As of Thursday morning, 780 NIU employees had yet to complete their required ethics training, which was mandated by the State Officials and Employees Ethics Act.

Employees who had not completed the training were issued pamphlets to read to assure they understood the training.

Although employees were given a month to complete the training, the majority completed the training the very first day – 1,000 out of the 8,329 were completed, said Deborah Haliczer, director of employee relations. She said they also have received hundreds of submissions in the last few days.

University employees had from Oct. 18 to Nov. 17 to complete the training program.

Steve Cunningham, associate vice president of human resources, said he was very impressed with the cooperation of the faculty and staff during this period. He said NIU’s number of employees who completed the training compared well to other public schools.

NIU does not anticipate any major issues with remaining employees completing the program in a timely manner, Cunningham said.

However, in time, if an employee still is outright refusing or uncooperative regarding the training, the names will be sent to the legal council, Haliczer said. From there, the information would be sent to the state of Illinois executive inspector general office, which has the authority to issue a $5,000 fine, take disciplinary action or terminate the employee.

Currently, there is no specific deadline as to when the names will be forwarded to the council, Haliczer said. She said a main concern is to avoid anyone getting fined. Employees still needing to complete the program should call the Employee Relations and Training office at 753-6039.

While some have yet to complete the training, 90 percent of all NIU faculty and staff had completed it by Thursday morning.

Sharon Systma, associate professor of philosophy and an ethics expert, completed her ethics training Monday.

“I’m not sure what my score was; I just saw that I completed [it] and I passed, and closed the window,” Systma said.

Jeffrey Hecht, professor and chair of the department of educational technology, research and assessment and an ethics expert, completed his training last week and received a perfect score. He said many of his colleagues completed the training at the last minute.