Buckeye Mail, Ohio State's New Student E-mail System has Successful Launch

Posted: June 2, 2009

The Office of the CIO recently announced that over 31,000 students have activated their new Buckeye Mail accounts since the April 6 launch. Buckeye Mail is the official e-mail system for Ohio State students.

Buckeye Mail offers a host of benefits including e-mail (10GB) and calendaring, 25GB of online storage and a place to share and edit their Microsoft Office documents online using Office Live Workspace. Buckeye Mail is only available to students and alumni (coming fall 2009). This system is designed for students. Faculty and staff should continue to use the current central or departmental systems.

Currently almost 50 percent of students are now using Buckeye Mail. Students always have the option of selecting Buckeye Mail or any other commercial account (Gmail, Yahoo, MSN, Excite, Hotmail, etc.). Any student accounts remaining on the old central student system will be transitioned to Buckeye Mail or other ISP before fall quarter.

"As we expected, students are already taking advantage of the many new features Buckeye Mail offers, like the ability to share and edit documents simultaneously-great for working on class projects," said Student Life CIO Valerie Shafer. "So even though students can still opt for mail forwarding, we think there is a strong case for all to use Buckeye Mail."

All students, faculty and staff should continue to use the name.#@osu.edu addresses for all e-mail correspondences. This is to ensure that the e-mails will be delivered to the student's designated mail account. Students can change their email forwarding at any time to any e-mail provider by going to 8help.osu.edu/3172.html.

Senior Director of Infrastructure, John Ellinger, who oversees the Buckeye Mail implementation, said, "Buckeye Mail is providing students unprecedented convenience, selection and value. With more storage, a calendaring feature, collaboration, spam filtering, access to Sky Drive, and less downtime, this is a great service for students now and for a life time."

Additional details regarding Buckeye Mail are available at 8help.osu.edu/buckeyemail. Questions can be addressed by sending e-mail to 8help@osu.edu or by calling 614-688-HELP (4357).