Since 2008, students at UC Davis have enjoyed the convenience of a centralized Google e-mail account through the campus “DavisMail” Google Apps service. However, the ever-increasing amount of students currently holding a “ucdavis.edu” address has led to an unforeseen problem: The university will soon run out of the allotted amount of e-mail accounts provided to them by Google. Subsequently, the fate of an Aggie’s e-mail account after graduation has been the subject of much speculation.
The standing policy has allowed previous graduates to keep their student e-mail addresses for private use. A new plan is currently being discussed that will solve the growing shortage of available accounts.
“Our current plans are to automatically provide students with an option,” said Gabe Youtsey, Program manager for the Cloud and Collaborative Technologies with UC Davis. “In addition to keeping your DavisMail account upon graduation, students can opt to forward their mail to another address. When all the changes have been made, student e-mail accounts will transition from an ‘@ucdavis.edu’ to an ‘@alumni.ucdavis.edu’, so students will still have mail from UC Davis as alumni.”
This change will maintain an appropriate number of student addresses due to the lack of restriction on alumni accounts. The change will be automatic, and all graduates since 2008 still using the service will be informed well in advance.
Research is also underway to discover the percentage of alumni that continue to use the student service for personal use. Data from this report will influence the means by which the central Information and Educational Technologies (IET) department will communicate the plans to students and graduates alike. Measures are also being taken to ensure the opinions of the general population are taken into account.
“We’re planning to reach out to students and talk to them through ASUCD and the Graduate Student Association (GSA) to discuss these changes and see if there is any feedback from the community,” Youtsey said.
Kimi Wong, a senior biological sciences major who plans to use her student account after graduation, is excited for the new change.
“It’s mainly for communication with professors, if I need to ask them for recommendations or anything official that’s pertaining to UC Davis in particular. I think it’s a good thing in general that we get to keep the e-mail. It should be that way.”
Evelyn Garcia, a senior community and regional development major, agrees.
“I’d love to keep it, refer back to it, for anything. I have a bunch of internship e-mails, professors that are saved onto my account, just stuff that I saved that would be good for the future. I don’t mind the name change; it’s understandable.”
According to Youtsey, an exact date for the change to be implemented has yet to be decided.
“It’s still in the planning stages, but we’re looking at roughly a year out,” he said.
