Faculty committee collects suggestions for UC Davis central email service

Faculty, students and staff on the Davis campus will soon be invited to take a survey asking them what features they need in a campus email service.

The non-technical questionnaire will come from the Campus Email Committee, which is charting a strategy for central campus email services for faculty, staff and students. The Academic Senate and Information and Educational Technology jointly formed the ad hoc committee last November.

"Your suggestions ... will help us ensure the committee recommends an informed and forward-looking strategy for UC Davis," says Computer Science Professor Felix Wu, committee chair, in an email to faculty, students and staff. The message includes a link to the survey, which will be released Monday, March 7.

One question asks respondents how satisfied they are with the service they use now. Other areas address the use of mobile devices to access email and calendars, privacy considerations, the size of campus mailboxes, and alternate methods of hosting campus email services. Completing the survey should take 3 to 5 minutes.

The Campus Email Committee, led by faculty, is building on work accomplished by other committees in 2009-10 to enhance email service for faculty and staff.

The central campus service for faculty and staff is currently Geckomail, powered by Cyrus software. Students use DavisMail, which runs on Google's Gmail. Several campus departments also run their own systems.

The email committee plans to submit its recommendations, including a summary of the survey results, to Senate Chair Bob Powell and campus Chief Information Officer Pete Siegel by the end of April.

The UC Davis Student Affairs Research Institute prepared the survey and will help analyze the results.

The committee may be contacted at emailcommittee@ucdavis.edu. Read more about its work here.