Other Policies

Email Policies at Other Universities

During 2005 we gathered email policy information from several Committee on Institutional Cooperation (CIC) institutions, Drake University, the University of Northern Iowa, Iowa State University and the University of Florida.

During this investigation, we sent the following email message:

Our administrators and faculty desire to use technology for official communications with students. They would like a high degree of assurance that their communications will be delivered to the students.

Email works relatively well but there are some problems. Even though we maintain "@uiowa.edu" routing addresses for all of our students, many of our students choose to route their mail to off-campus email providers, such as AOL. Due to anti-spam policies and disk quotas, we can not provide a high degree of assurance of email delivery to the students.

I would like to know what modes of communication that your institution uses for "official" communications with students. If email, how do you address the issue of reliable delivery? If you use some other mode, such as a student portal, I would be interested in more details.

We also included some information from public web sites.

The following is a summary of the results of this investigation.

Drake University

In October 2005 their Student Email Policies web page stated:

Reviewed 07/20/05

In order to provide easy communication among students, faculty and staff, OIT has as one of its goals to provide a convenient, fast, functional and reliable mail server, which students can access on- or off-campus using a web browser or an email client of their choice.

We wish to support academic needs at a reasonable cost in money and staff time. So we need email policies which support reasonable academic needs, but which place restrictions on inefficient email practices. There are many pressing academic needs for IT resources, and so it is not our priority to devote unlimited resources to provide email. The policies which follow are intended to meet the above goals. Students who use the system responsibly and with reasonable care should not be adversely affected at all.

We no longer permit forwarding of messages from Drake student accounts to other services such as hotmail or yahoo. It is a responsibility of students as members of the Drake community to check their Drake accounts regularly for messages from faculty and administrators. Students are of course welcome to continue using their hotmail, etc. accounts for their own, non-academic purposes.
Mass mailing announcements sent to all students from Drake faculty and staff are now deleted after fourteen days (with an allowance for vacation periods).
Messages will be retained on the server for an interval equal to one semester plus one week. Thereafter they will be deleted on a rolling basis. Students who use an email client are encouraged to download any messages they want to keep to their local machines, and delete them and any attachments from the server. Students who use a web browser should print their messages, download attachments and then delete both. This message retention policy applies to all students.
A disk quota of 15 megabytes is allocated (enough room for hundreds of messages and some multimedia files). A warning will be sent to student when the limit is approached, and if necessary messages will be deleted to bring the account under the limit. Space being used can be checked at http://mail.drake.edu/duwebfiles/emailquota.html. This disk space allocation policy applies to all students.
If an email account is being used in conjunction with a class project, a request for additional, temporary space may be sent to noc@drake.edu. Please include a one sentence description of the project, the name of the course and the instructor. A special web site for this purpose will be developed in the near future.
Accounts not accessed for 90 days that have grossly exceeded the disk space allocation will be given special treatment. Messages over 30 days old that have originated from outside of Drake will be deleted. In addition, accounts in this category that are subscribed to mailing lists will have their incoming messages rejected for two weeks to allow time for list senders to delete those accounts from their lists. Spam-based lists are the major concern. A student may request that the block on incoming messages be removed during the two week period by sending a message to noc@drake.edu. Otherwise, the receipt of messages is resumed after the two weeks.
One of the principal causes of slow mail access is a large in-box (with hundreds of messages). Students will find the system more responsive if they empty their in-box every time they access the system, either by moving messages to other folders, or by downloading them to their local machine and deleting them from the in-box.

University of Northern Iowa

In July 2005 a university representative replied:

We don't have a written policy, but probably should. Ours would be similar to most of the examples you've provided.

One thing that we do handle a little differently is diskquota... In the wee hours every other Tuesday morning, a process checks for students who are more than 10% over their quota. Those that are over are so notified and given until midnight Thursday to clean up. Checks are made several times per day on Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and those who do clean up are thanked and removed from futher checking until the next time. Those who remain overdrawn at midnight on Thursday have incoming mail privs revoked. When they do clean up, they may send a mail message to a special address that checks their quota and either turns incoming privs back on or reports back on how overdrawn they still are.

Iowa State University

In October 2005 a university representative replied:

All students have an ISU net-id and we use email as if it's the official method of contacting students. We will have a new policy in place in spring of 2006.

University of Florida

Beginning October 2005 the University of Florida will no longer permit their "Gatorlink addresses to be forwarded to third party accounts."

