Recruiting and Hiring Dual Career Faculty

Guidelines and Procedures

To maintain and strengthen its excellence, the University of Maryland College Park (UMD) must recruit and retain an outstanding faculty. Many faculty members who are being recruited by UMD have spouses or partners who are accomplished scholars.² The ability of a dual career¹ spouse or partner to find a satisfactory career opportunity is often a key factor in the recruitment process, and ultimately in the couple’s decision to accept an offer at UMD. These guidelines identify the opportunities and process for dual-career support when recruiting tenured/tenure-track or permanent status/permanent status track faculty, and apply only to recruitments involving the placement of both individuals into faculty positions at UMD.

At their initiative, the prospective faculty member should tell the chair of the search committee, the dean, or the unit head about any interest in, or need for, dual-career program support. Typically, the primary school, college, or department/unit then takes the lead in gathering initial information about the dual career spouse or partner and seeking a possible placement at UMD.

Terminology

• Primary Hire: The spouse or partner who is recruited and receives a UMD employment offer first.
• Second Hire: The spouse or partner who is recruited second (sometimes referred to as the trailing or dual-career spouse or partner).
• Primary Recruiting Department/Unit: The department/unit that is recruiting the primary hire.
• Secondary Department/Unit: The department/unit that is recruiting the second hire. In some cases, the primary recruiting department/unit may also be the hiring unit for the second hire.

Guidelines

1. Applicability. The arrangement will normally apply only when both members of a faculty couple require tenured or tenure-track or permanent status/permanent status track appointments. However, short-term non-tenure track faculty appointments for the spouse or partner may be possible.
2. Consent. Secondary departments/units are not obligated to participate in a dual-career arrangement. The arrangement must be based on voluntary consent of the primary recruiting department/unit, the secondary department/unit that will appoint the spouse or partner, and the deans of the participating colleges. The secondary department/unit must agree to accept the spouse or partner and the appointment arrangements, and the participating deans and the Provost must give their consent.
3. Arrangements for the position. Depending on the resources and needs of the secondary department/unit, the primary recruiting department/unit may wish to offer up to a three-year temporary academic appointment or a faculty tenure-track line.
   1. Note that non-tenure track faculty are usually offered a probationary three-year appointment so that secondary departments/units will have time to determine the suitability of the appointment.
   2. Postdoctoral appointments may be for one to three years, provided the second hire meets UMD’s postdoc eligibility requirements.
   3. For temporary appointments, funding is provided on a year-to-year basis, as set forth in Section 4(b), and the secondary department/unit is expected to cover 100% of the salary, if the appointment is renewed.
   4. For tenured or tenure-track appointments, permanent funding is normally provided by the participating units and the Provost when the initial appointment is approved.
   5. In all cases, an appropriate university employment contract is to be prepared and approved by the deans and the Provost. Should either the primary hire or second hire leave UMD, any base funds previously provided will be returned to the units that provided the funds.
4. Financial Arrangements. For tenured or tenure-track spouse or partner appointments (including permanent status or permanent status track hires), the primary department/unit, the secondary department/unit, and the Provost's office each provide ⅓ of the initial state support salary and fringes in base funding to the secondary department/unit. If the second hire will be placed in the same department/unit as the primary hire, the Provost’s contribution remains ⅓ of the state support salary. Deans may provide additional funds to assist the primary or secondary departments/units.
   1. It is the responsibility of the spouse or partner’s tenure/home unit to notify the Provost’s Office promptly that the salary funds are due.
   2. Should the second hire leave UMD within five years of the original hire date, or not obtain tenure, the funding provided by the funding unit(s) will discontinue, and any base funds previously provided will be returned to the units/offices that provided the funds once the spouse or partner is officially off the payroll.
   3. If the second hire is to be appointed jointly across departments/units, the salary support from the Provost and primary hire department/unit would be distributed and pro-rated by FTE to the joint appointment departments/units.
   4. For non-tenure-track appointments, up to three years of salary support will be negotiated by the primary and secondary department/unit, and assistance from the deans and Provost is permissible, but not mandatory. Normally, such appointments will not involve the transfer of base/permanent funding. At the conclusion of three years, the secondary department/unit is expected to provide the entire salary for the second hire, if that unit chooses to renew the appointment. The secondary department may elect to appoint the spouse or partner to a tenure-track appointment at the conclusion of the temporary appointment. For such conversions, financial assistance from the deans and Provost is permissible, but not mandatory.³ 
   5. Start-up package funding for the second hire (if appointed into a tenured/tenure track position) is as follows: ⅓ Provost and Vice President for Research, ⅓ primary hire department/unit, and ⅓ second hire department/unit. For joint appointments for the second hire, the start-up proportions would be recalculated to reflect the additional departments/units.
   6. The primary hire department/unit is responsible for the costs related to campus visits, as well as allowable post-acceptance travel, for both faculty members.

Procedures

1. When the primary recruiting department/unit learns of the existence of a spouse or partner who wishes to secure a faculty appointment, the department/unit should obtain a curriculum vitae and initiate contact with the secondary department/unit (or departments/units if a joint appointment is being considered) determined to be the most suitable for the spouse’s or partner’s appointment. The contacted department/unit is not obligated to hire the second faculty member.⁴
2. If the secondary department/unit is interested, the chairs/unit heads of the departments/units should develop a proposal within the framework of these guidelines.
3. The department chairs/unit heads should seek the concurrence of the deans. In cases in which the departments/units reside within the same college, the financial and appointment negotiations between the primary and secondary department/unit will be internal to the college.
4. Once a mutually approved plan is developed, the two deans (or, in some cases, the dean of the college in which both appointments will reside) should jointly seek agreement from the Provost’s office through the Office of Faculty Affairs to proceed with the possible arrangement.
5. As the negotiations become more serious, there must be a formal approval of the second hire’s appointment by the standard unit and college processes that apply for approving faculty appointments, including a job talk, an opportunity to meet with faculty and others in the unit, and a faculty tenure vote for any tenured appointment or a permanent status vote for any permanent status appointments.

¹A dual-career couple is one in which both spouses or partners pursue academic/faculty careers at the same time.

²To be eligible, the dual-career couple must be in a personal relationship, defined as a marital or other committed relationship, including a domestic partnership.

³Because faculty start dates do not always coincide with the beginning of the fiscal year, the equivalent of three years' worth of the starting salary will be provided across the relevant time periods corresponding to the start date of the spouse/partner.

⁴If the second hire is appointed into the same unit as the primary, and the primary hire will serve in a leadership role (e.g., chair or director), the dean must develop a management plan that prevents conflicts of interest.