The Northern Star Editorial Board would like to commend the NIU administration for their efforts in job transitioning concerning the recent approval of the Northwestern Medicine partnership, which will take effect as early as January.

The partnership was approved Nov. 15 at the Board of Trustees meeting and is intended to match most of the current provisions of Health Services. While discussing the possibility of a partnership, the administration acknowledged and aided those whose jobs may no longer exist once the partnership is in place.

Mike Stang, assistant vice president of Student Affairs, said the administration worked with groups and individuals to ensure a smooth transition and ample notice for current staff. He also prepared a timeline, which accounted for the holiday season and would allow current staff to maintain their jobs until after the holidays.

“I think we’ve worked as much as we possibly could to try to really help the staff understand what we were doing and why [and] to try to help them figure out what their options were and to try to help to prepare them for whatever those options were,” Stang said, according to a Nov. 15 Northern Star article.

The Northern Star Editorial Board feels it would have been easy for the university to turn a blind eye to its current employees, and by considering those people rather than ignoring them, the administration has done its due diligence. Especially with the holiday season approaching, we commend the administration in extending plans to aid its employees.

In addition to simply commending the university for its consideration of these things, we would also like to acknowledge how respectful the actions of the administration have been throughout this process.

In partnerships like these when an outside party assumes operations of entities similar to Health Services, it is common for the partner to take over staffing responsibilities. Not only is NIU following this common practice, but the administration has gone above and beyond when considering their employees.