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Project Overview

Project Goal

Update Northwestern's online systems for students, faculty and staff (including temporary staff) to be able to provide their name as they would like it to be displayed in University systems (e.g.,display name”) and their pronouns.

Project Partners

This project is the result of the collaborative work of campus partners from the Office of the Registrar, Human Resources, Information Technology, the Women's Center, the Office of Institutional Diversity and Inclusion, the Office of Global Marketing and Communications, and the Office of the Provost. For questions about this project, please contact any of the following members of the task force.

Project Phase

The first three phases of this initiative will focus on our major systems, and additional systems will be updated in future phases. We will update this webpage with timelines and additional systems implicated as that information becomes available.

Current Phase (Phase One)

Enable name and pronoun updates in the following systems: 

  • NUValidate 
  • myHR 
  • CAESAR 
This will lead to corresponding changes within the following systems and services:  
  • RMS Mercury (Residential Services) 
  • Northwestern People Directory (name only; not displaying pronouns) 
  • Microsoft 365 (Outlook, Teams, SharePoint, OneDrive) (name only; not displaying pronouns) 
  • Google G Suite (name only; not displaying pronouns) 
  • Workforce Software (Timekeeping) (name only; not displaying pronouns)
Phase One launched in January 2023.

Future Phases

Phase Two of this initiative will involve:

  • disambiguating sex and gender  
  • adding gender identity as a field within a select number of systems 
Phase Three of this initiative will include updating additional systems.