University transitions to Gmail

In the fall 2009 semester, the University approved the selection of Google as the new platform for student e-mail at Villanova. 

This summer, UNIT began migrating e-mail accounts of all current undergraduates, as well as those who had graduated in the last two years, to the new Gmail system. 

According to Matthew Morrissey, director of Technology Support Services at Villanova, the driving force behind the change was student demand. 

"The new system has features and functionality that we thought would better serve the students," Morrisssey said. "Students had expressed the desire to have larger mail quotas and also have the ability to retain their Villanova e-mail address after they left the University, and our previous system just wasn't able to offer that." 

With the Villanova community outgrowing their system, UNIT decided it was time for change.

"A few years ago, Google and Microsoft started entering the student space, but Google was clearly the one that came out on top," Morrissey said. "We met with focus groups and student government, and Google was definitely the platform that students preferred."

According to Morrissey, the new Gmail system has 7 GB of space, whereas the prior University system only had 100 MB. 

This allows students considerable room to store e-mails and documents, and negates many issues students had previously with the lack of storage space. 

"The extra inbox space is really nice to have," junior communication major Kate Colasurdo said. "Before, my inbox would get filled up really quickly and I wouldn't get e-mails until I cleared it out, so now I don't have to worry about that."

Additionally, Gmail allows the University to offer Villanova e-mail services after graduation.  

"Villanova alone doesn't have the capacity to provide alumni mail for life as the number of graduates grows exponentially, so we started looking into other options and Google was able to meet those needs," Morrissey said.

However, providing mail to alumni also created some issues with formatting e-mail addresses. The previous Villanova e-mail addresses were set up in the format of first-name.last-name@villanova.edu. 

With this system, students were only able to keep their Villanova e-mail address one year after graduation. 

After that period of time, the University recycled their address and their names went back into the available pool for future student e-mails.

In order to allow alumni to retain their e-mail post-graduation, UNIT could not reuse addresses. Thus the new user-id@villanova.edu format was created in order to give each student his or her own unique address. 

Morrissey explained that all incoming freshmen were issued an e-mail address in this updated format. Upperclassmen were also given an e-mail address with their user-id, but they also maintained the ability to send and receive mail with their first-name.last-name@villanova.edu address. 

According to UNIT, graduates from the '09 and '10 classes were automatically transferred over to the new Gmail system, and during this semester alumni from previous years will have the choice to opt-in to the Villanova e-mail system. 

While the transition went relatively smoothly, Morrissey acknowledged that when you're moving 13,000 e-mail accounts from one system to another, "There are bound to be some wrinkles that come up." Some students expressed frustration over the transition process itself.