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Information and Policies for Program Coordinators
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We have internally allocated funds sufficient for the needs of your program along the lines described in the following sections. These funds provide participants help with local living expenses and, in some cases, with travel expenses. Rarely are they sufficient to provide for full salary replacement, although, as will be discussed further, we can sometimes make arrangements to provide for a fraction of salary in special cases or otherwise facilitate prospective participants’ going on research or sabbatical leaves. The budget also allows for expenses for seminar speakers, within limits. If you will host a conference in connection with your program, it will be administered separately with its own budget for inviting speakers.
The KITP Deputy Director will work closely with you at each stage during the process of organizing your program. A coordinators’ data site will be established that will show all program applicants as well as those invited, our associated financial commitment, and their current status.
Some funding agencies have special grants that can be used to supplement the budgets for workshops or conferences. For example, various European agencies have provided substantial support for international collaborations and conferences, and, under certain circumstances, NASA, NIH, or the Departments of Energy or Defense have cooperated with us in sponsoring an activity. We have also occasionally been assisted by companies such as IBM or Raytheon and by private foundations such as the Burroughs-Wellcome Fund and the Clay Mathematics Institute. Please contact the Deputy Director or me if you know of such possibilities relevant to your program.
Because we view the Institute as a place to do substantial research, major emphasis is placed on long-term visitors. We strongly encourage program participants to be in residence as long as possible, ideally for the full term of the program. Shorter stays should be given relatively low priority. Visits of fewer than 3 work-weeks are strongly discouraged except for observers/experimentalists or special seminar speakers.
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The Institute currently has office space for approximately 23 participants (including the organizers) per program in residence at any one time. This assumes that each participant shares the office with one other visitor. You will have to plan your program accordingly. We generally have many more applicants for participation in our various activities than we can possibly accommodate. Thus, it is essential that we verify that space is available before extending invitations, even to people who require no financial support.
The Institute advertises its programs by sending posters to all PhD granting institutions in the United States, as well as to national laboratories, industrial laboratories and research centers abroad, inviting scientists to apply to participate. However, it is essential to go beyond this general announcement. You will need to bring your program to the attention of scientists who may have a particular interest in these activities, generally through an e-mailing of your own. The Deputy Director will assist you in the process.
We also encourage you to use our evolving web facilities. We wish to set up, as soon as possible, a program home page on the KITP server, where you can advertise the intent of the program and link to our online application page. You may find it helpful to look at the corresponding pages for current programs. Please send the Deputy Director a short description of your program for posting.
The KITP strongly encourages the participation of women and minorities in its programs. This is the responsibility of all coordinators, but please keep the coordinator responsible for ensuring diversity informed of your efforts. I would also like to point out that we will be expecting a brief report of these efforts and results before issuing the bulk of your invitations.
I strongly urge you to contact personally, at the earliest possible date, those individuals you hope to be key participants in your programs. If people inquire about visiting KITP, you can refer them to the “Visit info” tab on our web site.
Please note that graduate students may not apply unless they will complete their PhDs previous to the start of the program. (However, see the section below about Affiliates.) If supplementary funding is available specifically for the purpose of inviting graduate students or beginning postdocs, as is sometimes the case with some NIH grants, we can make exceptions.
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For most visitors we provide reimbursement toward local expenses at a per diem rate depending on the availability of lodging and seasonal factors. (IRS and University regulations require that reimbursements for meals not exceed $50/day and that lodging and all other expenses beyond $50/day be documented by original receipts.) Our present rate is $85 per day for individuals coming alone and often a bit higher for couples. For those coming with children, the amount depends on many factors, including the cost of their housing, the length of their stays, the ages of their children, etc. For families coming for four weeks or longer, there is the possibility of supplementary financial assistance from the Rice Family Fund. For further details, see our web site.
Visits of fewer than three weeks are strongly discouraged. In the cases of experimentalists or observers or special seminar speakers, a visit of one week is acceptable and can be reimbursed at a higher daily rate, the amount of which is seasonal up to a maximum set by GSA regulations. All of these expenses are charged to the program budget.
In rare appropriate circumstances, the Institute can provide partial salary support for long-term visitors. Budgetary limitations, however, restrict the number of people to whom this can be offered to one or two people at most, and it is usually reserved for program coordinators as needed. In order to make maximum use of our resources, we ask visiting members to provide as much of their own salaries as possible. The response to this request has been very satisfactory, and the KITP traditionally has needed to provide very little salary replacement. For further discussion of salary replacement, see the Appendix.
In those instances when the Institute does provide a salary supplement, it may also be possible to provide some reimbursement for local expenses. The amount of this reimbursement varies widely depending on personal circumstances. Although documentation of lodging expenses is required, this allowance is not classified as income for tax purposes.
Our travel budget is very limited. We ask visitors if at all possible, to supply travel costs from their own resources. However, if that is impossible, the invitee can explain briefly why and apply for travel support using a short web-based application form.
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Formal invitations and financial commitments are made in writing by the Director only, upon the advice of the program coordinators. Commitments must not be made by the coordinators prior to the letter sent by the Director. In the past, misunderstandings have arisen in this regard, and no invitation will be issued unless the projected space and budget permit.
I would like to urge you to have some commitments made to key individuals as soon as possible. They will help you anchor the program and attract other participants.
Anyone coming for more than one week but fewer than three weeks is considered a short-term visitor. Please ask them to complete an application as usual, but their visits are handled differently from regular participants. They do not qualify for help from our housing assistant in locating suitable accommodations, so they must make their own arrangements, generally staying in a nearby motel. Their per diem arrangements for local expenses are the same as for one-week visitors or seminar speakers (next section,) and they may apply for travel assistance if needed. The number of such short-term visitors must be included within the quota of 23 participants/week.
