New Student Orientation

Northwest Missouri State University provides email services to faculty, staff and students.

Access Northwest Email

Northwest provides electronic mail services to faculty and staff through an in-house Microsoft Exchange service. While students have a separate email service through Microsoft’s Office 365 cloud service.

• Forwarding messages to preferred email account 

The Cat Personal Access to Web Services program (CatPAWS) is a web-based program that allows students to enroll in classes, drop or add classes, and view their bill. CatPAWS can be accessed from the Login icon in the ☰ menu at the top of the page.

Access CatPAWS

• Enrollment Verification
• Changing Personal Information
• Student Services/Financial Aid
  • Add/drop courses
  • Course Schedule
  • Paying bill
  • Checking grades

myNorthwest is a web portal that provides a number of services designed to help students, faculty and staff interact more effectively with Northwest resources, including:

Access myNorthwest

• Northwest Online - access to your online course site.
• Email - myNorthwest provides a link to your Web-based e-mail.
• University Calendar - myNorthwest provides a link to the University's Calendar of Events.
• Group Studio - Create online groups containing resources like photo albums, Internet links, news articles and applications like message boards and chat rooms.
• Administrative Services - myNorthwest allows you access to various administrative services such as the ability to check grades, register for classes, change the personal information that your institution maintains about you, etc.

myNorthwest allows you to customize your user layout to add, remove and rearrange channels. Every time you log into myNorthwest, your tab and channel preferences are preserved.

To get on to the myNorthwest web portal, login with your Northwest username and password from the Bearcat Login page.

A how-to-guide of basic myNorthwest features and how to access those features:

• myNorthwest Web Portal 

DegreeWorks is a web-based tool to help students and advisors monitor student progress toward degree completion. Degree Audit combines Northwest Missouri State University's degree requirements and the coursework you have completed with an easy-to-read worksheet that helps you see how courses that you have completed count toward degree requirements, and what courses and requirements you still need to complete. Degree Audit can be accessed through your myNorthwest account. 

Northwest Online is an online extension of Northwest Missouri State University that offers courses and degrees through the Internet.

Access Northwest Online

All online courses are offered through Northwest Online. Additionally, some onsite courses offer course material through Northwest Online.

• How to log in to Northwest Online

• Subject Guides for Research
• Ask a Librarian for Help
• Search for Books
• Search for Articles
• Citation Examples

Online tutoring through Smarthinking can be accessed by logging into Northwest Online.