The University of Iowa is a community of faculty, staff, students, alumni, and friends who seek to advance knowledge and foster learning across a broad range of academic endeavors. So that learning and creative expression may flourish, the university takes seriously its obligation to protect academic freedom and free expression; maintain a safe, supportive, healthy, and humane environment; and nourish a system of collaborative decision-making based on mutual respect and shared governance.  

Because diversity, broadly defined, advances its mission of teaching, research, and service, the university is dedicated to an inclusive community in which people of different cultural, national, individual, and academic backgrounds encounter one another in a spirit of cooperation, openness, and shared appreciation. The university recognizes its accountability to the people of Iowa and the need to exercise responsible stewardship over the intellectual and material resources entrusted to it, including the need to direct those resources to programs and initiatives that are central to the university’s core mission.  

In all that it does, the university measures itself by exacting standards, promotes continuous improvement, honors excellence and high aspiration, and holds its community as a whole to the highest degree of honesty, fairness, and personal integrity.

This handbook provides a general overview of the University of Iowa and its policies as they relate to all staff.  The University Operations Manual is the principal source of information on all university policies and procedures.

Staff at the University of Iowa are categorized by job descriptions to one of the groups listed at the bottom of this page. While the Operations Manual is the primary document containing the governing policies and procedures for all staff as well as faculty, in cases of unionized staff, a negotiated contract through their respective unions (i.e. AFSCME and SEIU) takes precedence for some policies. Information about both AFSCME and SEIU contracts can be found in the labor/union relations section.

University Staff Categories

• Professional and Scientific staff (non-unionized): Governed by university policies as stated in the University Operations Manual

• Professional and Scientific staff (unionized health care employees): Governed by university policies and Service Employees International Union (SEIU) contract

• Merit Staff (unionized): Governed by Iowa Board of Regents Merit Rules, American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) contract, and university policies

• Merit Supervisory Exempt/Confidential Staff: Governed by Iowa Board of Regents Merit Rules and university policies as stated in the University Operations Manual.

To determine which category your job description belongs to, contact your unit-level human resources representative or, Compensation and Classification, a unit of University Human Resources.