Dear Walden Faculty,

To upgrade and enhance Walden email and improve the way we interact and communicate we are launching the “Walden eCampus” in late July 2007. This new system represents a significant investment and effort from the University in improving its technology tools for the benefit of students and faculty.

The Walden eCampus will offer a number of services and benefits, including

• Enhanced email access with upgraded space (1Gb per faculty member), reliability, access, and performance
• University and program announcements
• Walden communities, such as the Center for Teaching and Learning, and the Center for Student Success
• Personal file storage and other productivity tools like calendars and directories
• Access to the PeerNet profile database, a custom-designed networking tool

All Walden faculty members will receive a new Walden email account in a new format (firstname.lastname@waldenu.edu) that will replace their current Walden email address. These new Walden email accounts will eliminate numerous problems and greatly improve our ability to communicate with the Walden community. Faculty will access eCampus (and their new email) through the “Faculty Portal,” another significant improvement that will launch soon (communications on Faculty Portal will go out shortly.) This way we are moving to consolidate access to the majority of faculty systems under one single login (one user ID and one password.)

With the launch of the Walden eCampus, all students will receive a Walden University email account formatted “firstname.lastname@waldenu.edu.” The account will activate as soon as the student accepts the admission offer. The new email accounts will be accessible via the student’s PSP (no need for any additional ID or password) The PSP will show a link to the eCampus where the email resides.

Why is Walden email changing?
In 2005, we stopped assigning Walden email accounts to new students, because as the university grew the existing mail system (WIN) could not handle the increased load. This system is not functioning well for faculty members, evidenced by the weekend’s hardware failure, and why it is being replaced.

With the availability of the new email system that will support all faculty and students we will be able to make our communications and interactions more consistent. As the new system becomes operational all Walden University communications to students and faculty will be sent to the new, official Walden email addresses only. Faculty (as well as all other student facing teams) will only use official Walden email addresses when interacting with students via electronic mail.

How will we transition?

• Emails sent to current Walden email addresses in WIN (the old system) will be automatically forwarded to the new address in eCampus until Sept. 30th, 2007.
  
• The current email system (WIN) will be kept operational until September 30th so users can extract or forward data from it. It will be the responsibility of each user to extract any pertinent data by forwarding individual messages from the legacy WebEdge system. The 14,000 Walden email accounts currently in existence will not be migrated. The bulk of mail sent to these accounts is spam, and most of these accounts were unchecked in the last 60 days.
  
• A one-time process to migrate a limited selection of messages will be offered. Users will be able to select a set of messages to be migrated, and those will be automatically transferred to eCampus between August 13th and August 20th. Instructions for this process will be posted in the Faculty Portal by August 1st.
  
• For those faculty members using “WebEdge” that are interested in migrating their address books please send an email requesting so to “ecampus@laureate-inc.com.”

What Stays the Same

• All existing Walden "role accounts" (e.g., bursar@waldenu.edu) will continue to receive mail, as usual.
  
• Walden email addresses in Lotus Notes (for staff from Enrollment, Registrar, Residencies, etc.) will continue to receive email as always, but will send from a new address (e.g., bursar@waldenu.edu or jane.advisor@waldenu.edu will now become bursar@mail.waldenu.edu or jane.advisor@mail.waldenu.edu.) This will require no change in how any department conducts business; mail will simply be sent from a new address.

What is changing?

• The new email supports POP3 to external clients for faculty (not for students.) Users who POP3 their email into a personal desktop client will be required to change the POP3 settings, and once they do that will be able to continue to use their email reader. Instructions will be posted on the Faculty Portal.
• The new email does NOT support IMAP. Current IMAP users will be required to change to POP3. Please refer to the same instructions for POP3 mentioned above.
• All Walden systems (e.g., Onyx, D3, and Colleague) will be updated to reflect the new, official Walden email address as the “primary” email address. A second email address will be kept on record for referencing purposes only. As indicated before all communications will be sent to official Walden email addresses.
• All Walden staff and faculty who currently use Lotus Notes and have “@waldenu” addresses will send/receive email from their new address: “@mail.waldenu.edu.”
• If you use a Laureate Education computer and Lotus notes, your email will now have "mail" in it (e.g. John.Doe@mail.waldenu.edu). If you use your own computer and email application, your email won't have “mail” in it (e.g., Jane.Doe@waldenu.edu).

The eCampus Communities

• The Center for Student Success offers student collaborative tools for academic advising, academic residencies, augmented Writing Center information, and more
• The Center for Teaching and Learning offers professional development tips, guides, and resources; self-paced tutorials; and faculty collaboration spaces
• General university administration communities include access to academic calendar information, university announcements, president and provost communications, .rss news feeds, and more

The communities will have access to a variety of collaborative tools, including shared documents and images, and online networking profile tools.

We have created a tutorial site (within tutorials.waldenu.edu) to assist students and faculty. The site contains detailed walk-throughs of the new Walden online email system. LiveMeetings will also be scheduled to train faculty and staff, as well as in-person training sessions for Frontline, Centralized Student Support, and Academic Advising.

Please rest assured that every effort is being made to minimize strain on the various teams within Walden, and we appreciate your understanding during the transition. Further details will be sent shortly along with exhaustive reference guides and step-by-step instructions designed to help make the change as easy as possible.

In the meantime, if you have any questions, please contact Dan Lawrence at daniel.lawrence@laureate-inc.com.

 

For questions about the Walden Tutorials site, please email webteam@laureate-inc.com