"To provide better service and more reliable information to its students, the University of Florida will discontinue the policy that permits Gatorlink addresses to be forwarded to third party accounts. Students will still be able to forward Gatorlink accounts to other email services that are maintained by their departments in the UFL.EDU domain. This policy will become effective for all students on October 1, 2005. All students are encouraged to begin using their Gatorlink email accounts as soon as possible to insure they receive all official correspondence of the University of Florida." - Gatorlink Student E-mail Forwarding Policy, Effective Oct 1st, 2005

Indiana University

Use of Email as Official Correspondence with Students

Introduction
At Indiana University, there is an increasing need for fast and efficient communication with currently enrolled students in order to conduct official business at the University. Students tend to communicate extensively through electronic mail. Each student is issued a University network ID and email account for use throughout the time the student is registered for classes at the University. Accordingly, email is an available mechanism for formal communication by the University with students. If a student chooses to forward his/her mail to another email address (AOL, Hotmail, departmental server, etc.), the student’s primary campus email address remains the official destination for official university correspondence.

The following policy is consistent with the Bloomington Faculty Council “Mass Email Procedures and Restrictions” as well as policies and procedures established by the Office of the Vice President for Information Technology and Chief Information Officer. It does not make email the only official method of communication. While campuses are encouraged to adopt the policy on email as an official means of communication, each campus will have the option to do so.

Policy
Email shall be considered an appropriate mechanism for official communication by Indiana University with IU students unless otherwise prohibited by law. The University reserves the right to send official communications to students by email with the full expectation that students will receive email and read these emails in a timely fashion.

Assignment of Student Email
Official university email accounts are available for all registered students. The domains for the addresses vary according to campus (e.g., indiana.edu for IU Bloomington, iupui.edu for IUPU Indianapolis, iun.edu for IU Northwest). Official university communications will be sent to students’ official university email addresses.

Students are expected to check their email on a frequent and consistent basis in order to stay current with university-related communications. Students must insure that there is sufficient space in their accounts to allow for email to be delivered. Students have the responsibility to recognize that certain communications may be time-critical. Students will not be held responsible for an interruption in their ability to access a message if system malfunctions or other system-related problems prevent timely delivery of, or access to, that message (e.g., power outages or email system viruses).

Forwarding of Email
Students who choose to have their email forwarded to a private (unofficial) email address outside the official university network address, do so at their own risk. The University is not responsible for any difficulties that may occur in the proper or timely transmission or access of email forwarded to any unofficial email address, and any such problems will not absolve students of their responsibility to know and comply with the content of official communications sent to students’ official IU email addresses.

Course Related Use of Email
Faculty may assume that a student’s official university email is a valid mechanism for communicating with a student, although faculty should exercise caution about including sensitive data, such as grades, in an email. This policy will ensure that all students will be able to comply with course requirements communicated to them by email from their course instructors.

Responding to an Unofficial Email Address
IU employees need to be careful when responding in detail to a query sent from an unofficial email address since there is no assurance that the sender is, in fact, the student. A recommended step is to provide generic replies only, directing students to university tools that require authentication, such as Oncourse or self service functions, or to require students to provide their primary campus email address to receive a reply.

December 10, 2003

University of Minnesota

Policy Statement

A University assigned student email account shall be the University's official means of communication with all students on the Twin Cities campus. Students are responsible for all information sent to them via their University assigned email account. If a student chooses to forward their University email account, he or she is responsible for all information, including attachments, sent to any other email account.

Reason for Policy

The University of Minnesota provides students with an email account upon the student's matriculation to the institution. This account is free of charge and currently is active as long as the student remains active. Increasingly, email is becoming the primary mode of communication between students and the University. The information distributed via email varies from college updates to registration summaries.

Some students do not use their University assigned email account. Other students forward their University email account to an alternative account (i.e., America Online, Yahoo, Earthlink, etc.). When students do not use or forward their University assigned email account, vital information is often not conveyed as the email is unopened or the associated attachment is not forwarded.

It is imperative that students understand that a majority of information will be communicated to them via their University assigned account while they are students. To better serve our students, upon matriculation students are informed that their University assigned email account is the primary means of communication from the University community and that they will be held responsible for the information in the email.

To review the entire policy for the University of Minnesota, see http://process.umn.edu/groups/ppd/documents/policy/email_pol.cfm

Northwestern University

University Email Notifications To Students
Northwestern University

Reason: At Northwestern University, there is an increasing need for electronic communication with students. The university intends to establish email as a communication mechanism with students. Implementation of this policy will ensure that email can be used as an official means of communication with students.

Policy: Email is a valid mechanism for official communication with students at Northwestern University. The university has the right to send official communications to students by email. The university has the right to expect that students will receive email and will read email in a timely fashion.

