Faculty Handbook

Retirement Eligibility Requirements for Faculty and Academic Staff

Last updated: 12/6/1991

IV. ACADEMIC HUMAN RESOURCES POLICIES (Cont.)

The following policy was approved by the Board of Trustees on February 17, 1962 and revised on December 6, 1991.

Eligibility Policy

The University retirement plan is described in the section entitled Faculty/Academic Staff Benefit and Retirement Programs. Michigan State University's faculty/academic staff retirement policy provides:

  1. Retirement of faculty/academic staff members is optional on the first day of the month following attainment of age 62 with 15 years of service or after 25 years of service at any age. 1  For more detail, please see the Retiring from the University Policy.  
  2. Tenure system faculty members appointed prior to January 1, 1992 who meet the retirement eligibility requirements in 1, above, may serve their final year before retirement on a terminal consultantship basis with agreed upon duties involving at least a half-time assignment provided there were no compensated leaves in the five years immediately prior to retirement. Recommendation for such consultantship must be made by the department chairperson/school director and dean. The salary must be provided by the department/school. In applying for a terminal year consultantship, the faculty member must attach a letter to the retirement form outlining the proposed duties during the consultantship. At the end of the consultantship period, a report on the accomplishments is to be submitted to the department chairperson/school director or dean of a non-departmentally organized college. The special retirement form for a consultatnship is available at Special Retirement Situations.
  3. A retired faculty/academic staff member may be re-employed, usually for part-time service, on a semester-to-semester or year-to-year basis. Salary will be determined at the time of appointment for such service. Retired faculty/academic staff who return to active employment at 50% time or more for nine months or longer are eligible to receive benefits such as health, dental, employee paid life, travel accident, 403(b) Base Retirement Program with University contribution, and 403(b) Supplemental Retirement Program and/or 457(b) Deferred Compensation Plan, in the same manner as an active employee.
Footnote:

1 Service includes activities of interest to and supported by the University regardless of the sources of financial support.

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