NoordaCOM – Media & Information Technology Blog

Hello Noorda Colleagues,

I have received positive feedback on the Master Calendar, but one point of critique is that it is ONLY useful if everyone actually uses it.     So please review the guidelines below with your teams and have a conversation about what your department needs to post to the Calendar.   Make some process decisions to ensure that it remains updated, complete, and useful to the Noorda community. 

The Master Calendar is a shared tool to help faculty and staff coordinate campus events, prevent scheduling conflicts, and minimize resource strain (e.g., parking, space, staffing). This calendar is not for internal departmental tracking, but for cross-departmental visibility.

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✅ What Should Be Posted

Post events that could impact or require awareness from other departments or that utilize shared campus resources, such as:

• All-campus or multi-department events
  (e.g., orientations, town halls, student-wide workshops)
• Events using shared facilities
  (e.g., ballrooms, shared classrooms, events involving hallways like poster exhibit events, outdoor areas, etc)
• Events that may affect traffic flow or parking availability
• Events requiring IT, Facilities, or AV support
• Special guests, VIP visits, or media presence
  (when they may impact operations or require coordination)
• Major construction, maintenance, or scheduled outages
• Staff or faculty development days/trainings  -even if off-site
  (especially if large numbers are attending)

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❌ What Should Not Be Posted

Avoid posting events that are strictly internal or routine for your department and do not affect others, such as:

• Regular team or departmental meetings
• Office hours or routine staff availability
• Internal reminders or planning tasks
• Private appointments or personal calendars
• Events not held on campus or not impacting campus operations

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📝 Posting Best Practices

• Be specific: Include a clear title, time, location, and point of contact or sponsoring department.
• Be timely: Post events as early as possible to allow others to plan around them.
• Be thoughtful: Ask yourself, “Would it be useful for another department to know about this?
• Be thorough:  While brevity is thoughtful, it is better to err on the side of sharing more info than needed than too little or not enough.     

📣 Questions?

If you’re unsure whether something belongs on the calendar, ask your supervisor or department head for guidance, or shoot me an email to facilitate a conversation.  

Thanks for your help in making this simple tool effective and worthwhile for us all.   

Chris Milliken

Director of Information Technology

Dear campus community,

In order to address the ongoing cybersecurity threats to our campus, we will be implementing a significant enhancement to our login protocol known as “Passwordless Authentication” which uses an authenticator app for MFA (multi-factor authentication).   Typically, an increase in security results in a decrease in convenience, but we found this to be an excellent compromise that will give us both security and convenience.    However, it will require you to go through a simple initial enrollment setup.    Once setup, you will be able to login using a confirmation action with the authenticator app instead of a memorized password.   This is a critical strategy to prevent passwords from being stolen, hacked or compromised through other means, which is becoming increasingly common. 

Please review the attached instructions.  The MIT team has also made a brief video to walk you through the process that you can view here:

Passwordless Authentication Enrollment Video Instructions

This new Passwordless Authentication feature is now available for you to use.  But starting January 1st, it will be required.   This will give you the rest of this calendar year to get it set up and try it out.  So please encourage your staff and colleagues to complete this enrollment as soon as possible.    The attached instructions and/or video explain it all.  But if you need further assistance, please reach out to our Help Desk at helpdesk@noordacom.org or stop by and visit us during regular business hours.

Thank you for your partnership in keeping our campus safe!   You are our most critical cybersecurity asset! 

Chris Milliken

Director of Information Technology

https://kahoot.com/webinars/schools/#upcoming

The link above will direct you to additional information and the “register now” button.

No RSVP needed. Bring your computer.