Traveling internationally for Notre Dame? There’s a registration for that.
The University urges faculty and staff traveling abroad for work to register the travel at ndi-tr.nd.edu. Registration is mandatory for undergraduate students traveling internationally on University-sponsored travel, and is strongly encouraged for graduate students, faculty and staff.
Jaime Signoracci, who joined Notre Dame International (NDI) in August as associate director of international travel safety, explains why it’s important to register.
“The University partners with leading travel assistance firms to continuously monitor the world for incidents and events that have the potential to impact our international travelers wherever they might be. By registering your trip, NDI will know where you are, how to best contact you in an emergency to confirm your safety, and how to quickly assist you when you need it most,” she says.
The registry and the Travel & Safety section of the NDI website, international.nd.edu/travel-safety, also offer travelers access to pre-departure resources, information and advice on a wide variety of topics, from traveling with medications to practicing good situational awareness to what to do if you find yourself in an earthquake.
An earthquake is exactly what Sarah Craig, communications specialist with Notre Dame Research, experienced in Haiti in 2010. Back then she was the program manager for the Notre Dame Haiti Program, which works with partners to eradicate lymphatic filariasis, a debilitating mosquito-borne disease.
“I was the program manager from 2003 to 2011, and I traveled to the country often,” Craig says.
So frequently that Craig admits she had become lax in filling out the Department of Biological Sciences travel paperwork. (This was before NDI launched the online registry.) Craig says if she had filed her January 2010 travel plans, there would have been a record of her anticipated whereabouts when the earthquake hit.
On January 12, 2010, Craig, a colleague, a postdoctoral student and the founder of the Haiti Program, the Rev. Thomas Streit, C.S.C., were at Hotel Montana in Port-au-Prince attending a semiannual partners meeting. The four were standing on open hotel balconies when the ground shifted violently. They rode the building down as it pancaked to the ground. Fortunately, they sustained only minor cuts and bruises.
Someone at the University checked in with the Department of Biological Sciences to see if there were Notre Dame faculty or staff in Haiti. The office didn’t have record of the travel, so the response was “no.”
“That was an administrative lesson learned the hard way,” says Craig. “We never again forgot to do our paperwork.”
While the University previously tracked travel on paper, NDI launched the online University-wide travel registry in 2014.
“NDI partners with many other divisions, primarily Student Affairs, General Counsel, Risk Management, Campus Safety and Emergency Management,” Signoracci says, adding, “In my short time at Notre Dame, I’ve been impressed with the comprehensive travel health and safety resources to help support the University’s international travelers, including faculty and staff.”
And, as Signoracci points out, planning and preparation can help mitigate the majority of travel risks before leaving. The first step is to register work-related trip in NDI’s Travel Registry system.
If you have questions, please email travelregistry@nd.edu.
Planning to travel abroad with students?
Get to know Jaime Signoracci, associate director of international travel and safety, who will…
- co-host destination-specific pre-departure health and safety orientations (it’s required!)
- host trip leader training before spring break and summer group travel (dates TBD)
- answer specific travel health and safety questions for any destination
Contact Jaime at 631-9645 or jsignora@nd.edu
Originally published by at ndworks.nd.edu on January 17, 2019.