Time for change
For those students who haven’t checked their Bobcat e-mail account lately, check again. Many changes have been made and new features have been added.
The Office of Information & Instructional Technology has implemented a newer Bobcat email system for students and faculty to use. The new system is more user friendly and has many new features.
“The Bobcat address is one we are sure is current and one the faculty and campus offices can find,” said Jim Wolfgang, chief information officer. “Students tend to change the ‘free’ addresses at will, sweetcheeks@hotmail today and then swampman@yahoo next week. Then when a faculty member is trying to notify the student about a change in class or remind them of advisement, they can’t reach them.”
The old Bobcat email interface, thought to some as hard to use, has been scrapped, making way for a newer more modern approach to emailing, offering many of the features that Yahoo and Hotmail currently offer.
“Get off Yahoo, look again and you will be surprised,” said Wolfgang. “We have invested a good amount of time and money to make it state of the art. It’s a lot easier and faster. It allows you to change your password, which is a good idea every 90 days, and forward mail. There are many whistles and bells on this one. The old version was basically a free program with little enhancement. This is an enterprise level application.”
One of the reasons that many students haven’t logged on to their Bobcat account lately is because of the amount of time they have had with the other email systems.
“I like the options that Yahoo’s service offers,” said Adem Alp, freshman majoring in economics. “With the features that the new system has I might take time to check it out.”
There are also talks of making Bobcat e-mail addresses the official
means of student/administration contact.
“The item is on the agenda of the University Technology Committee for this month,” said Wolfgang. “If approved it will go to University Council for approval, I hope we will have it by March. It will probably go into effect with the beginning of the summer.”
With this new policy in effect, students will be required to check their Bobcat email accounts to stay up to date with administration and professor plans.
“I have only ever used my Bobcat email account once, and that was when I was a freshman,” said Scott Malone, junior majoring in business management. “It is probably the easiest way of getting in touch with everyone though.”
One of the other plans that OIIT had when designing the new email interface was to give the students a “professional” sounding address where they can be reached by prospective employers.
“We try to help the students understand that sweetcheeks@hotmail isn’t very professional on a resume or application,” said Wolfgang. “Your @bobcat.gcsu.edu gives the address some credibility. This is why we have also gone to an easily identified address using first and last name, not a code . . . john_doe@bobcat.gcsu.edu.”
OIIT will continue to work on the uses of the email accounts and still have a few more plans in store for them.
“We will continue to work at upgrading the actual software and using the
email resource in innovative ways to support other activities on campus,” said Wolfgang. “In the spring we will be doing the same on another server for the faculty and staff for many of the same reasons. But the students come first.”
Posted by Colonnade Archives
on Feb 7 2003. Filed under News.
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