The Daily Bruin

The university’s FoxTALE upgrade to Version 1.9 is complete. To read about the upgrade and the version’s new features, visit the IT website. The biggest change is a new grade book scheme. If you would like to view Fall 2008 grades in the old format, go to foxtaleold.georgefox.edu. The old format will be available until Jan. 31.

For information on updating grade books with weighted categories in the new 1.9 version, see the document on the conversion procedure on the FoxTALE upgrade web page.

Three information sessions about the new features have been scheduled. You can sign up for one of the following:

Newberg: Wednesday, Jan. 7, 9 a.m. to noon, Hoover 211 (R.S.V.P. to sabercrombie@georgefox.edu.)
Portland Center: Friday, Jan. 9, 1-4 p.m., PDS 210 (R.S.V.P. to sabercrombie@georgefox.edu.)
Webinar: Wednesday, Jan. 7, 1:30-3 p.m. (Pacific Time). E-mail gdoherty@georgefox.edu to reserve a seat.

If you have not used FoxTALE, you can sign up for one of two FoxTALE training sessions:

Newberg: Tuesday, Jan. 6, 9 a.m. to noon, Hoover 211 (R.S.V.P. to sabercrombie@georgefox.edu.)
Portland Center: Thursday, Jan. 8, 1-4 p.m., PDS 210 (R.S.V.P. to sabercrombie@georgefox.edu.)

Questions? Contact the IT Service Desk.

When there is an emergency campus closure, usually due to inclement weather as was the case earlier this week (and may occur again before winter is over), the university’s policy indicates the following in the Employee Handbook, Section 7.1 Emergency Closure:

• If the university is closed, employees are paid as if they worked.
• If the university has a late opening and/or early closure, employees who work are paid for a full work day.
• If employees cannot make it in, their absence is covered by the use of vacation or is unpaid if vacation is not available.
• Employees who are required to work to assist with facilities and safety issues as a result of the weather (primarily Plant Services employees) will be given time off within the following 30 days equal to the time they worked during the closure.

In addition, employees who happen to be on vacation or using sick leave the day of a closure should record those days/hours as vacation or sick leave the same as they would had the campus been open.

IT reports that FoxTALE will be upgraded to version 1.9 from 6 a.m. Monday, Dec. 29, until 6 a.m. Tuesday, Dec. 30. FoxTALE will be unavailable during this time. (All times are Pacific Standard Time).

Employees are invited to attend an all-community meeting from 4 to 5 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 11, in Hoover 105. The meeting will provide employees an opportunity to receive campus updates. Your participation is strongly encouraged.

For those at the university’s four regional sites, the meeting will be available for viewing at stream.georgefox.edu/live/commmtg.sdp. For best results, use Mozilla Firefox for your web browser, and your computer must have QuickTime Player installed. Simply copy the link into the address bar of your browser. If you have any problems, contact the Service Desk at ext. 2569.

Since Melissa Rosenberry decided to stay home and be a full-time mom following the birth of her daughter this fall, the university needs to fill an administrative assistant I (Pay Range 3) position in undergraduate admissions.

The schedule will likely be 32 hours per week for nine months each year and 25 hours per week during the summer. This position is currently open only to internal applicants (employees). Please e-mail hr@georgefox.edu to obtain a copy of the job description and transfer request if you are interested in applying. A completed transfer request, cover letter and resume must be submitted to HR no later than Tuesday, Dec. 16, at 5 p.m.

The university’s IT department never asks for you to supply personal information in an e-mail. There are numerous e-mail messages currently being used to try and deceive people into divulging personal information to unknown recipients. The e-mails try to pass themselves off as official and are sent to .edu and .org e-mail addresses. Do not respond to these e-mails. The senders of the messages are identity thieves.

Here is a sample of one such message:

ATTENTION: EDU WEBMAIL SUBSCRIBER:

This mail is to inform all our {EDU WEBMAIL} users that we will be upgrading our site in a couple of days from now. So you as a subscriber of our site you are required to send us your mail account details so as to enable us know if you are still making use of your mail box.

