eLine

New Student E-mail accounts available

In FY 07, the College earmarked funding from the Technology Fee budget to purchase a robust campus-based e-mail system for the students.  After reviewing various options and systems, it was decided to purchase and install Microsoft Exchange server.  Microsoft Exchange is a very stable platform with a very simple and user friendly web interface, and the College has had several years of knowledge and experience with this product.

Software and hardware was purchased during summer, 2006.  Installation and testing of the product continued into the fall semester.  Finally the new system was made available to the students at the end of November, 2006.  Students were given instructions via e-mail and through campus-wide publicity on how to transfer e-mails from their existing system (Netmail) to the new Student Exchange System (SES).  The transfer and migration of the e-mails was completed in December and the old e-mail system, Netmail, was shut down. 

In the future, there is no need for students to deal with Yahoo or Hotmail or AOL or other 3rd party e-mail accounts.  Every student’s e-mail address has the same domain name i.e. username@student.saintpaul.edu where the username is the student’s user ID.  A spam and antivirus filter was also installed on SES in January, 2007.  This will effectively protect the student mailboxes from unnecessary spam and viruses.  

The link for students to create an e-mail account is on the College Web Home page.  The process is very intuitive and more than 5000 students are already using the new e-mail system.  The new email system is the official means of communication between the College and students and it also gives us the ability to send “Broadcast” messages to the students. 

Contributor:  Najam Saeed