Integrated e-mail system crucial, says college bursar

By Drew Hampton, News Writing Student

While the college’s new integrated
e-mail and Mine Online service was intended primarily as a convenience to students, OCCC Bursar Brandi Henson anticipates it also will be highly useful for her office to communicate critical financial information to students who might not otherwise be reachable.

“If we send you a statement (by regular mail) and it comes back to us as undeliverable, now we can look you up and find your student e-mail account,” she said.

Henson said her office can then send an e-mail to the student, saying the U.S. mail came back to the college and letting the student know the next payment is due.

Before the e-mail system was in place, Henson said, the Bursar’s Office was forced to hang on to undeliverable statements and financial aid checks in the hope that the student would come in and ask why it had never been delivered by the postal service.

“We need to get word out to students that they’ve got these e-mail accounts and that they should be using them,” Henson said. “They are receiving communications from the college in those accounts, no doubt.”

Henson said that while the system behind these messages is currently incapable of listing how much is due and when for each student, the Bursar’s Office is working to convert their records into the system and hopefully change this in the future.

Henson said she also anticipates communication to students will eventually switch entirely from paper to electronic form.

Making the switch to paperless communication would save the college a great deal of money in both postage and printing costs, she said.

Henson also noted the improved security of the college’s e-mail accounts versus traditional mail.

If a letter from the college is delivered to the wrong address, she said, there is the potential for identity theft to occur.

In contrast, Henson said, “that e-mail is only going into your account… and you control that account.”

A brief survey of students, however, suggests that four out of five have not checked their e-mail accounts since the switch to the new system.

“I checked the old e-mail,” said Cleoretta Cochran. “With the new e-mail, though, I couldn’t figure out how to get in. It’s confusing.”

Students can access their e-mail by visiting the college website at www.occc.edu and clicking on the “Student and Adjunct E-mail” tab.

The new system uses a student’s first name, middle initial, and last name separated by periods as the username.

The default password is set as the last six digits of the user’s Social Security number.

If a student doesn’t have access to a computer at home, many areas on campus — most notably, the library and the area by the main entrance — have been set up for student Internet use.