Retirement and End of Employment

Planning for your retirement is an important, career-long endeavor with serious personal, health, and financial implications. The creation of the Faculty Retirement Planning Guide was motivated by more than 30 UNC-CH faculty retirees who wanted to facilitate a smoother process for still-active faculty by raising awareness of hurdles they faced planning their own retirement.

UNC-CH Faculty Retirement Planning Guide

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC-Chapel Hill) Exit Interview Program is designed to offer departing employees with the opportunity to provide feedback about their work engagement components and overall experience while here at UNC-Chapel Hill. Your input is valuable to UNC-Chapel Hill, and we appreciate the contribution of your thoughts and suggestions. The Exit Interview Questionnaire is the primary vehicle in place to capture feedback about benefits, work balance, communication and work environment issues.

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Each faculty member may retire in accordance with the provisions of Chapter 135 of the North Carolina General Statutes “Retirement System of Teachers and State Employees”) at any time. The only exception is that nine-month employees must retire at the end of their contract year, i.e., May 31, June 30 or December 31. For nine-month faculty, any deviation from the usual retirement or resignation date would be exceptional and will require review and approval by the appropriate dean’s office.

The University of North Carolina Phased Retirement Program is designed to provide an opportunity for eligible full-time tenured faculty members to make an orderly transition to retirement through half-time (or equivalent) service. The goals of the Program are to promote renewal of the professor in order to ensure institutional vitality and to provide additional flexibility and support for individual faculty members who are nearing retirement. The Program is entirely voluntary and will be entered into by a written agreement between an Eligible Faculty Member and the institution.

For more information about phased retirement, contact the Benefits & Leave unit in the Office of Human Resources.

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The following summarizes guidelines for annual and bonus leave payout and transfer eligibility for faculty members.

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Once the retirement is processed, the UNC Benefits Office will automatically update the campus directory to “emeritus” status, which will allow continued access to UNC email. Faculty who continue active research with external support may choose to delay their request for this automatic designation.

UNC retirees are also automatically added to the online UNC Directory as a retiree status:

• Retired faculty with emeritus status are listed as “Emeritus, UNC-Chapel Hill.”
• Non-emeriti faculty are designated as “Retiree UNC-Chapel Hill” with a reference to the previous home department.

UNC’s directory listings have now been standardized as indicated above; directory listings cannot be customized further.

To have the title “emeritus” updated to “emerita” or to delay the “emeritus” designation: Please email the UNC Benefits Office at benefits@unc.edu with your name, PID and request.

Emeritus faculty may request University business cards to be printed to reflect their Emeritus title and current contact information. Such requests should be directed to the administrative office of the department in which they were last appointed. Departments are encouraged to satisfy such requests, but ultimately this is at each Chair’s discretion and subject to budget availability within the department.

For other continued amenities (like office space, laboratory facilities, library carrels and parking) as may relate to emeriti faculty, contact your appropriate department chair or dean.