As the fiscal year-end gift solicitation and fundraising activity has concluded, please watch for any mail or donor correspondence that may contain gift checks and deliver them promptly to Institutional Advancement without delay. Please include the envelope and any correspondence included with the gift. To be credited for FY21, checks and mail must be postmarked on or before June 30. We will be closing the fiscal year-end gifts over the next 10 days.

For any department with mail being held at Mail Services, it is your responsibility to sort through the mail and retrieve any donations sent to your attention. The Usdan Mail Services office is open and staffed Monday through Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. The Institutional Advancement Office of Gift Administration lockbox is now located at 51 Sawyer Road, 2nd floor.  

Please direct any questions to giving@brandeis.edu or call 800-333-1948 to connect with a member of the Institutional Advancement team.

As the University continues its planning for the Fall 2021, it is important for our faculty, staff and managers to be aware of the planning that is taking place by department managers and leaders and to understand the requirements associated with remote working outside of Massachusetts.

For positions that may be eligible to work primarily remote, the employee will need to complete and abide by the provisions of the Telecommuting and Alternative Work policy. Commuting to campus, as may be required by the role or manager, is considered the responsibility of the employee and is not considered an expense that is reimbursable by the University.

The residential location of each employee is a matter of their own discretion and decision. Brandeis registers with all states in the United States for which we have a domiciled employee. As such, the University can accommodate the necessary filing and tax implications in these states.

If you need clarification, please contact Procurement for questions on supplies, your personal tax advisor for possible tax implications of working outside of Mass. or Human Resources if you have any questions on the Fall 2021 planning process or the telecommuting policy. For additional information, please visit the Remote US Based Employment webpage.

Faculty and staff can now use Workday to view students’ academic records and to complete key activities such as viewing teaching schedule and class rosters, change program of study, waitlist management, approve prerequisite overrides and requests to enroll, manage waivers and substitutions, change student status and more. Sage will continue to be the system for academic activities for summer classes. Please continue to use Sage to view official transcripts and enrollment verification.

Early registration for continuing undergraduates and graduate students runs June 29 through July 2. New undergraduates will register July 12 - July 16. Registration will re-open for all students July 19 and run through Sept 13. Faculty can monitor class enrollment in Workday by using the 'Find Course Sections Brandeis' report to see details of their course section(s) including creating a saved search to quickly view courses and seeing the total number of students enrolled and the capacity of the course. Administrators and chairs can use this report and approach for monitoring the full set of classes for a department as well.

Need help? Staff and students can get one-on-one assistance from the Workday Student project team during Workday Student Office Hours (visit link for list of dates and Zoom link). Please visit the Workday Student website to view the library of resources including job aids, instructional videos and FAQs. For questions or help, contact workday-help@brandeis.edu.

Facilities Services is recognizing and celebrating the hard work of our essential employees later in July during an on campus luncheon.

We are inviting the campus to send personal thank you messages, which we will display at the luncheon. We know this would mean a lot to employees to hear from campus members and partners.

Employees will be recognized and celebrated for their dedication and service to the Brandeis community. Please email your message to Facilities@brandeis.edu by July 9.

Hone your research, technical and data skills this summer. All Brandeis faculty, staff, and students are welcome to the Library's upcoming workshops.

• Citation
  • Introduction to Zotero, Thur., July 8, 11:30 a.m.-12:50 p.m.

• Data Analysis
  • Intro to Programming with Python, 3 part series, beginning Thur., July 22, at noon
  • Getting Started with Stata, Tues., July 13, 11 a.m.-noon
  • Bivariate Analysis with Stata, Wed., July 14, 11 a.m.-noon
• Teaching with LATTE
  • Dive Into the LATTE Shell, Offered weekly
• Archives and Special Collections
  • Teaching with Archives, Thu., July 22, 3-3:30 p.m.
  • The Beginnings of Brandeis: a History in Pictures, Fri., July 23, 11-11:30 a.m.
• Arduino Electronics
  • Intro to Arduino Electronics, Weekly on Tuesdays, 5-6:30 p.m.

