Policy on Distribution of Official Georgia State Notifications to Students via E-mail
Approved by Senate December 6, 2001
A Georgia State e-mail address will be assigned to each applicant upon admission to the university.
Messages sent by Georgia State units to Georgia State-provided student email addresses will constitute an official means of communication.
Students can check their e-mail by using their university-issued e-mail accounts or by forwarding their e-mail to a system of their choice. If choosing the latter option, students will be responsible for keeping the Georgia State e-mail system up-to-date with respect to their preferred e-mail address.
Students will be responsible for managing their Georgia State e-mail accounts to ensure that storage space allotments are not exceeded. Georgia State units will be careful to minimize the amount of email distributed to students.
Requests to communicate via e-mail with all Georgia State students must be submitted and evaluated as specified in the Georgia State policy on informational e-mail broadcasts.
All colleges, academic units, student services units and other units that plan to use the e-mail system to contact a subset of students must first develop policies to screen and approve messages to be distributed. These policies will aim to ensure that students do not receive a large number of messages and that only messages strictly related to official college or academic-unit business will be distributed.
Applicants and students will be retained on the e-mail system as long as they are eligible to enroll for classes. Those who are no longer eligible to enroll will be purged from the e-mail system. New e-mail accounts will be assigned to students upon re-admission to the university.
This policy became effective on January 2, 2002.
Rationale
To provide students with timely access to important information regarding university business, to reduce the costs associated with the use of surface mail for the dissemination of information regarding university business, and to reduce the amount of paper used in conducting university business, email will constitute an official form of communication between Georgia State students and Georgia State units (e.g., colleges, academic units, and student services units).
Many Georgia State units have reported a steep rise in the costs associated with the use of surface mail to disseminate information to students. In addition to postage costs, surface mailings entail costs for paper, printing and processing (e.g., stuffing envelopes). Georgia State units can provide information to students in a less costly, more timely and more reliable manner via email than via surface mail.
With its new student e-mail system, Georgia State provides students with easy, user-friendly access to a Georgia State e-mail account. Students who wish to use e-mail service providers outside of Georgia State will have access to a convenient, web-based form that will enable a student to have his or her Georgia State e-mail forwarded to a non-Georgia State email account. Georgia State now has the infrastructure required to distribute email readily and efficiently and to ensure that students find it easy to access this e-mail. Accordingly, Georgia State should follow the lead of universities in Georgia and elsewhere that are harnessing the Internet to keep students better informed regarding university business.