By Zana Pommier
pommierza@mnstate.edu
While students usually spend mid-semester whining about midterms, this time around many are protesting the memorization of StarIDs, too.
The night of Oct. 12, the school-assigned username will replace students’ prior-used DragonNet logins. The randomized set of letters and numbers will be used to access university email, classroom and lab computers, campus Wi-Fi, D2L, and eServices.
Although many students are unhappy about memorizing the number, the change is intended to make logging in easier. Instead of accessing eServices with a student ID number and email with DragonNet credentials, students will access both with their StarID.
“The number of usernames and passwords students and employees will need to remember and use will be reduced,” said Terry Peterson, IT director of applications. “Ideally, a single username can be used to log into any system and that will use StarID.”
StarID will be used by the entire MnSCU system and assigned to all students, faculty, and staff. The change has already been made at most of its 31 colleges and universities.
This makes the conversion especially helpful for those associated with MnSCU schools as transfer or PSEO students, or for those enrolled at more than one institution.
“When students transfer to other MnSCU schools, StarID transfers with them,” Peterson said.
According to MnSCU’s website, StarID was chosen as an identification number to avoid name-based identifiers. This way, if a student changes their name or shares a name with another student, they won’t run into collision problems.
Although students will begin logging into their emails with StarIDs instead of DragonNet credentials, university email addresses will remain the same.
Since StarIDs are assigned to students as a username by the system, they cannot be changed. Passwords, however, may be altered at any time.
“Many may consider this ID hard to remember at first, but because it will be used so often it should become less difficult and can be compared to memorizing a phone number or home street address,” Peterson said.
Although DragonNet credentials will no longer be used, new students will still be assigned Dragon ID numbers.
“Student IDs will remain as they have been and are typically an eight-digit number that is unique to each individual on campus,” Peterson said.
These will remain separate from StarIDs, are campus-specific, and will typically not be used for any login information. Students can still expect them to be printed on their student ID cards to be used around campus for getting into academic buildings during after-hours, spending Dragon Dollars, and utilizing meal plans.
Students should expect that access to online school services during the conversion on Oct. 12 will be unavailable. Students are encouraged to visit starid.mnscu.edu to change StarID passwords.
Students who have yet to activate their StarID will need to do so before the change. Visit http://starid.mnscu.edu/go/activate/ to take the first step into becoming better connected with MnSCU.