Did you get yours?

By Dr. Philip Baczewski, Associate Director of Academic Computing

Academic Computing Services is proud to announce EagleMail. EagleMail is a service concept which includes UNT Internet Services E-mail plus a few new features. ACS has refocused its student E-mail service to better address the needs of students and employees to communicate with each other. EagleMail includes a number of ways to access E-mail and will allow students to receive important University messages which apply directly to them.

For some time now Academic Computing Services staff have been planning for up to 100% participation in the UNT student E-mail system. This is to support a pending policy change which will designate E-mail as an official communication channel from the University to students. The plan was first discussed in the June meeting of the Information Resources Council and acted upon at the July meeting of the Council.

One new service of EagleMail is a bulk E-mail system (available Spring, 2000) which provides the ability for selected faculty and administrators to send topical messages to like groups of students at various hierarchical levels (a group could be a single class section or it could be all Freshmen). Another feature is the addition of a Web IMAP client as an option for students to read and send E-mail. This Web client works just like some popular free Internet E-mail sites, like yahoo.com or hotmail.com, but without any commercial advertisements.

In preparation for this new service concept we made an http://eaglemail.unt.edu / Website which displays the Web client login screen by default, but also has a help page which provides some basic information about EagleMail. It serves as a focal point for activating an EagleMail account, managing an account, and accessing E-mail. Please visit that page, try out the client, view the "help" page, and provide any feedback you may have. We will be integrating EagleMail into more and more of our support documents as we continue the rollout process.

Our next major effort will be to promote the student E-mail system and develop name recognition for EagleMail. The first step we took was to try to get the EagleMail name percolating out there amongst the student population. This started with advertisements in the NT Daily on December 2 and December 6. The ad in the Daily simply referred people to the EagleMail Website and was the beginnings of our marketing campaign.

The goal of EagleMail is to support better communication on campus. Part of EagleMail is the ability to send information more quickly and accurately by E-mail than by traditional means. Another aspect is to make the E-mail service more useful to and accessible by students. Undoubtedly, as we move our efforts forward, you should be hearing more and more about EagleMail. Remember, it’s not just E-mail, it’s EagleMail!