The College of IST will allow faculty members to purchase individual professional memberships if the following criteria are met.
Faculty
- The faculty member has sufficient funding to cover the expense of the membership.
- The membership is for a maximum duration of 1 year. (The college limits purchases of professional memberships to one year duration to reduce the college's financial exposure when faculty leave unexpectedly.)
- All individual memberships should be purchased with a Purchasing Card.
- The faculty member must document the business purpose of the membership and how the membership benefits the College/University (such as savings or discounts), as well as personal scholarly benefits.
- The above items should be documented on the Purchasing Card Support Form when completing the Service Now ticket via the Reimburse/Reconcile Travel or Goods & Services form.
Postdocs and Graduate Assistants
- Student memberships are generally not allowed to be purchased with University funding except when membership is acquired in conjunction with a conference registration (i.e., to receive a discount or if membership is required to attend). This should be documented in the Purchase Request Form.
Examples of memberships typically covered by the college include SIGCHI, IEEE, SIAM, and others, although approval for each faculty member is required.
If the request is in alignment with this policy and University policy HR12 it will be deemed as approved by the Dean.
The College of IST also has several institutional memberships for the entire College. Faculty do not need to renew these memberships on their own. Renewal will be handled by the Finance Office and faculty will receive a notification when the renewal occurs each year. New faculty are added and departing faculty are removed as needed. The list of memberships includes the following:
- ACM
- ISchools, Inc.
- HCIC
- CRA
Approved by: Dr. Andrea Tapia, Interim Dean, 8/21/2023
Clarification added to Faculty bullet point #2, 2/6/2025
Renewal process added for institutional memberships, 3/5/2025
Updated to reflect the use of the Purchasing Card Support form and Service Now ticket, 7/7/2026