Implementation: At the university all students will be assigned an official university email address. All official university communications will be sent to this official university email address. This official university email address will be maintained in the official university email directory for each student.

Forwarding of email: The university will provide a convenient mechanism so that a student may have email forwarded from the official university email address to another email address of the student's choice. Students who choose to have email forwarded to another email address do so at their own risk. The university is not responsible for email forwarded to any other email address. A student's failure to receive or read in a timely manner official university communications sent to the student's official email address does not absolve the student from knowing and complying with the content of the official communication.

Course-related use of email: Faculty may assume that a student's official university email is a valid mechanism for communicating with a student, and faculty may use email for communicating with students registered in their classes. This policy will ensure that all students will be able to comply with course requirements communicated to them by email from their course instructors.

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Preferred E-Mail Address for Students
University of Wisconsin
Effective August 1, 2004

Background

At the University of Wisconsin-Madison there is an increasing need for fast and efficient communication with currently enrolled students to conduct official business at the University. Students tend to communicate extensively through email. Each student is issued a University network ID and email account for use throughout the time the student is enrolled for classes at the University. Students are responsible for activating their account from the log-in page of the My UW-Madison portal. Accordingly, email is an available mechanism for formal communication by the University with students. If a student chooses to forward his/her mail to another email address (AOL, Hotmail, departmental server, etc), the student's primary campus email address remains the destination for most official university correspondence.

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) of 1974, establishes rules under which the university must operate to protect the privacy of student information. Since email is increasingly used as a vehicle to communicate official information from the university to the student (and is, in fact, an officially recognized vehicle for that purpose), it is important that any information sent be shared only between the party sending the information and the student. Use of an email account that provides us with a great level of assurance that it is indeed the student to whom we are communicating allows the university to communicate with that student in a way that protects their rights and insures that we are communicating to the student.

We have a high level of confidence that email messages sent within the university arrive at their destination and show up in the inbox of the recipient. We are less confident that email sent outside the university actually arrives and can be read by the individual. The vagaries of the Internet, spam filters, lack of storage space, etc. are all factors which decrease our confidence that email will arrive as expected.

Sending email over the campus backbone gives us a high level of confidence that email will not be read by someone for whom it was not intended.

Email address custodian: Office of the Registrar in cooperation with ISIS Campus Community Committee

Email service provider (email assigned and maintained): Division of Information Technology (DoIT)

Preferred Email

All students are responsible for activating their university network ID and their email account. The university assigned student email account shall be the University's preferred means of communication with all students attending the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Students are responsible for all information sent to them via their University assigned email account. If a student chooses to forward their University email account, he or she is responsible for all information, including attachments, sent to any other email account.

Forwarding of email
Students who choose to have their email forwarded to a private email address outside the official university network address will be doing so at their own risk. The University is not responsible for any difficulties that may occur in the proper or timely transmission or access of email forwarded to any unofficial email address, and any such problems will not absolve students of their responsibility to know and comply with the content of official communications sent to students' official UW-Madison email address.

Responsibilities

Student - students are expected to check their email on a frequent and consistent basis in order to stay current with university-related communications. Students have the responsibility to recognize that certain communications are time-critical. Students should be aware that their email addresses will be available to faculty on class roster(s) available through My UW-Madison.

Registrar - will respond to unique student requests and will promote the use of email communication for official correspondence. The Registrar's Office will maintain the email address as part of the student record in ISIS.

Departments/Programs - faculty and staff are encouraged to post student attachments to a web page and refer to that site within the email rather than include an attachment to each student email. Email addresses should be used for institutional/educational purposes only.

Faculty - having a preferred email that is a campus email address will help to ensure that all students will be able to comply with course requirements communicated to them by email from their course instructors. Student email addresses will be available on class rosters. These email addresses must be used for institutional/educational purposes only. Faculty should exercise caution about including sensitive data, such as grades, in an email. Faculty should be familiar with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA). See http://registrar.wisc.edu/ferpa/. Learn@UW may provide its own course management-related email. This allows faculty the option of communicating with students through the regular student email or the CMS. Both are provided by DoIT.

DoIT - The Division of Information Technology will provide email service, maintain the appropriate use policy and other related information technology policies. See http://www.doit.wisc.edu/. DoIT will communicate, as appropriate, to students and to campus about email services and policies.

Educause archives

The EDUCAUSE CIO list has had two threads concerning e-mail communications.

The main archives are located at http://listserv.educause.edu/archives/cio.html

Look at the archives for August and September 2004, searching for notes with the subject line "Mail quotas and 'official e-mail communication' requirements". The other thread is in April 2003 and has the subject line "Required E-mail Use".