Academic Affairs and Personnel

Date:               November 8, 2024
To:                   Deans, Directors, Department Chairs & Administrative Officers
From:               Kathleen L. Komar, Interim Vice Provost for Academic Affairs and Personnel
Subject:           Retirement Planning – Components to Pathway Agreements

Dear Colleagues:

UCLA’s Pathways to Retirement program facilitates faculty retirement as part of the larger goals of faculty renewal as well as enhancing the continuing participation of emeriti faculty in academic life. In the past several years, over 500 members of the faculty have taken advantage of the opportunity to set a specific date for retirement in conjunction with specific plans for research, teaching, and service up to two years preceding and three years following the move to emerita/us status. For Deans and Chairs, those guaranteed future faculty retirement dates improve their ability to plan for future hiring. 

My office will work with you and your Senate faculty colleagues to craft individualized Retirement Agreements. Many of the benefits that you can offer have little or no direct cost. What costs may be involved are good investments, both in providing for continued contributions from your senior faculty and in your unit’s faculty renewal.

Pathway to Retirement Agreements include an appointee’s agreement to irrevocably retire as of a fixed date (usually the penultimate business day of June). Agreements typically include a mix of pre- and post- retirement conditions. Here are some elements you may want to consider for inclusion in a Pathways agreement:

1. Chair’s Grant of Teaching Relief Prior to Retirement:  Teaching obligations may be shifted or partially reduced. Departments can benefit if the faculty member engages in curriculum development or co-teaching, provides special administrative services, or concludes unfinished research or catalogues one’s scholarly work and research. Such relief can be spread over two years prior to retirement and coordinated with pending sabbatical leaves. Teaching relief can be especially valuable during the last quarter or two just before retirement. Note that if the teaching relief results in a zero-teaching quarter, faculty are expected to be in residence and available for regular department and university service during that quarter. 
2. Deferral of Five-Year Review:  Agreements may “defer” a five-year review (or a review’s remedial plan); see UCLA CALL, Appendix 12. Such a deferral can be especially attractive when combined with teaching relief, as it can provide long-serving colleagues with a smoother path to retirement. 
3. Recall:  Campus administrators may enter a pre-retirement agreement for recall to service for up to three years following retirement. Recall may be for teaching, research, or administration. Recall teaching is compensated on a per-course basis, following campus guidelines. Research recall is ordinarily supported by individual or group extra-mural grants. Overall, Paid Recall can provide up to 43 percent of an individual’s salary at retirement. See APM-205.     
4. Space:  Chairs, with support from their Deans, may approve an allocation of post-retirement space as a component of pre-retirement Pathways Agreements, subject to campus space policies and availability.
5. Research Funds:  At the expense of the School or Department, post-retirement research funds may be made available. In some cases, these funds may carry over from an Endowed Chair, as specified in the UCLA CALL, Appendix 18.   
6. Research Professor Title:  Emeriti senate faculty continuing active research programs have embraced the opportunity to apply for the title of Research Professor (or Distinguished Research Professor for Above and Further Above Scale Faculty), which they may use in lieu of the Professor Emerita/us title. Chair’s and Dean’s support for this title may be included as a component of Pathways agreements, pursuant to UCLA CALL, Appendix 38.

For more information, please contact Emeritus Professor David Lopez, who serves as our campus Faculty Retirement Liaison, at dlopez@soc.ucla.edu.  Professor Lopez works with individual faculty members to develop their retirement plans and to adapt the Pathways format to their specific situations. He has posted helpful guides to Retirement Planning and to Emeriti Rights on the Academic Affairs & Personnel Office Retirement Resources webpage.  He has also posted a helpful Guide to the 2016 Tier Retirement Plan as it operates for Senate Faculty as a reference to help you answer questions from prospective and new faculty hired after June 30, 2016.

Please contact my Special Assistant, Professor Robert Goldstein (goldstein@law.ucla.edu) and Assistant Vice Chancellor Erika Chau (echau@conet.ucla.edu) when you are ready to finalize a Pathways Agreement, and prior to obtaining any signatures.