Fitness classes are FREE and run through August 11. Class schedules can be found on the athletics webpage. Registration is required for all group exercise classes. Tuesday and Thursday Yoga classes are for staff only and held in Skyline Commons. Wednesday Cardio/HIIT is open to all and held in Gosman dance studio. If you have any questions, please contact Kat Page.

Please save the date and plan to join your colleagues across all departments, divisions, and functions for the 2023 All Campus Summer BBQ in honor of Brandeis' faculty and staff, hosted by Ron and Jessica Liebowitz. An invitation and registration link for the August 10 BBQ will soon follow via email. Questions may be directed to uesp@brandeis.edu.

To commemorate the university's 75th anniversary and its ongoing commitment to repairing the world, we are excited to kick off a community service challenge (July 1, 2023 - June 30, 2024). We challenge Brandeis community members to contribute to our 75,000 acts of tikkun olam or repairing the world. These could be: volunteering at a food bank, delivering groceries to the elderly, donating blood, tutoring in your community, mentoring, being a part of a demonstration/protest, lobbying your senators for change, and so much more! To help us to our goal, complete the Global Service Initiative Community Challenge Pledge (available with the launch of the 75th website in July). Note all the volunteer work that you do currently as well as any new service that you pledge to do in the next year.

Please note that this is a great initiative to share with students, colleagues, and other Brandeis connections. There will be a directory of opportunities on the 75th Anniversary website in July for ideas on how to get involved! For more information, please contact Steph Grimes at grimes@brandeis.edu or x64039.

Brandeis University is committed to supporting our staff with comprehensive benefits, programs and services. We recognize that there may be times when a staff member experiences a significant and unexpected personal emergency that creates a financial burden or crisis. To assist in these cases, the University offers an emergency loan program to benefits-eligible staff, with at least 6 months of continuous service. The program is designed to provide an interest-free loan to the staff member to help cover the costs of the emergencies when they take place. Please visit the Health, Wellbeing and Safety Resources website to learn more.

The Technology Help Desk is pleased to share Summer 2023 support hours for all technology-related issues. Now through August 11, the Help Desk will be open for support at the following times:

• Monday - Thursday, 8 a.m. - 5 p.m.
• Friday, 8 a.m. - 4 p.m.
• Saturday and Sunday, Closed
• Monday, June 19: Closed Juneteenth
• Monday and Tuesday, July 3-4: Closed Independence Day

The Help Desk staff is committed to providing high-level technology support and service to the Brandeis community this Summer. Our team of technology support specialists is located in the Goldfarb Library, Level 1. Community members can also get support by sending an email to help@brandeis.edu or calling 781-736-4357. For more information, including a detailed support schedule for Summer 2023, please visit the ITS website.

Brandeis is rich with religious diversity. This year Muslims will celebrate Eid al Adha on June 29. Eid al Adha, also called the Feast of Sacrifice, honors the willingness of Abraham to sacrifice his son to God, who then commanded the sacrifice of a ram instead. It also commemorates the end of the Hajj pilgrimage to Mecca.  It will be celebrated from sundown on June 28 to sundown on June 29. For more information on this and other holidays, visit the Center for Spiritual Life's Guide to Religious Observances.

Effective June 1, 2023, the university strongly recommends that all members of the Brandeis community receive the COVID-19 vaccination and recommended boosters in order to safeguard the health of our employees, students, and campus community from COVID-19. The vaccine is no longer required. Faculty and staff are encouraged to read the full policy on the Human Resources website. Questions about this policy can be directed to Occupational Health.

Take a moment to look at your workspace -- is your desk, chair, and other work equipment arranged to prevent injury and promote good posture? Could you use a little help to turn your workspace into an ergonomic workstation? If so, request a WorkSpace Ergonomic Evaluation.

Blogs @ Brandeis, powered by WordPress, has been serving the Brandeis community for many years. After a significant upgrade became required for WordPress, the Office of Communications and ITS took the opportunity to reassess blog usage at Brandeis. As a result, the blogs server will be retired in October 2023. If you are an administrator of a blog that is still in use, you will be contacted by the Office of Communications with more information. Please contact cmshelp@brandeis.edu with any questions.

The Workday Finance Subcommittee, reporting to the parent Workday Advisory Committee, provides oversight and direction for the Workday Financial Module — approving and prioritizing changes stemming from Workday product releases and needs across campus. The subcommittee is led by Finance and Administration representatives, Ken Freda and Cherie Sadeli, and includes representatives from Brandeis schools and departments. Representatives work with the Brandeis community to vet and advance requests to the subcommittee.

The IT Governance Program includes committees, processes, and communications that engage the Brandeis community. For more information about the IT Governance Committees, including the Workday Finance Subcommittee, to sign up for IT Governance WAC communications, or to learn about the requests or your committee representatives, please visit our updated IT Governance website.

