Leaving MIT - What happens to my MIT accounts and services?

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Athena Account

Typically, Athena accounts are deactivated in the January after you graduate or otherwise leave MIT. You will be contacted in early November and again in January via email to your MIT email address, prior to account deactivation. Although your account will remain active until January, we strongly suggest that you backup the contents of your Athena locker and any other data associated with your account as soon as possible.

Athena accounts may also be deactivated at the request of your department or superior after you have left MIT. Please note that this rarely happens, but that, if it does, you will not receive any warning for this type of deactivation.

If you have ongoing academic or collaborative research work following graduation, a faculty member may choose to extend your account by sponsoring you as a guest. See "Getting Started" at the Guest Account page.

Also note that upon graduation, your account affiliation will change from Student to MIT Affiliate. As an affiliate you lose access to some services, financial forms, and some software.

Here is a list of accounts that would be subject to January deactivation:

Students who graduated in January, June or August of the previous calendar year.
Students who are not registered for the current term, according to the Registrar's office.
Users who have sponsored accounts and the sponsor did not respond to a renewal request from Accounts
Temp employees whose supervisors did not respond to a renewal request from Accounts
Visiting Scholars who do not have an appointment for the fall semester just prior to the January deactivation
(September degree candidates appear on the following year's list.)

Additionally, if you require access to certain resources for a valid academic reason, you may have your account sponsored by a current faculty or staff member.

The regular Athena account deactivation process is a staged process, in which the account spends a short time in an intermediate suspended status, before full deactivation. During the interval in which the account is suspended, logins are denied, but some resources (such as web.mit.edu serving the user's public AFS content) are left online.

Certificates

As long as your Athena account is still active, you should still be able to download and use your personal certificates. Please note that affiliate accounts do not have the same permissions as student, faculty, or staff member accounts. This may limit your software download privileges and academic resource privileges (Stellar page limitations and library resources).

When an Athena account is deactivated or administratively suspended, Touchstone logins will immediately cease to work, regardless of the expiration date on any previously issued MIT personal certificates.

Email

Email Account

Your MIT email will be accessible as long as your Athena account is active, but will be deactivated along with your Athena account. All emails will be deleted from the server when this happens, so we highly recommend that you begin backing up your emails and contact anyone who uses this email as their main point of contact for you, informing them of an alternate address by which they may contact you.

Once your email account is deleted, any emails sent to it will not be delivered and the sender will receive a bounce back message stating your account does not exist. There is currently no way to permanently forward your @mit.edu email address after it has been deactivated.

For graduating students, The MIT Alumni Association offers Email for Life (EFL) which gives you an email address (username@alum.mit.edu). This is not at all associated with your MIT email address. Any questions or issues with EFL should be directed to the Alumni Association's EFL support via email help@alum.mit.edu or by phone at (617) 253-8245.

Sloan Students are also offered Email Forwarding for Life for their email address @sloan.mit.edu. See this page in MySloan for more information:https://mysloan.mit.edu/offices/sts/comm/Pages/EFL.aspx

Email Lists

Any mail sent to MIT Moira or Mailman lists that you were on prior to deactivation will not be delivered once your account is deactivated. If you would like to remain on those lists after deactivation, contact the list administrator to request being added with a new email address.

What mailing lists (moira or mailman) am I on?

You will also no longer own or be able to administer any Moira or Mailman lists. If you are the sole administrator of a list that must continue to function after you've left MIT (such as a student group mailing list) you should hand off ownership of the list to somebody who will continue to have an account and maintain the list after your departure.

Wireless Networking

Until your account is deactivated, you will continue to be able to use the MIT SECURE wireless network.

