University to Switch Student E-mails to Gmail: Change will offer students more flexibility to their Pacific Email Addresses
The University of the Pacific will partner with Google Inc. to offer students Google email addresses. Starting spring semester 2010, the university will begin assigning active students and recent graduates Google email addresses with "u.pacific.edu" name extensions.
The Google partnership will help the University keep pace with a growing reliance on student e-mail, reduce costs and allow students to keep their Pacific e-mail address forever. Students also will be able to incorporate other Google online applications into their messages such as instant messaging, shared calendars, and Google's online document programs.
"Many of our students are already familiar with Google's Gmail, so we hope that by switching to the platform, we will make communication with Pacific easier to use", said Larry Fredrick, associate provost and chief information officer.
Over the course of the next several months, Pacific's Office of Information Technology will begin working with student organizations and campus business units to set-up requirements which will enable students to migrate from their existing pacific.edu mailboxes to their new Google mailboxes. Students will be offered the new addresses during the spring semester.
Benefits students will receive with their new u.pacific.edu address include:
* Lifetime Pacific email addresses.
* 7 gigabytes of email storage, highly effective spam filtering and the ability to search e-mail messages with Google's powerful search engine.
* Email forwarding enabling students to choose other email applications to receive email.
* Mobile device delivery of email to iPhone, Blackberry and other mobile devices.
* Google CalendarTM - enables easy coordination of work or class schedules, meetings and events online.
* Google TalkTM - supports free PC-to-PC voice calls and instant messaging.
* Google DocsTM - enables users to create and collaborate on documents and spreadsheets in real-time.
Pacific's Office of Information Technology is working with Alumni Associations to eventually expand this service to all Pacific Alumni. For additional information on Pacific's Google mail, go to: http://oitfaq.pacific.edu or by e-mail at student.googlemail@pacific.edu.