vice President for Research and Innovation

Dear Colleagues,

The SJSU RSCA assigned-time program continues to successfully provide time in a faculty member’s official workload to engage in scholarly activity. The program provides time to our most RSCA-active faculty across the university, regardless of discipline.

The program began in 2019, and in 2024-25, provides support for 376 tenured and tenure-track faculty. The cost of the program this year is ~$7.8M, with most of that funding coming from the Academic Affairs state funding (86%), with smaller amounts from revenue from self-support programs (PaCE, ~9%), and Research and Innovation F&A revenue (~5%).

We are pleased to affirm that despite likely budget cuts to SJSU next year due to state funding reductions, we anticipate the same level of funding for the program in 2025-26. This means that we expect to be able to support 376 faculty again.

However, maintaining the funding level does not mean that there will not be difficult decisions. There are a number of assistant professors coming off of their first two years of faculty appointment who will be registering for the program. This means that to maintain the same number of funded faculty, some currently funded faculty may not be renewed in the program based on the evaluation of their RSCA productivity. People who are ending their 5-year commitment are welcome to apply for renewal, but please note that constraints on the total number of awards may mean that funding for everyone currently in the program may not be available next year.

We are making a change to the review process this year. While the review will continue to be based on reports of RSCA productivity as measured by the college-specific RSCA metrics as in the past, the final decision of who is continued in the program will reside at the college level, with the Dean of the college rather than with the Vice President for Research and Innovation. The final decisions will be determined by the total dollars each college is allotted based on their historical funding levels in the overall program.

We are committed to growing the RSCA assigned-time program in future years to support a larger number of our great faculty. However, this can’t be done with diminishing state funds. A more realistic approach may be to grow PaCE and F&A revenues allowing us to increase the total funding for the RSCA assigned-time program. As noted above, 9% of RSCA AT is funded by self-support/PaCE programs and holds strong potential for future growth to support the overall program. We believe that by growing these revenue streams, we can place the RSCA assigned time program on an even more stable financial footing that allows the program to expand and support more faculty in years to come.

Vin and Marc