Further informed that we will be deleting all mail account that is not functioning so as to create more space for new user. so you are to send us your mail account details which are as follows:

*User name:
*Password:

Failure to do this will immediately render your email address deactivated from our database. Your response should be send to the following e-mail address.

Your Admin Manager: edu.sub.2008@live.vvv

Yours In Service,

Mrs. Kaushik Mohan

Employees are invited to attend an all-community meeting from 4 to 5 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 11, in Hoover 105. The meeting will provide employees an opportunity to receive campus updates. Your participation is strongly encouraged.

For those at the Boise and Portland centers, the meeting will be available for viewing at stream.georgefox.edu/live/commmtg.sdp. For best results, use Mozilla Firefox for your web browser, and your computer must have QuickTime Player installed. Simply copy the link into the address bar of your browser. If you have any problems, contact the Service Desk at ext. 2569.

This is a Critical notice regarding the registration/billing software transition for spring semester 09.  Please take a moment to read the information.

Impact:

• Fall 08 – Final grade entry will be in Bruindata – No Change
• Students are receiving emails/ennouncements asking them to register for Spring 09 by Thursday, Dec 4, at 5 p.m. to reduce manual work in late December and early January.
• Registration enrollment records will be converted into PeopleSoft beginning Dec 4 at 5 p.m. in preparation for Dec 8 go-live date.
• Students will continue using the Bruindata Registration for spring 09 after the new system is live on Dec 8. These records will then be entered manually in the new software by the Registrar’s office.

Please encourage students to register as requested; this will greatly assist the Registrar’s and Billing offices to start springs semester in the new software.

This is a Critical notice regarding the registration/billing software transition for spring semester 09.  Please take a moment to read the information.

Impact:

• Fall 08 – Final grade entry will be in Bruindata – No Change
• Students are receiving emails/ennouncements asking them to register for Spring 09 by Thursday, Dec 4, at 5 p.m. to reduce manual work in late December and early January.
• Registration enrollment records will be converted into PeopleSoft beginning Dec 4 at 5 p.m. in preparation for Dec 8 go-live date.
• Students will continue using the Bruindata Registration for spring 09 after the new system is live on Dec 8. These records will then be entered manually in the new software by the Registrar’s office.

Please encourage students to register as requested; this will greatly assist the Registrar’s and Billing offices to start springs semester in the new software.

Please take a few minutes to submit your November time sheet (support staff) or time-off report (administrators) to your supervisor right away. As always, please be sure it is complete, accurate and signed by both you and your supervisor before sending it to HR at Box 6108. If your supervisor is not available to sign it, please send a copy to HR and keep the original until it has been signed. These documents are available on the HR website.

Thanksgiving holidays note: No hours should be recorded for the Nov. 27 and 28 holidays on the staff time sheet unless an employee worked those days.

Due to the Thanksgiving holiday, Wednesday, Nov. 26, is the last business day of the month, making it our November pay day.

Having an early pay day is nice, but it does mean a five-week stretch before our next pay day, which, despite the Christmas and New Year holidays, is still Dec. 31.

The Orbis Cascade Alliance, in conjunction with Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), is finalizing work on the new Summit catalog. Summit is the system for ordering books and media from other academic libraries in Washington and Oregon.

On Monday, Dec. 1, the catalog will have a new look and functionality. With one search, this new catalog will allow you to discover materials from both the Summit system and the WorldCat catalog. The service will remain the same, but there will be some changes. Many of these changes are expected to be temporary as we migrate to the new system.

For your convenience, we have listed many of these changes on a link off the library homepage. If you have any questions, be sure to ask a library staff member or a librarian. The library is excited to bring you better searching and discovery tools.

To learn more, read an FAQ on the Summit catalog at the Orbis Cascade site.

