New Brunswick Update on Canvas Outage

May 8, 2026

Dear Faculty and Staff Colleagues, 

I am writing to share some updates, clarifications, and guidance regarding the ongoing Canvas outage: 

1. As you saw in the message just sent out by CIO Michele Norin, Canvas login has not yet been reenabled at Rutgers. While Canvas's parent company, Instructure, has indicated that Canvas is functioning and accessible, OIT must ensure that all cybersecurity risks have been mitigated before access to Canvas is restored on campus, a process also taking place at many of our peer institutions.  
2. Please understand that no final exams should take place today regardless of modality or whether the course relies on Canvas in any way. Doing so is unfair to students who may not have had access to important study materials and who were told explicitly that today's exams are postponed.
3. I met last evening with the deans and members of their academic teams to devise a plan for rescheduling today's exams, the details of which are contingent upon when Canvas access is restored and will be communicated to students and faculty within roughly the next two to three hours. 

In the meantime, please see the information below from OIT on steps that faculty can take to communicate with students and share course information outside of Canvas. I offer this guidance with the understanding that we may reach a point where final course assessments may need to proceed without the foreseeable use of Canvas. Whether we reach that point and what the path looks like from there will be communicated in a subsequent message following consultation with deans, vice provosts, academic leaders, and our shared governance bodies. 

Communication with students

1. Email students in your course. Download the class roster with emails from REGIS.
2. Create a Box or Teams site to share resources with students
3. Attach files of readings or other resources your students might need
4. Leverage Zoom if helpful. Create Zoom links via the Zoom portal and email the link.

Grading

OIT is working on a solution for exporting Canvas gradebooks from the Unizin Data Platform into workable CSV or Excel files for instructors with instructions on how to complete them and upload to REGIS. 

Jason Geary, Ph.D. 
Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs
Rutgers University–New Brunswick