Employees are not entitled to personal leaves of absence as a matter of right. In special cases, an employee may be granted a Personal Leave of Absence. A Personal Leave of Absence will ordinarily not be approved for greater than 12 months and cannot exceed 24 months.
In reviewing the request for personal leave, many factors will be considered. These include, but are not limited to:
- The reason for the personal leave
- The employee's work performance, to include any active disciplinary action
- The employee's length of service with the University
- The need for the services of the employee and the ability for the department to absorb the employee's work during the absence
- When applicable, the benefit to the University of the experience gained by the person on personal leave
If approved for a Personal Leave of Absence, the person must exhaust all vacation, compensatory time, personal plus time, personal days (lab school faculty associates) and, if applicable to the reason for personal leave, sick time before moving to an unpaid status.
Eligibility and Limitations
- Eligible Employment Classifications
- Tenured/Tenure Track Faculty
- Non-Tenure Track Faculty
- Faculty Associates, continuous and non-continuous
- Civil Service employees (does not include temporary, student, or extra-help appointments)
- Administrative Professionals, continuous and non-continuous
- Civil Service employees serving an initial probationary period are not eligible.
- All other non-Civil Service employees must have completed at least 12 months of benefit-eligible employment with the University.
Personal leaves cannot:
- Extend beyond the time period of a non-continuous employee's current contract end date
- Be used to hold employment at the University after another position of employment has been accepted elsewhere
- Be counted toward eligibility for sabbatical and/or tenure
Application Procedure
The employee should complete the form and submit to their department. The form must be approved by the department, the Associate Vice President for Human Resources, and the respective Vice President for the employee's division.
Benefits During Leave
Benefit accruals, access to insurance benefits, and contributions to State Universities Retirement System (SURS) will continue for the time period that the employee remains in a paid status.
If at any point an employee moves into an unpaid status, the accrual or deposit of benefit time will cease. Insurance benefits throught the State of Illinois may be continued for up to 24 months cumulatively at full cost to the employee provided the employee has not already exhausted personal leave time according to State of Illinois Group Insurance rules. Unpaid personal leaves of absence will be reported to SURS, and service time will only be credited if the employee elects to ourchase the time with SURS in accordance with theire rules and procedures.