Date: June 14, 2021
To:  Tenured Faculty
From:  Provost Katherine Fleming

Dear Tenured Faculty Colleagues,

I am writing to bring your attention to a new Tenured Faculty Retirement Program that will be offered permanently going forward.

The program will become a standard component of benefits for eligible full-time tenured faculty in all schools and institutes at NYU’s campus in New York, except the NYU Grossman School of Medicine and the Long Island School of Medicine. It offers three options to meet different career and retirement goals of our tenured faculty.  

This retirement plan, which is wholly voluntary, is designed to provide significant University support to faculty who are considering retirement, while also providing a framework for reinvestment in the ranks of our tenure-track faculty. The program’s design incorporates best practices from peer private research universities while also addressing requests that we have heard from NYU faculty over the years for a retirement program that is equitable and consistent across the University for all eligible faculty, and that has transparent terms. A description of the program, including eligibility criteria and specific dates for all aspects of the program, is available here.

In this first year that it is offered, eligible tenured faculty who wish to participate in the program must submit a non-binding enrollment form anytime between October 1, 2021 and the submission deadline of December 13, 2021. Participants must then enter into a formal signed retirement agreement by June 17, 2022. Retirement information sessions for faculty will be held this summer and fall.

Unlike the special retirement program offered last year, the Tenured Faculty Retirement Program will be ongoing—it is not a temporary program—with one especially important exception: in this first year only, the program is open to all eligible tenured faculty, including those whose age will exceed the upper limit of the program’s requirements on their retirement date. Note that faculty whose age exceeds the upper limit for this program are eligible to enroll in Fall 2021 during the first year of the program only and will have no opportunity to enroll in the program at a later date.

I know that faculty will have questions about this program; many can be answered through a review of FAQs, which include information about faculty retirement in general and about this Tenured Faculty Retirement Program in particular. The site also provides contact information for individuals in each school, and in Work Life, who also can answer questions about retirement.

The program will yield financial savings to help cover its own cost in the near term and will provide resources to NYU schools to invest in academic initiatives in the longer term. Schools will be expected to hold vacated positions open for one year, and to use vacancies to hire at the Assistant Professor level. There is no intent to reduce the number of Tenured/Tenure-Track faculty positions. Indeed, no aspect of this program requires, or would necessarily lead to, a reduction in the number of Tenured/Tenure-Track faculty positions in a school. It aims rather to support faculty at the end of their academic careers in their transition to retirement and at the same time to replenish the junior faculty ranks on a regular basis.

We recognize that the decision to retire is a significant one for faculty members and their families. We hope that this program will provide helpful options for our faculty as they consider this important transition.

Sincerely,

Katherine E. Fleming
Provost

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