Why are we making a change?
The primary objective is to provide each student with an e-mail address that guarantees that mail sent from PBCC will reach the student’s e-mail account.  By providing the account, we can provide that assurance. One of the challenges Faculty and the College Administration have with communicating with students is the assurance that the students receive e-mail from PBCC to the e-mail address the student supplied to the College.  Sometimes, some e-mail systems interpret PBCC e-mail as spam and reject the messages.  The student e-mail system is designed to assure that any e-mail from PBCC to a PBCC student e-mail account supplied by the college will not be rejected.  This gives faculty the assurance that any e-mails they send to students will be delivered. In addition, faculty receiving e-mail will know that it is from a student based on the e-mail address.

What e-mail system are we using?
The College has entered into an agreement with Microsoft to use their Windows Live@edu product.  This is a specific product offering designed for the higher education market.  It is a hosted solution, which means that the college does not have to purchase, install and support computer hardware and software locally to offer this service to our students.

How will students find out about their PBCC E-mail?
During the first week of April 2008, the College Web home page and PantherWeb Registration login page will have information about the new system. In addition, students with a valid personal e-mail address on file will receive an e-mail at that address with their PBCC e-mail address, initial password and instructions on how to access the account. We will also be including information about the new student e-mail system in the Student Newsletter produced by the Registrar’s Office and there will be signs on each of our four campuses advertising the new system. New and readmitted students will receive information about their e-mail address and password in the Conditions of Admissions notification sent by the Registrar’s Office. If the student gave the college a personal e-mail address at the time of application they will also receive an e-mail at this address with their PBCC e-mail address, initial password and instructions on how to access the account.

What address will a student receive?
The PBCC student e-mail domain address will be my.pbcc.edu (note the ‘dot’ following my). The first part of the address will be the student last name (up to 10 characters), first letter of the student’s first name, student’s middle initial (if they have one), followed by a sequence number for duplicates. For example, John Wilson Smith would be smithjw@my.pbcc.edu.

Which students will receive e-mail addresses?
All students who apply to PBCC, both credit and non-credit, will be assigned an e-mail address.

How will students access their e-mail?
Students will have a link to open their PBCC e-mail on their PantherWeb home page. Once they have authenticated to PantherWeb with their ID and pin number they can access their e-mail without an additional logon ID or password.

What about students who have been previously enrolled at PBCC?Will they receive an e-mail account?
Yes. Beginning the first week of April, Information Technology will begin assigning current term and all past enrolled students an e-mail address. This process will take several weeks. If the college has a personal e-mail address for these students, they will receive an e-mail at this address with their PBCC student e-mail address and initial password.

Will the college still ask students for their personal e-mail addresses?
Yes. The college realizes that there are situations where communicating to students via their personal e-mail address would be more effective. For example: early stages of the admissions process or when a student has not been enrolled for several terms. Students will be able to update their personal e-mail address through the PantherWeb System. However, official communication will be sent by the college to the PBCC Student E-mail address. All enrolled credit & PSAV students must use this address to receive official communication.

How will faculty and staff know about the new system?
During the next six weeks there will be several all user e-mails sent to all college employees announcing the system. These e-mails will provide links to additional information for faculty and staff on the college web site. We will also be including information about the new student e-mail system in the Perspectives.

What student e-mail address will appear on the class roster?
Beginning Summer Term 2008-3 all credit, prep and PSAV class rosters will show the student’s PBCC e-mail address. All other types of non-credit class rosters will continue to show the student’s personal e-mail address.

Will faculty and staff be able to send e-mails to groups of students?
Faculty will continue to have available the e-mail function that currently exists on their class roster. Initially the college e-mail system will include distribution lists for groups of registered students. They may be filtered by class type (credit and noncredit) and campus of class for the current term and one future term. These “Student All User” type distribution lists will be managed by each Campus Provost Office and the College Vice-Presidents.

What if I wanted to e-mail a targeted group of students?
For example, all students registered for Honors Classes? Unfortunately, these types of e-mail groups will not be available as part of the initial deployment of the student e-mail system.

If students have questions or experience difficulty using their e-mail, who do they contact?
They should first review online help resources at the following link http://www.pbcc.edu/x14985.xml. If they cannot self-serve using this resource, they will be directed to contact The Information Technology Assistance Center – iTAC (Help Desk) at 561-868-4000.