E-mail policies

E-MAIL POLICIES FOR SETZLER COURSES

Whether we like it or not, e-mail has become the primary means of professional communication in the American workplace and in most college settings. In any given semester, I will need to contact most of you by e-mail at least once or twice outside of our regular class meetings; on rare occasions, I may need to pass information quickly on to an entire class with the aid of an e-mail list. For your part, while you are always welcome to stop by my office, many of you will likely find it most convenient to ask me quick questions or send me reminders by using e-mail. I typically check my e-mail several times a day (more often than my phone), so this is the most reliable way to quickly contact me.

Students in my classes are required to regularly review their HPU e-mail (skip this section if you already get your HPU mail daily). I need to have some confidence that you are getting your e-mail, and thus I require all of my students registered to maintain an e-mail account that they check at least once every day or two. In the past, I have found as many as half of the students enrolled in my classes either never checked their e-mail or used e-mail accounts other than those provided by the university. Students failing to check their university mail accounts not only miss out on information that I think they need to have, but also they can fail to receive critically important messages from the registrar, business office, campus security, and their advisors. Keep in mind, that you may move several times during your time in college, and your instructors often will not have access to any current contact information beyond your HPU e-mail address. If you go several months without checking your university e-mail account and deleting messages, you may fill your disk quota, meaning that you will not be able to receive any new messages.

Fortunately, reading your HPU e-mail requires no special software or configuration: You can use almost any internet browser to log onto your university e-mail account by following the link marked "webmail" on High Point's homepage. If you are unable to access your university account because you have misplaced your webmail login information, you will need to call or e-mail the Information Technology helpdesk (883-HELP; helpdesk@highpoint.edu).

If you are one of those students who forgets to check your HPU e-mail account on a regular basis because you maintain an alternative account outside of the university (e.g. AOL or yahoo), please configure High Point's webmail to forward e-mail messages from me to this other account. The one major drawback to having your mail forwarded to another account is that these messages will list you as the sender (meaning that you will have to open each message to see who original sender was). To forward mail from me to another e-mail account, take the following steps:

Log-on to HPU's "webmail" following the link on the university's homepage...

Click on the Outlook Web folder marked "Rules," which is located on the left-hand side of the window towards the bottom of the frame...

Click on the appropriate button to create a "New" rule...

In the rules dialog window make sure all of the spaces blank except:
(1) In the first field, label the new rule "forward my mail."
(2) The "Importance is" field should be changed to "Any."
(3) Add setzler to the the "From" field
(4) The "Forward it to" box should be checked, and you should enter your external account's e-mail address precisely (including lower and upper capitalization).
(5) Finally, the box marked "keep a copy in my Inbox" should be unchecked if you don't regularly check your HPU mail account. Deleting messages as they are forwarded to an external account will ensure that your disk quota on the university's mail server is not exceeded (when this happens, no more messages will be accepted).

Keep in mind that you will still will need to check your HPU account from time to time to make sure that your e-mail space is not completely used up.

Please put your name and class name in your e-mail subject line. Most e-mail services, including the university's now use spam filters. Messages containing a blank subject line or very brief and/or vague subjects--e.g., "hello," "quick question," "hey," etc.--are likely to delayed or deleted by a spam filter.

Be professional in your e-mail communication. Given how ubiquitous e-mail communication has become in professional settings, I am surprised each and every term by the large number of students who approach me in writing using a tone that they would never consider employing if we were talking one-on-one. While your messages need not adhere to the high, often rigid language and grammatical standards of a business letter, you should carefully consider what impression you want to leave whenever you are using e-mail to interact with someone in a professional context. Here are a few guidelines that will help you to avoid grief:

	Don't use IM/text messaging shortcuts when writing e-mail notes. If you want someone else to take the time to read your message, take the time to write in full words and complete sentences.
	Use the standard rules of capitalization rather than writing messages in all lower or upper case.
	Run the spell check and reread your message to make sure that it makes sense.
	If you are sending an attachment, verify that the document is actually linked before sending your message. If you want feedback or advice on a document, send the document as an attachment rather than cutting and pasting the text into a mail message. If you do not know what word processor the recipient of your messsage is using (all High Point University faculty use MS Word), save and send your document in "RTF format" using the "Save as" option in your word processing program.
	Most importantly, your should always try to use the same level of familiarity in your e-mail messages (and certainly not more intimacy) that you would use if you were talking face-to-face to the recipient of the message. I once had a student who wanted a paper extension begin a message to me with the following: "yo marky, mark!" What impression do you think that left? What do you think my response was to the request for an extension?

© Mark Setzler, 2000-2007. The pages on this website are intellectual property. They may not be reproduced without my written permission. Current students and faculty members at High Point University may reproduce any and all materials on the website for their own use.