City College students to get new Google e-mail addresses
By Jessica Luthi EDITOR IN CHIEF
With the addition of the new Google student e-mail feature, students may have noticed a new change on their WebStars accounts. Currently City College e-mail addresses are not available to all students.
Previously, e-mail addresses were assigned to students only at the request of an instructor. But as of June 2009, all credit students will have access to a City College e-mail address for life, said Doug Re, director of Information Technology Services. He hopes that by fall 2009 every student, including non-credit students, will have access to such an e-mail address. Faculty and staff will also have the option of getting new e-mail, while keeping their current e-mail addresses.
About 2,000 e-mail addresses have already been created as part of a pilot project in January. “They [students] were pretty much picked out of the multimedia department,” Re said. “We have a good working relationship with that department chair and their faculty.”
The new e-mail accounts will be hosted through Google Apps Education Edition, which is a package of applications that include e-mail, word processing and chat, at no cost to City College. Re is hoping all accounts will include additional Google add-ons’ including Google Calendar, Google Docs, and Google Talk by Fall 2009 semester. Such add-ons are contingent on meetings with key faculty members from Shared Governance Committees, said Re.
E-mail addresses will consist of students’ first initial and the first seven letters of the last name. In case of duplications, a number will be attached to the name. For example, if a student’s name is Betty Peppersmith and another student’s name is Billy Pepperstone, Betty’s e-mail address would be bpeppers@ccsf.edu and Billy’s would be bpepper1@ccsf.edu.
Since October 2008, City College has been working on getting student e-mail accounts. The initial need for such accounts was asserted by the Board of Trustees. “The Board of Trustees have asked us several times over the last year, year and a half, when students would receive student e-mails,” Re said.
“I think it [Google mail] is a very good thing,” said Mamie Hou, dean of the Education Technology Office. “It will allow students to do collaborative work with students and instructors through Google Docs and give people more tech tools.”
“It’s convenient for new students to connect with other students,” said fire science major, Allan Frias, 22, of the new e-mail system. “ But I probably won’t use the e-mail much because I have two already.”
San Francisco City College students can login and access their City College email accounts by browsing to http://google.com/a/mail.ccsf.edu.