Cloud Services

Adobe

See "What to do when leaving MIT - Students, Faculty, or Staff" under: Adobe Creative Cloud Landing Page

Explain Everything

An active MIT Kerberos account is required for access to MIT Explain Everything. To retain access to the Explain Everything account after the Kerberos account has expired, change the email address associated with your account: Change your Email

Github Account

See: Github Accounts After Graduation or Leaving MIT

Google Workspace for Education Account

All data needs to be downloaded and stored on an external device of choice prior to leaving MIT.
Google does not support moving an account from Google Workspace for Education to a Personal account.

Lastpass Account

See: What happens to my LastPass enterprise account when I leave MIT?

Notability

Notability at MIT is accessible to users with an active Kerberos account. To maintain access to Notability after the Kerberos account has expired, create a new account with Notability and move the data between accounts via Importing, Exporting, and Sharing Notes.

Panopto

An active MIT Kerberos account is required for access to MIT Panopto. As soon as your account is suspended, you will lose access to your MIT Panopto account. Once your account is deleted, all data associated with your Panopto account is deleted as well. This includes all recordings and videos saved in the cloud. You can download your data prior to deactivation to preserve any recordings or videos you need.

Poll Everywhere

MIT’s Poll Everywhere enterprise agreement allows users with both an active Kerberos account and Presenters license to create activities. Once the Kerberos account has expired, the presenters license will be revoked, however you will still be able to participate in activities other people create.

Slack

Once your account is suspended, you will lose access to the MIT Slack Enterprise Grid. After your account is deleted, your user account in MIT Slack will also be purged, deleting all data associated with your account

Zoom Enterprise

An active MIT Kerberos account is required for access to MIT Zoom Enterprise. As soon as your account is suspended, you will lose access to your MIT Zoom account. Once your account is deleted, all data associated with your Zoom account is deleted as well. This includes all recordings and reports saved in the cloud, and it also means that any upcoming scheduled meetings will be canceled and deleted too.

Financial / Employment

As long as your Athena account is active and you are still actively employed at MIT, you will be able to access your ePaystubs, eW-2s, and other employment and financial information from Atlas from a computer with personal certificates installed. If your Athena account has been deactivated, you have MIT affiliate / guest status, or are no longer working in your position at MIT, you will need to contact HR / Payroll via email payroll@mit.edu or by phone at 617-253-4255. If your account is active and you are having issues with certificates, then please contact the IS&T Service Desk (servicedesk@mit.edu or 617-253-1101).

How to receive a paper copy of your W2
[hd:W2 Prefab Email for MIT affiliates]

Software

Most software offered by MIT on our software distribution page is only available to current students, faculty, or staff. Please note that graduating students' accounts are changed to MIT Affiliate after graduation. If your account is deactivated, or your account has a status of "Affiliate," you will no longer be eligible to download most software. You may check your account status yourself using our People Directory. If your "title" shows up as MIT Affiliate, then you are an affiliate; if it shows up as your current title, then you most likely retain the same affiliation as you have before.

If you have downloaded software from MIT in the past, in most cases, you will need to stop using this software upon leaving MIT. The terms of use are listed on the information page for each piece of software on the software distribution page.

Microsoft Windows and Office

MIT"s Enterprise versions of both Windows and Office check with our KMS server periodically to ensure that they are genuine. There is no license key.

If you are a graduating student, you should be aware that your Microsoft Windows or Office products will stop authenticating against the MIT license and you will need to purchase a license for these products.

Due to license agreement restrictions, faculty or staff that have left MIT are unable to continue using MIT's Microsoft Enterprise license for either Windows or Office, and will need to purchase their own.

If your Athena Account is still active, then you may be able to keep it active for a short period of time by connecting to the MIT VPN (vpn.mit.edu). We highly recommend you purchase a valid copy of Windows as soon as possible, as once your account is deactivated you will no longer be able to connect to VPN and Windows will expire after a period of time of not having contact with our KMS server.

LinkedIn Learning (formerly Lynda)

LinkedIn Learning linkedinlearning.mit.edu is licensed for active students, staff, faculty and affiliates. LinkedIn Learning is not licensed for alumni after their Athena Account has been deactivated.