The university has posted a new cellular phone/data policy on the financial affairs website. Visit georgefox.edu/offices/fin_affairs/FORMS.html to get the details. If you have questions, please contact Karon Bell (Financial Affairs) at ext. 2162.

FoxTALE is being upgraded from version 1.8.6+ to version 1.9 on Monday, Dec. 29. FoxTALE will be unavailable from 6 a.m. on Monday, Dec. 29, until 6 a.m. on Tuesday, Dec. 30.

Read about the upgrade and the new 1.9 features on the IT website. Questions? Contact the Service Desk.

The all-employee meeting originally scheduled for Thursday, Nov. 20, has been moved to 4 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 18, in Hoover 105. Please make a note of this scheduling change. The meeting will provide employees with an opportunity to receive campus updates. Your attendance is strongly encouraged.

For those at the Boise and Portland centers, the meeting will be available for viewing at stream.georgefox.edu/live/commmtg.sdp. After the meeting, it will be posted at itunesu.georgefox.edu.

Information on margins for both versions of the university’s new letterhead is now available on marketing communications’ website.

Please take a few minutes to submit your October time sheet (support staff) or time-off report (administrators) to your supervisor right away. As always, please be sure it is complete, accurate and signed by both you and your supervisor before sending it to HR at Box 6108. (If your supervisor is not available to sign it, please send a copy to HR and keep the original until it has been signed.)

These documents are available on the HR website. A tip to help you remember to do this each month: Set a recurring appointment on your Outlook calendar for the first business day of each month with a brief notation, “Turn in time sheet.” That gives you one less thing to have to remember, allowing you to save your brain space for important stuff.

Thank you,
Human Resources

The university’s iTunesU site, devoted to higher education podcasting, is now included in Apple’s public search through the iTunesU tab under the iTunes Store. This marks an upgrade to the site’s profile, as previously George Fox’s site was not searchable in the larger community of iTunesU.

Thanks go to John Taggart and others in IT, as well as the Marketing Communications staff, for getting the site upgraded. We invite you to check it out at itunesu.georgefox.edu.

The university is seeking a full-time admissions counselor to do recruiting for the seminary from now until the end of June. This position may not continue into next fiscal year. It does include benefits. This job currently is open only to internal (employees) applicants.

Please e-mail hr@georgefox.edu to obtain a copy of the position announcement and transfer request if you are interested in this opening. To apply, you will need to submit the completed transfer request, cover letter and resume to Human Resources no later than Tuesday, Nov. 4.

As the turbulence in the stock market continues, you may want to take advantage of helpful information available from TIAA-CREF about strategies for market volatility.

On the TIAA-CREF website (tiaa-cref.org), you will find video and audio commentaries about retirement planning and investing in volatile times, along with messages from TIAA-CREF’s investment strategists and executives, and facts about TIAA-CREF’s financial strength.

Some of TIAA-CREF’s more recent additions to provide guidance for investing during tumultuous times include:

• “Guidance for Investors: Words of Wisdom for Navigating Turbulent Markets” covers important points to keep in mind when markets are volatile.
• TIAA-CREF’s chief investment strategist discusses “Principles & Perspectives for Weathering Volatile Times” in an educational video.
• “TIAA-CREF’s Sober Approach to Risk Management” summarizes how TIAA-CREF’s Risk Management Group has enabled the organization to minimize its exposure to products that they believed were not in the long-term financial interest of clients saving for retirement.
• “Ask TIAA-CREF: Should I Save During Volatile Times?” underscores the importance of making regular contributions to one’s retirement plan during periods of volatility.

You also can hear Roger Ferguson, TIAA-CREF’s president and CEO, discuss this current period in the markets on National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered.” The interview is available on NPR’s website.

“Staying on Track in a Volatile Market” and “A History of Strength and Stability” are two new financial education seminars also available. In addition to these materials, you can call TIAA-CREF to talk to a representative about your retirement portfolio.  Hold times are longer these days, but once you reach a representative you should be able to have your questions answered. The number is 1-800-842-2776.