Having your image captured for your Harvard ID card is a condition of employment for all
employees, and a condition of enrollment for all students. New incoming students should use the
ID Card Photo Submission Application.
There are several image capture
stations around campus, with sufficiently varied hours to accommodate nearly all Harvard
affiliates. With rare exceptions, if you are in eastern Massachusetts, you are
expected to have your picture taken at one of these stations.
However, we realize that there are some people for whom coming to an image capture station
poses an undue hardship (e.g. employees stationed far away from the Harvard campus, traveling
scholars, people with a physical disability etc.)
In these cases, you may submit a
standard U.S. passport photo (a color photo
with a white background, approx. 2" square) for scanning. Black and white photos, family
snapshots, or portraits with non-white backgrounds cannot be accepted. Due to the time
required for scanning and adjusting the photo to make it suitable for printing, it will
take a minimum of two to three weeks to process the card in these cases depending upon the
workload of our office.
Alternatively, if you have access to a digital camera, you may take a digitized picture
and send it to us. The image specifications are the same as for photographs--it must be a
color picture with a white background, cropped from just above the top of the head down to
the collarbone. Images in the HUID database are 280 x 296 pixels in size. To prevent loss
of image quality, the image you submit should be at least that large, and the width and height
should be approximately equal. Digitized images may be submitted on diskette or as email
attachments.
- Send your passport photo or digitized image to:
- Harvard University ID Services
953 Holyoke Center
1350 Massachusetts Ave.
Cambridge, MA 02138-3846
email: ID Services
Of course. Simply come to any of our
image capture stations
and we will take a new picture for you. The next time a card is made for you, it will have the new picture.
Please note that for security reasons, a new card is not automatically produced when a new image is captured. If you have a currently valid card and want a new one with the new image, you must return the old card before a new one is generated.
- There is no charge for simply having a new image captured.
- There is no additional charge for a new image when replacing an old card due to loss, theft, expiration, or change of name.
- There is a $25.00 charge for replacing a valid, properly functioning card with a new image.
If you simply wish to have a new image captured for your next card reissue, we ask that you do so at least two months before your current card expires; our lead time for bulk production ranges from two to four weeks, and chances are that if you wait until right before your card expires, your new one will already have been produced. We also ask that you have your image captured outside of our busiest periods (early June thru mid-July, mid-August thru late September, early October thru mid-November).
