Leaving Carleton - Your Digital Departure

Owned by R Kevin Chapman
Last updated: Apr 04, 2024
7 min read
Table of Contents

Overview

As you transition to post-Carleton life, there are a few things you should take care of during your final days on campus regarding digital materials that are tied to your Carleton account. During your time at Carleton you will have created documents, presentations, posters, and more that you may wish to keep. You may be the owner of resources for an organization or committee which you now need to transfer to someone else. And, of course, there's likely to be a lot of email that you may (or may not) want to keep for future reference. This page is intended to be a quick one-stop reference and reminder of the digital aspects of your Carleton career which you may want to archive or transfer. It also includes links to pages in our Knowledge Base with more detailed instructions on how to do so.

If you have any questions on the following information, please don't hesitate to contact the ITS Helpdesk via our support portal at go.carleton.edu/helpdesk, by phone at 507-222-5999, or through email at helpdesk@carleton.edu.


Account Expiration Timelines

The following shows the standard account expiration timelines for Carleton students, staff, and faculty following their departure from campus. As always, there are exceptions to every rule, but this will provide you with an idea of the amount of time you have to complete your digital departure. (For more details, please refer to the ITS Account Eligibility article).


  • Students (Undergraduate Degree):  Student Account expires at the end of July of their graduating year

  • Faculty and Instrument / Vocal Instructors:  Account expires 30 days after their last work date

  • Staff (Bi-Weekly, Exempt, Union):  Account expires on their last work day.


Class of 2024 - Digital Departure Deadline

To our graduating Seniors in 2024, the deadline for reviewing, moving, and extracting your digital files is July 31st, 2024.

After that date, you will lose access to all digital resources, including all Google apps (Gmail, Drive, etc.) and data will be unrecoverable.
Media stored in Carleton Supported hosting tools - such as Google Drive, Imagen, and Panopto - that you intend to preserve must be downloaded or transferred by July 31st or it will be irrevocably deleted.


Update Accounts Using Your Carleton Email Address

You should plan to update your contact information on any accounts outside that use your Carleton email address before it is shut down.

For example: if you have a social media account, or an Amazon account, that you created using your Carleton email address, you may need to update that before you lose access to your Carleton account. 

Some sites want to send a confirmation email to the original address as a security precaution, to ensure that the owner of the account is authorizing the change. If you try to make this change after your Carleton account is deactivated, you won't be able to receive that confirmation.


It is not possible for ITS to "temporarily reactivate" your Carleton email account to accommodate this. The account is not simply deactivated, it is deleted and no longer exists. 


Archiving or Transferring Email

Class of '24 Deadline:  End of July
After July, messages in your Carleton mailbox vanish and are non-recoverable; mail sent to your address will be returned to the sender.

While it is tempting to simply move all of your email from your Carleton Gmail account to, for example, your personal Gmail account, we suggest that you consider archiving your Carleton email instead. One of the main reasons for this is that there is no elegant method for transferring email between two different systems. The methods below will work, though they may not transfer the labels that you have created in your Carleton account. Remember, although labels look like folders, they are not actual folders which means that they may not transfer. This means that all of your Carleton emails will come through in a single, very long list that you may need to sort, depending on how you want to use it.

Archiving email has the advantage that you are simply downloading and storing the email for future reference, in case you need to refer back to it in the future. It helps to keep your old Carleton email separate from your current (or new) email, in a searchable location for those times that you need to refer back to it.



Documents and Files

Class of '24 Deadline:  End of July 
After July, you will lose access to you Carleton Google account (including Drive), as well as Dropbox if you were using it. Shortly thereafter, your files will be irretrievably deleted.

During your time at Carleton, you have undoubtedly written and created a lot of material which is stored digitally in various places on our network: Course assignments in Moodle, that Photoshop masterpiece stored on Drive, collaborative documents with Google Docs, or even a personal or class website. Once your Carleton account expires, you will lose access to these files which will eventually be deleted from our systems. The links below provide more information on accessing and transferring these types of files.


  • Leaving Carleton - Cloud Storage Files
    Files stored in Google Drive or Dropbox under your Carleton account for which you are the Owner will be inaccessible (to anyone) when your account expires at the end of July, and will be permanently deleted soon after. You will therefore need to transfer ownership of files that need to stay at Carleton (for organizations or research), transfer files to a personal account, and/or download copies of any of your own files that you may want in the future.

If you're looking for more information on managing your files on Google Drive, including details on how to maintain or transfer them from your Carleton account, please refer to this presentation created by Academic Technologies.

Transferring Ownership to Someone Else

Copying, Moving, or Archiving for Yourself



Passing the Baton: Groups, Files and More

Class of '24 Deadline:  End of July
Mailing lists and organization resources that have no on-campus owners will be scheduled for deletion, so please pass them along to someone who isn't graduating.


If you have been an active member of a student group or organization, or a perhaps college committee during your time on campus, it is possible that you are the designated owner or administrator of either the corresponding mailing list or other network resources. Before you leave Carleton, you should be sure to transfer such ownership to your lucky successor (or other member of the group). Mailing lists that have no on-campus owners will be scheduled for deletion, so please pass them along to someone who is not graduating.

Student organizations whose leaders have all graduated may be considered inactive by the CSA, so if the organization is to continue, you will need to hand it off to the next generation. You will need to designate next year's org leader and transfer network folder and web resources to help.

Instructions on both can be found at the links below.


  • Mailing List Ownership
    All mailing lists you own must be transferred to someone who isn't graduating. Any lists that end up without a valid owner will eventually be closed.

  • Student Org Resources
    If you lead a student organization, you must transfer ownership of online resources to someone who isn't graduating.

  • Drive / Google Docs - Transfer Ownership
    Any (non-personal) Google Drive files for which you are the owner must be transferred to a new owner.

  • Dropbox - Transfer Ownership
    Any (non-personal) Dropbox files or folders for which you are the owner must be transferred to a new owner.


DUO Two Factor Authentication

DUO two factor will remain in place on your Carleton account until it fully transitions to an alumni account. In the event that you change or upgrade your cell phone this summer, having DUO backup codes will make setting up your new phone a lot easier.



Your Alumni Account and Staying Connected

Deadline:  N/A

ITS provides several computing services to Carleton alumni, to help ease the transition into the post-Carleton world and to provide ways of keeping in touch with other alumni and the Carleton community. You will continue to have access to web resources like the Hub and the Alumni Directory after graduation. For services like these, you will continue to sign in using your current username and password.



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