Last fall as we were migrating faculty and staff onto the new IRIS email system, ITS worked with a large number of students and some faculty and staff to select a new email platform for students. Three vendors made presentations: Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo. Participation in the evaluation required designing and filling out an online evaluation matrix that eventually grew to 50 items. Out of the initial 1,500 individuals who signed up to help select a vendor, 70 hardy souls made it through the required work to recommend that NAU adopt Google as the new email solution for students.
The decision to go with an outside vendor for student email was made even before we understood how serious the budget problem would be for Arizona. NAU simply can’t match the free services offered by these vendors. The vendors, in return, are able to capture market share; however, they agree not to advertise to students with the hope of retaining these students as life-long alumni to build up their advertising base in the future. Already, more than a dozen US universities now use Google for student email, including Arizona State University and Northwestern University.
Students understood the tradeoff inherent in using these free services. Most embraced the offer as they were already used to seeing advertising in their personal email. In return for future advertising, they particularly liked the idea of replacing our legacy system with a system that offered a lot of new exciting tools, with seven GB or more of disk space, and with lifetime email accounts after graduating.
Google was a clear favorite in nearly every category evaluated. Students liked the fact that it was browser independent, that the product appeared to be more integrated than Microsoft’s Exchange Labs, and that it was a familiar, proven, and popular email platform. They also liked the idea that Google Apps for Education would give them new features sooner than a normal Google account and that their email address would end in “nau.edu.”
On December 2, 2008, a presentation was made to the President’s cabinet and President Haeger approved going forward with Google as an outsourced replacement for student email. We are currently negotiating the legal agreement and preparing to launch a Google email pilot this spring. Depending on how soon we can start and how many problems we initially encounter, we hope to have some students moving to Google email before the end of the semester. The big push to turn email off on the legacy Dana system will begin in earnest next fall. Once email is removed from Dana, we can downsize the Dana machine and begin to save some maintenance money.
Lifetime Email Accounts
In addition to a number of technical challenges related to actually implementing the service, we have two very important goals that will affect the campus. First, we want to make it possible for staff or faculty who are also students to have two identities supporting two email accounts that are both completely functional: one on IRIS and the other on Google email. Due to the design of our First.Last email addresses, this currently isn’t possible. Second, we want to give alumni lifetime email access.
Logging into Google’s email will use the same single sign-on password that we use for our other campus web applications, such as PeopleSoft or Blackboard Vista. Extending email services to alumni means that ITS will keep track of alumni who are actively participating in email services. This means that we should build, over time, a very large list of good alumni email addresses that professional programs or the Alumni Office can use to let their constituents know about NAU services and opportunities. We will be able to contact alumni much more easily and we could even consider offering new web-based services targeted to alumni. The first step, of course, is to get Google email in place. After that, we’re already hearing from professional programs, the Alumni Office, and others interested in building good relations with our recent graduates and former students.
If you want to stay up to date on the progress of this effort, please visit nau.edu/studentemail or send questions to John.Campbell@nau.edu.
