Undergraduate students are being issued new Phoenix Cards this week, to be followed soon after by graduate students and Elon employees.
Incoming students received the new smart cards during orientation, while thousands of other undergraduate students have picked theirs up this week. Sophomores, juniors and seniors who haven’t yet turned in their old Phoenix Cards and collected a new one should do so Friday, Sept. 5, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. in Moseley Center just outside the mail center. Graduate students and university employees will receive emails in the coming weeks with instructions on how to claim their new cards. Everyone must turn in their old Phoenix Card to receive a new one.
New cardreaders have already been installed in the mail center, a step that has dramatically reduced wait times, according to Assistant Vice President for Administrative Services Chris Fulkerson.
Over time, the new cardreaders will make entering dining halls, getting into buildings and checking out media from Belk Library faster and easier. The cards’ encrypted chips can also securely store a significant amount of data, Fulkerson says, so additional uses for the technology such as storing academic or medical records are being considered.
Elon was an early adopter to the previous generation of Phoenix Card technology, so Fulkerson says adminstrators waited until it was financially responsible to begin the upgrade process to the smart cards.
“It was time to start replacing some of the infrastructure,” he said. “So rather than invest more in the old infrastructure, we started making this switch.”
The updates to Phoenix Cards will not impact how merchants in the surrounding community use the cards.