Brandeis is requiring all students, except for those with limited medical and religious exemptions, to be vaccinated before returning to campus in the fall. To create as safe of an on-campus environment as possible, we have decided to extend this requirement across our community. In support of this goal, all Brandeis faculty, staff, and affiliates who access campus must be vaccinated, and must upload their COVID-19 vaccination documentation by August 26, unless they receive a medical or religious exemption.

Proof of your vaccination or request for religious or medical exemption must be uploaded to the Campus Passport if you have not already done so (exemption requests may be submitted beginning the week of July 19). On August 26, all vaccination “stickers” will disappear from individual Passports, since all members of our community will have either documented their vaccinations or received exemptions to meet this requirement.

Individuals who have questions about how to upload their vaccination documentation can email c19testing-group@brandeis.edu. Answers to questions you may have about vaccinations can be found on the COVID-19 Response website.

As part of the transition from Sage to Workday, the Office of Student Financial Services will be moving from the TMS Student Account Center (SAC) to the Nelnet Student Account Portal. Once the Fall 2021 bill is released in mid-July, students will use this new portal to view e-bills and account transactions, make payments and manage monthly payment plans.

Students can now access the Nelnet Student Account Portal to set up an account and add authorized parties. Please complete the following steps to ensure account access:

1. Set-up Nelnet account - Students should log in to the Nelnet Student Account Portal to set up their student profile. Refer to the Nelnet - Account Access job aid for detailed instructions.
2. Add parent or authorized parties access - Any existing authorized users in the TMS SAC will not be activated in Workday Student or Nelnet student portal. Students will be required to use Nelnet to add Authorized Parties (e.g., parents, sponsors, etc.). Refer to the Nelnet - Add Authorized Payers job aid for detailed instructions. Students should not share their Nelnet log-in credentials with their parents. They must set up parents as Authorized Parties with their own log-in credentials.

We will send a notification to students and authorized parties when the information is ready in Nelnet.

Governor Baker recently signed legislation into law that gives Massachusetts employees paid sick leave for qualified reasons related to COVID-19. Under this newly enacted law, Brandeis employees can take up to 5 days (max of 40 hours) of MA EPSL if absent from and unable to work. For additional information on qualifications, please visit Massachusetts COVID-19 Emergency Paid Sick Leave (MA EPSL) Law Update page.

For over a year now, Brandeis has offered a Pandemic Pay program. Pandemic Pay provides ten (10) days of paid leave for employees who contract COVID, have COVID-like symptoms and are waiting for COVID test results or who need to quarantine in accordance with public health guidance or on the advice of a medical provider. Going forward, Brandeis will be expanding its Pandemic Pay program to cover qualified reasons related to COVID-19 as covered by the MA EPSL.

Additionally, Brandeis will allow Pandemic Pay to be used for COVID-19 vaccine appointments, immediate family member vaccine appointments, personal recovery from vaccines and immediate family illnesses due to vaccines.

Employees with questions or who have taken sick or other time off for the above listed reasons, which may require an absence correction, may contact Renee Relerford in Human Resources. Documentation as to the need for the leave will be required.

In accordance with the MA EPSL, Brandeis’ Pandemic Pay program will end on September 30, 2021. Please review the Mandatory notice regarding this new law.

As a reminder, in order to ensure that contracts and agreements for Brandeis University are properly reviewed, approved, and recorded, the University has a policy for contract management. Per Brandeis University by-laws, only select individuals are authorized to bind and execute agreements and contracts on behalf of the University. Procurement and Business Services will oversee the review and execution of all non-research agreements and/or contracts, including independent consultant agreements, hotel agreements and other financial documents requiring a signature by a university official.

Upon completion of the review of any proposed contract Business Services will route the contract to the appropriate authority for signature.

Sponsored research agreements are and will continue to be reviewed and signed by the Office of Research Administration.

The list of all authorized signers for the University and more detailed information on the contract process is available on the Contract Management Webpage.