To eliminate the large volume of Mississippi State University Announcements, a committee has been meeting to discuss ways to reduce the amount of emails sent out.
Mike Rackley, head of Information Technology Services and committee chair, said the original problem presented by Student Association officials was students were feeling overwhelmed by the number of campus emails they were receiving
“[The committee] is meeting to come up with an alternate way [to distribute information], so we wouldn’t need to send so many emails,” he said.
Rhett Hobart, SA president and committee member, said important announcements like add/drop dates and scholarship award dates can possibly get lost amidst other emails.
“Truthfully, the way our email system was, it lost its importance,” he said. “I want to return importance to [the MSU Announcements] system.”
Maridith Geuder, director of university relations and committee member, said messages are being lost because of the number of emails being sent to students, faculty and staff.
“The options [to reduce emails] are being discussed,” she said. “A lot of the messages currently sent are related to events.”
Hobart said he hopes MSU Announcements will be lessened to one or two per week so they will gain more attention.
One option to reduce the amount of event emails sent is to lessen dependency on email by developing a comprehensive campus calendar, he said.
“Revising the email policy is a step-by-step process,” he said. “We don’t want to eliminate [the opportunity for communication] without getting the word out other ways.”
Geuder said there are issues involving the calendar, like the best mechanism to create it and the point person who would coordinate it, before moving forward.
“We looked at other university calendars, which are more comprehensive,” she said. “Consolidating events around campus would give us a much more substantive view. [One] could look in one place and see where everything is happening.”
A consolidated campus calendar would have a beneficial impact on MSU, whether or not it affects email levels, Rackley said.
“Part of the [calendar’s creation] will be technical and part procedural. We have to have the whole campus participate,” he said. “There is no one magic bullet […]. We should have the right structure as well as procedures.”
The committee will discuss software and procedures of the calendar. MSU already has software that is used exclusively to schedule classrooms and events, Rackely said.
“While it is good at scheduling events, it doesn’t provide the community an interface to look up events,” he said. “Our scenario would be to keep that software in place and get software that has a better user interface.”
The campus calendar could also be possibly synched to BullyMail, iPhones and other devices, Hobart said.
“We are so connected to the technological world that it would be great to find a way to add events to the calendar to make it more interactive and dependable,” he said.
Another option is to look at an opt-in/opt-out email system that would allow students to choose which categories of emails they would like to receive, Rackley said.
A system would have to be developed and announcements would have to be sorted into categories. However, he said other options could reduce the amount of MSU Announcements so an opt-in/opt-out system would not be necessary.
To help alleviate the amount of MSU Announcements sent out, potential emails now require vice president level approval, Rackley said. Formerly, emails only required dean-level approval.
“We have already noticed a significant level of reduction,” he said. “We’ve given a significant level of relief to the problem.”
University Relations has already created the Maroon Memo News, which is a newsletter that can be found online for faculty and staff on the front page of the MSU website, Geuder said.
“We can put a lot of announcements and event information into [the newsletter],” she said. “It will cut down on emails being sent out.”
Geuder said options other than emails exist already, like university relations, TV and radio stations and The Reflector.
“Sometimes, it is best to submit events weeks in advance rather than the day of [the event],” she said. “We have a lot of university media; someone just needs to get the information to the sources.”
Rackley asks for everyone to have patience as the committee meets.
“We want to come up with a solution that will solve the problem,” he said.