Guidelines for Faculty/Non-Faculty Outside Relationships

The academic environment also encourages mentor/mentee relationships between faculty and non- faculty individuals (including undergraduate, graduate, and masters’ students, along with doctoral candidates and postdoctoral appointees as well as graduate medical trainees). These relationships provide incalculable benefits, but when a faculty/non-faculty relationship extends to an outside activity, the following guidelines and principles may govern interactions:

1. Quite often, financial relationships between faculty members and students take place within the context of a start-up company founded by the faculty member, although other types of relationships are possible (e.g., where the faculty member and the student consult for another entity). In general, although the institution does not actively monitor these relationships, the assumption is that a full-time postdoctoral appointee or other post-secondary student with a stipend is receiving a living wage which is sufficient to allow them to focus on their prescribed research/work, and taking on part-time projects for a faculty member is inconsistent with those assumptions.

 

2. A Duke faculty member may not supervise or directly employ (i.e., hire) any non-faculty member of the Duke community for an outside professional activity if that Duke faculty member is also in a supervisory role for the individual as part of their primary commitment. Supervisory roles include, but are not limited to, student advisor, faculty mentor, member of dissertation committee, principal investigator, attending clinician, program/center/institutional director, and/or departmental/divisional leader.

 

3. All outside professional activities that may involve a non-faculty member of the Duke community working with and/or reporting to the Duke faculty member as part of their primary commitment requires review and approval by:
   1. the appropriate Dean(s), including of the graduate or undergraduate school as applicable if the non-faculty member is in a student/trainee role.
   2. the department chair, if the non-faculty member is an employee of the University.

An independent ombudsperson will be made available to the non-faculty member if the circumstances necessitate or the Dean/Department Chair or individual make such a request.

 

4. No Duke faculty member should engage in behavior that would appear to require, coerce, or otherwise pressure a non-faculty individual to work with them in any outside professional activity; this restriction applies to individuals even if there is no direct reporting relationship to the faculty member in question.