Notices
Faculty and staff meal plans now available for purchase
Faculty and staff meal plans are now available for purchase. Plans can be used to dine in or take food to go using a green, reusable container from our All You Care to Eat locations or toward meal exchange at participating locations. Dining Dollars are accepted at all campus dining locations. Make life easy and enjoy what campus dining has to offer with a plan that never expires. Sign up today at go.niu.edu/FS-mealplan.
NIU 403(b) Supplemental Retirement Plan approved vendor virtual appointments
Northern Illinois University sponsors the Northern Illinois University Supplemental Retirement Plan – Internal Revenue Code Section 403(b) (“Plan”). As an employee of Northern Illinois University receiving compensation reportable on a W-2, you are eligible to voluntarily elect to invest a portion of your compensation to the Plan to supplement your retirement savings. The Plan allows employees to make tax-deferred (pre-tax) and/or Roth option (after-tax) 403(b) investment contributions. The approved Vendor(s) in the Plan will be holding virtual appointments to provide individual financial counseling. Whether you are currently enrolled in the Plan or seeking additional information for future enrollment, each vendor listed below has provided a link to their company information and the dates of their future appointments for those who would like individual financial counseling. To obtain more information on the NIU Supplemental Retirement Plan 403(b), please visit the Human Resource Services website.
Change to email authentication for faculty and instructors
O365 currently allows two modes of authentication to your email: basic authentication and modern authentication. Only modern authentication supports multifactor authentication (MFA) and protects your account from hackers. Basic authentication does not support MFA and does not protect your account from hackers the way modern authentication does. Due to this lack of protection, and changing liability regulations, modern authentication has already been enforced for staff, student, student employee, graduate assistant and retiree accounts. This change is scheduled to go live on Friday, July 30, 2021 and will be applicable to all faculty and instructors. Once this improvement goes into effect, only software that supports modern authentication will function with our O365 service. If you are using any clients which are not on the supported list, you would have to make the transition to one of these clients to be able to access your NIU email. After the change is implemented, if you are using iOS native mail client to access NIU email, you may receive an email from Microsoft that states email access has been blocked, but this is not true. This is due to the native iOS mail client still being configured with basic authentication. To resolve, please remove the account and re-add it using Microsoft's instructions. It is critical that you select "Sign In" instead of "Configure Manually" so you can receive the MFA prompt and use modern authentication. Alternatively, you can download the Outlook app from the App Store and start getting mail that way.
P2PO Requester Training Session The P2PO system used for creating, submitting and approving requisitions is fully operational. There are two roles established in the new system: requesters and approvers.
Requester training is required before you can create requisitions in the new system. There are training sessions scheduled for: • July 20 - Register now. • August 17 - Register now. • September 21 - Register now. • October 19 - Register now. • November 10 - Register now. • December 9 - Register now. All sessions will be conducted via Teams. If you have been identified as a requester and have not yet attended training, please click on the link for the session to reserve your seat for one of the sessions.
Approvers are encouraged to obtain the Approver’s Training Guide as well as the Quick Reference Guide for instructions on how to review and process requisitions. If you have reviewed the available training materials and still have questions, please contact your business manager for assistance. NIU Wi-Fi Network Changes
The Division of Information Technology made changes to the NIU Wi-Fi network in Jan. 2021. The unencrypted ‘NIUGuest’ network will be shut down on July 30 and is being replaced by the new ‘NIUVisitor’ network. Below is the information you need to know to keep your devices connected to NIU’s Wi-Fi network while you are on campus. Why? In this digital era, information and cyber security are essential practices for individuals and institutions. NIU provides multiple methods of Wi-Fi access to students, staff, faculty, and guests and strongly recommends users use the encrypted ‘NIUwireless’ Wi-Fi network, whenever possible. Open unauthenticated Wi-Fi networks are the most vulnerable to intentional abuse, accidental misuse and pose other inherent risks to its users. To reduce these risks for the current implementation of the open and unencrypted ‘NIUguest’ Wi-Fi network, NIU is implementing a registration-based guest Wi-Fi where campus visitors will register before gaining access to the internet. Who is affected and what to do? These improvements are applicable to all students, staff, faculty, and guests who would like to use the Wi-Fi network services provided by NIU.
• All students, staff and faculty are required to connect to the encrypted ‘NIUwireless’ Wi-Fi network using their NIU username and password on their compatible devices such as phones, tablets, and laptops.
• Campus visitors can gain access to the internet by connecting to ‘NIUvisitor’ Wi-Fi network. This network requires users to register and limits access to the network to 5 days from the date of registration.
• Students, staff and faculty with personal devices such as smart TVs, gaming devices and personal assistants that cannot authenticate to the encrypted ‘NIUwireless’ Wi-Fi network can gain access to the unencrypted ‘NIUvisitor’ Wi-Fi network by registering their devices via the MyDevices Portal which be accessed by while connected to the NIU network or VPN.
• For NIU owned and managed devices that cannot connect to the encrypted ‘NIUwireless’ Wi-Fi network, DoIT has created a process to register these devices which will allow access the network by connecting to the unencrypted ‘NIUregistered’ Wi-Fi network. Check the details of this process on DoIT's website. A more detailed explanation of these changes along with the instructions document can be found on DoIT's website. When? These new additions and improvements were put in place on Monday, Jan. 4, 2021. The unencrypted ‘NIUGuest’ network will be shut down on July 30 and it is highly recommended to move to the applicable networks as explained above, immediately, so that any issues users might face, can be resolved before the ‘NIUguest’ network is taken down.
Policy Library update – new policy and revisions
One new policy and two policy revisions are open to review and comment for a 30-day period. This provides the NIU community the opportunity to consider and respond to the revised policies before they take effect. The policies are: New policies: - Missing Student Notification Policy.
Revised policies: - Payment Card Merchant Security Policy.
- Animals on Campus.
To submit a comment, go to the policy library website. The revised policies will appear at the center of the screen. Click on “Comment on New/Renew Policies.” You will be able to review the policies and provide your comments. All comments are due by Friday, Aug. 13 and Monday, Aug. 16. If you have any questions, please contact Rebecca Hunt, university policy librarian, at rhunt@niu.edu. | .jpg)