The sole exception to the policy above concerns speakers or experimenters coming for visits of one week or less. So long as the budget permits, you may invite them directly without prior approval provided that you fill out the proper form on the Web::
http://www.kitp.ucsb.edu/visitors/info/mso/speakerform.php.
[Please bookmark this URL, which is not public.] The speaker will then be integrated into the program database, listed on the relevant weekly calendar, and contacted about housing and travel arrangements. Subsequent changes should be e-mailed to speakers@kitp.ucsb.edu.
We can offer these short-term visitors (who come for a week or less to give a talk and to interact with the long-term program participants) somewhat more for daily local expenses in recognition of the greater expense of the motel-type accommodations needed for such short visits. In addition, we often provide some travel support, up to amounts depending on the origin of the travel. (A rough schedule of airfare guidelines appears on the speaker form.) The first such weekly visitor will not count against your weekly quota of participants, but beyond the first, they will be counted unless otherwise approved. Consult with the Deputy Director about space limitations.
Program participants frequently wish to bring their graduate students and/or postdocs. We call these “Affiliate Participants.” We generally welcome affiliates—indeed, we are eager to provide these unique opportunities for young scientists—and we have allotted at least five spaces per week per program for this purpose. (These five are in addition to the weekly quota for participants, since they are assigned desks in large rooms with other affiliates.) The policies concerning the length of their visits are the same as for program participants.
All expenses for an affiliate must be paid by the sponsoring program participant, unless KITP has a special grant specifically for this purpose. Preference is given to those whose sponsors are long-term visitors and, in general, affiliates will not be considered for participants coming for fewer than four weeks. Note that the visit of an affiliate is restricted to coincide with some part of the sponsor’s stay at the KITP unless arrangements can be made for another participant to serve as ersatz mentor. Usually, the affiliate’s airfare is to be paid by the sponsor or home institution.
For outstanding graduate students who can come for an extended stay, you should encourage nominations as Graduate Fellows, for whom KITP does provide financial support. [See our web site for information, where you will find nomination forms for both affiliates and grad fellows.]
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Visitors to the KITP can find answers online to just about any question they may have concerning transportation, housing, and living in the Santa Barbara area. They should start from the “Visit Info” page, the link for which is on the header of nearly every page on the KITP web site. Visitors coming for fewer than three weeks need to make their own lodging arrangements directly, usually at a nearby motel, because their reservations must be guaranteed by credit card.
Our housing assistant, Monica Curry, helps confirmed participants (including affiliates) who are staying three workweeks or longer to find suitable housing. Participants must complete the online housing questionnaire well in advance of their visits as several factors, including length of stay and the presence of family members, affects availability.
At the conclusion of the program, you will be asked to prepare a short summary report, including a diversity chart, a sample of which is available online. It is due within about two months following the end of the program.
Your primary contact at the KITP for detailed matters related to organizing your program will be our Deputy Director, Martin Einhorn, whose e-mail address is meinhorn@kitp.ucsb.edu. His telephone number is (805) 893-6309; the KITP FAX number is (805) 893-2431. It is very important to maintain close contact to ensure that the program is planned most effectively.
David Gross
Director
Appendix: On Salary Replacement
Q: If a participant in our KITP program wants or needs some salary in order to participate, are there any options to pursue this?
A: The program’s budget does not explicitly include funds for salary replacement, but they can be used for that. In practice, however, there is very little money for salary replacement without overly constraining the program. The amount available is usually insufficient to provide the half-salary characteristic of sabbatical leaves. KITP does sometimes supplement the budget to provide for an important visitor, and, if the time of the visit extends beyond the limits of the program, may pay either a salary replacement or a per diem allowance in the category of “General Member” not associated with a program.
We have found that it is particularly important that invitees apply for support at the earliest possible date because there are often early deadlines, e.g., for Guggenheim Fellowships and the like. Also, special funds are frequently available from Department Heads, Deans, etc., if one moves quickly. We can provide letters supporting such requests.
For an especially distinguished participant, KITP will occasionally provide a supplement from other sources, but KITP has only a small endowment. [It is a high priority for development to raise funds for senior fellowships that would permit full salary replacement, but so far, we have met with little success.] We expect members to provide their own salary during the summer, and we are explicitly forbidden from providing summer salary for those who have access to grant support for this purpose.
What has often worked is this: a university will provide release time for a faculty member for the cost of a replacement instructor (usually under $10K for one term.) There is precedent for this in the experimental community, where faculty sometimes need to be in residence at a remote laboratory to mount or conduct an experiment or to make observations. People from most of the UC campuses have come here under such an arrangement, as well as people coming from other major research universities, such as UM, Cornell, MIT, Texas, and elsewhere. Participants from industrial and government laboratories are often able to obtain leaves with salary support for periods of a month or more. All such arrangements need to be negotiated well in advance and must allow for additional time for official approval from administrations involved.
At times a department will allow a faculty member to double-up teaching one term in order to be free to come to the KITP another term. With a cooperative department chair, sometimes the additional teaching duty can be arranged to be not so onerous.
KITP benefits enormously from the good will of its user community, which recognizes the value of our programs both for advancing the research frontiers and for enhancing career development. Participating in a KITP program provides opportunities to meet new people and to form new collaborations, links that often continue to benefit the researcher and his/her home institution long after the our program ends. Helping to organize a program adds a dimension of leadership and experience that is valuable and highly visible.
A related issue: sometimes participants ask about medical insurance. UCSB cannot provide any assistance, but for participants from overseas, they can sometimes purchase a policy from a private insurer. They should contact Deborah Storm for further information.
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Last update on 05/30/09. me
Find an error? Please email Deborah.