If you want to retain your learning history, prior to leaving MIT ensure you connect your personal LinkedIn profile to your LinkedIn Learning account. This will store all of your transcripts so that if you ever get a LinkedIn Learning account in the future all of your transcripts go with you and are accessible down the road. You will also be able to retain your course completion information on your personal profile. If you choose not to connect your personal LinkedIn profile to your MIT LinkedIn Learning account your learning transcripts will be lost upon leaving MIT.

How to Access Lynda LinkedIn Learning for Free

Academic Resources

Library Resources

Until your ID Card expires, graduating students should be able to continue borrowing materials from the MIT Libraries. According to MIT Libraries' website, "The MIT Libraries encourage alumni/ae of the Institute to make use of the Libraries during their visits to campus." For a fee, they may get a special Library Privilege Card that will allow them to check out materials from the Libraries' collections.

In most cases, alumnae will have access to e-journals and other electronic resources up until their account is deactivated in mid January as long as they have valid personal certificates. After this, they will only be able to access e-journals and databases that do not require authentication. This type of access will only be available on campus; off campus access to databases and e-journals is restricted to current students, staff, and faculty due to licensing restrictions, regardless of whether they require authentication.

More details are available at the library information desks and on the libraries' alumni information site at http://libguides.mit.edu/alum.

Stellar

If you have a valid Athena account and you are listed in the Stellar site's membership list, you should still be able to log in and access the course materials for a Stellar site you are a member of. However, restricted materials are not available after the end of a semester due to copyright. If you need access to restricted materials after the end of a semester, please contact the course instructor directly.

Transcripts

To request online transcripts via the WebSIS student portal, you need to have an active Athena Account and must be registered to take classes at MIT. When the Summer session after your graduation starts, you will no longer be able to use the method stated above.

Students who were enrolled at MIT in the past and have an Infinite Connection account can order transcripts online. For questions about setting up an Infinite Connection account, please contact the Alumni Association.

If you do not have an Infinite Connection account, you may order your transcript online by creating an account with the Registrar's transcript ordering service. If the you had previously ordered transcripts as a student, you will be presented with the option to convert the existing account into a former student account. For more information, see: Ordering Transcripts

Shared AFS Lockers

If you are an administrator of a shared AFS locker for a student activity, UROP, course, or MIT Organization, you will no longer be able to login to access or administer it after your account is deactivated. Make sure you've downloaded any files you want to keep, and ensure it has an active administrator so it does not become orphaned.

Set locker permissions

ID Card

In general, ID cards for graduating students expire the January or June after your graduation date. All members of the MIT community may find their ID expiration date on the front of their ID card in the bottom right corner. Once this card expires, you will no longer have access to any buildings or services requiring your MIT ID, including print quotas, TechCash accounts, and library borrowing. General building access will be revoked at midnight the day of card expiry, but this information will remain in the system for two weeks in the event your card is renewed.

For faculty and staff, ID cards are also subject to deactivation without warning per request of your department or supervisor after you have left MIT.

Graduating students may request a free Alumni ID card, which allows basic building access privileges to select buildings on campus, provides eligibility for Coop membership, and enables free admission to the MIT Museum. For more information, contact Card Services.

T-Passes and CharlieCards

T-Passes, including LinkPass and Commuter Rail passes, will be shut off as soon as you leave MIT. Any CharlieCard issued through MIT T-Pass or MIT ID card with CharlieCard functionality will continue to function as a pay as you go CharlieCard. You may keep these CharlieCards when you leave MIT. For more information please contact the Parking Office or email tpass@mit.edu.

MIT Purchasing Discounts

Most MIT discounts on hardware and other physical items are accessed with an MIT Personal certificate. They will continue to be available to you so long as you still have a valid MIT Personal certificate. For more information, see:

[I'm a recent graduate of MIT. Is there a grace period during which I can still purchase a new laptop with the student discount?]