Many Miami University students were caught by surprise by a change in their email addresses over Christmas break.
All Miami students as well as faculty and staff were given miamiOH.edu email addresses, which replaced their former muohio.edu email addresses.
When students learned of the change, one of the most common questions they asked was "Why?" according Randy Hollowell senior communication and web coordinator for Information Technology (IT) Services.
Senior Erin Hawley is applying to medical school and graduate schools and is concerned that the email change may interfere with her being able to communicate with those schools.
"I'm not afraid of change or anything but I can't understand for the life of me why they did this right smack dab in the middle of the year because for those of us who are seniors because of the way that med school or grad school communicates with you is by email," Hawley said. "So I'm already anxious enough but now I have to be worried about if they can't get ahold of me because something is missing on my application."
Hawley is also concerned that schools may not be able to look her up in their systems because she applied under her old email address.
The idea behind the change in email address is to give Miami a new brand, according to Deedie Dowdle, associate vice president of University Communications and Marketing.
A survey was sent out last year to prospective students, guidance counselors, current students, faculty, staff and alumni asking them if they thought muohio was an appropriate web address and email address for Miami.
The overwhelming response from the 6000 people who responded was 'no,' according to Dowdle.
"We heard repeatedly that muohio did not make much sense as a web address," Dowdle said.
Dowdle said what 'muohio' was missing was the name 'Miami.'
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"For marketing purposes, for branding and visibility, instant recognition, you always want your name to be in your website," Dowdle said.
However, in order to change the student email addresses to MiamiOH, IT Services needed to migrate student emails, docs and calendar from one domain to another.
This is why if a student signs into their email account under their muohio.edu address they will not receive new emails.
The migration process took longer than IT Services was hoping, Hollowell said, with the migrations taking place up until Jan. 13.
IT Services started the process Dec. 31 with the hope that migration would be complete by Jan. 4.
Hawley agreed that the new email address and web address better represents Miami, but still said she thinks that the change in address should have occurred at a later date.
"I think the domain represents Miami a lot better because no one knows us as MU, but I don't understand why it was in the middle of the year," Hawley said.
While Dowdle said University Communications had not received much of a response from students about the email change, Hollowell said IT Services received a significant response from students asking why the change was occurring. IT Services received this response because although the decision to change the email addresses came from University Communication, IT Services implemented the change.
"I think students saw this as an IT Services initiative," Hollowell said.
Email that is sent to a student's muohio.edu email address will still be delivered to their miamiOH.edu email address for at least until June 2014.
Miami is currently pursuing options that will allow them to maintain two domain names and therefore email that is sent to muohio.edu email addresses would always be forwarded to miamiOH.edu email addresses.
If students still have questions about the email change they can contact the IT Support Desk at ITHelp@MiamiOH.edu or (513) 529-7900.
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