Sponsored Programs Accounting (SPA) is pleased to announce a more streamlined and efficient Effort Certification Process in Workday. After reviewing the current process, SPA has introduced several important changes to the process of certifying time and effort for grant-funded projects. These changes include a Pro-Forma Effort Certification report that can be run to review reported effort, auto-generated Payroll Accounting Adjustments created when the effort is changed in Workday, and a new Effort Reporting Work Area to consolidate work in one place.

SPA will host office hours to assist users with these changes on Thursdays at 11 a.m. via Zoom, Thursday, June 15 through Thursday, July 6.

If you have questions regarding the Effort Certification process, please email effortspa@brandeis.edu for assistance.

You are invited to participate in this year's ISSO Friends Program (previously named the Open Doors Host Program). The ISSO Friends program offers incoming international students the opportunity to pair up and connect with Brandeis continuing students, staff, faculty, alumni, or other Brandeis affiliates to learn more about U.S. culture, the Brandeis community, and the Waltham/Boston area.

Please note, ISSO Friends is not a homestay program. Rather, it is an opportunity to gain insight into another culture and to build friendship with people from around the world.

As an ISSO Friend, you will receive your new student's information over the summer to begin an email exchange before they arrive on campus. There will be a Welcome Gathering and Orientation in early September for Friends and students to formally meet. During the fall semester, the ISSO will reach out with ideas for activities that you and your student can do together. You can meet for coffee or lunch, go to an on-campus event, explore Boston together, invite them over for a holiday celebration, exchange your cultures and languages, or simply check in via email to cheer them on as they settle into their new home at Brandeis. The commitment is for Fall 2023 and contact with your new student after that is optional, although we encourage you to keep in touch.

If you are interested in joining the program, please see our FAQs page and sign up as soon as possible. We match Friends and new students on a first-come, first-served basis. Please contact the ISSO if you have any questions.

For all webinars there are sessions at noon – 1 p.m. & 3 – 4 p.m.

• Wednesday June 21 – Choosing Kindness morning session or afternoon session
• Wednesday June 28 – The Power of Perseverance and Grit morning session or afternoon session
• Wednesday July 19 – Documents for Life morning session or afternoon session
• Wednesday July 26 – Putting Your Best Foot Forward Online morning session or afternoon session
• Wednesday August 23 – Embracing Change morning session or afternoon session
• Wednesday August 30 – Fostering Agility in Your Workplace morning session or afternoon session

For more information please visit the HR Training Website or email us at farquhar@brandeis.edu.

As a commitment to the Brandeis University Community to continue to improve the reliability the Brandeis University’s Fire Alarm Systems, we have scheduled our 2023 annual Fire Alarm Testing.

Testing is taking place now through August 10. Since we test every building on campus, please visit the Department of Facilities Services website for reference to your building's schedule. Signage will be placed at the entry doors to the buildings during the test to notify those entering the buildings. If you have any questions about the testing, please contact the Department of Facilities Services.

Time off is an important benefit, and we encourage all staff to use their available time to rest and reenergize. Vacation time is meant to be restorative, is important for our well-being and can help improve productivity and creativity. It also can help reduce stress, help prevent burnout and promote work-life balance.

Brandeis offers a comprehensive benefits package, including a generous time-off program for staff. As we approach the Summer, it is important for managers and staff to review vacation time balances. Managers should actively balance the needs of staff time off, with the operational needs of their department, and help staff find time to use available vacation days before the end of 2023.

While the University does provide a service-based vacation carry over policy, there are limits on the number of days that can be carried over from one calendar year to the next. Staff with high vacation balances may lose time, not including carry over amounts, if they do not use their available vacation days before December 31.

As a reminder, managers can review individual employee's time off balances in Workday under ‘Time Off’ and also review an absence calendar under ‘Team Absence’ that shows each employee's planned vacations and other absences (approved and unapproved). View the Benefits Eligible Staff Workday Time Off Categories.

University Records Management (URM) assists in the management of records in all formats to meet legal and contractual requirements, to satisfy the operational needs and efficiency of the University, and to guide Brandeis employees, faculty, and students in proper record stewardship and retention practice. The Records Retention Schedule consists of record categories, how long each category needs to be retained, and the recommended final disposition of the material. The length of retention is based on external laws and regulations, best practices, and legitimate business needs. The purpose of the schedule is to serve as a published policy and a guide for the Brandeis community's consistent record retention and destruction practices.  It can be found on the Data Governance webpage under the Policies and Protocols menu. The schedule is a work in progress and will be expanded in the coming months.  For more information please contact URM at records@brandeis.edu or 781-736-8759.

In advance of the fall bill coming in early July, new students should 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 - 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.