Travel & Special Entertainment

Last Updated: March 7, 2025

Exception Requests

Our collective responsibility is to ensure prudent financial stewardship, which necessitates an immediate tightening of expenses across our institution. For Academic Affairs, we are instituting the policies below for administrative (non-school) units:

Business Travel

All non-essential business travel should be postponed until further notice.
For non-school units, staff travel should be paused unless absolutely necessary. Any exceptions require approval from Office of EVC.

Special Entertainment

- For non-school units, special entertainment should be paused unless necessary. Any exceptions require approval from Office of EVC.

Submit an Exception Request

FAQs

Travel Funding: Discretionary

Q: Does the pause on non-essential travel apply to folks attending conferences (or going on planned research trips) that are reimbursed from their own discretionary research funds/grants?

Each faculty member should assess whether their travel is essential given the current financial stewardship measures. If the travel is deemed essential, such as attending research conferences or conducting research trips funded by grants or discretionary research funds, it may proceed with caution, taking into account the broader financial situation. No EVC approval is required for schools; however, faculty should remain mindful of any unit- or department-specific guidelines and exercise prudent judgment in their travel decisions.

Pre-approved travel

Q: For non-school (administrative) units, if professional development conferences and travel has been vetted through a departmental approval process prior to the new policy, should this go through exception request?

Yes, for non-school (administrative) units only, exception requests are required for travel/conferences that have been pre-approved by units.
For school, please follow your school’s protocol.

Pre-paid Travel
Q: For non-school (administrative) units, for professional conferences and travel that has already paid for registration, airfare, etc. but the conference itself has not occurred should we submit an exception request?

No. However, please use your best judgment if the overall cost of the travel is higher than the cancellation of the trip.

In-progress Payment for Travel
Q: For non-school (administrative) units, what about employees with transactions in process where the purchase date was prior to the policy but the transaction is not yet complete, how do you propose we manage those?

For purchases in progress, please reconcile per usual practice.

STAR Awards

Q: For administrative (non-school) units, should STAR awards be paused?

At this time, STAR Awards are not paused; however, we encourage units to take a conservative approach to reviewing all expenses.