Personalize your student portal e-mail

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Your cmich.edu e-mail address does not say anything about who you are as a person.

It is formulaic – almost mathematical – and it’s a pain to dictate over the phone.

That’s why students and faculty members can very easily set up e-mail aliases, or a more customized e-mail account name of their choosing.

“It’s not something necessarily that a lot of students use, but not a lot of them realize it,” said Kole Taylor, a McBain junior and Help Desk employee.

“It’s something more faculty members use.”

Both the alias and the traditional cmich.edu e-mail will work after an alias is set up, and the second “@cmich.edu” email address will still deliver e-mail to the user’s current inbox, Taylor said.

To set up an alias, Taylor said, visit myaccount.cmich.edu and sign in using a current global id. Then click “set your e-mail alias”.

While the system suggests that students use the format “firstname.middleinitial.lastname@cmich.edu,” it will accept just about anything that has one period in it. Most students and faculty members use some version of their first and last names, but others get more creative.

“Pool.monkey,” “sliverking,” “quick.chick” and “jjsweety” are just some of the e-mail addresses that can be found in the CMU 2008-2009 directory.

E-mail aliases that are not allowed include those that could be confused with a state or federal agency, campus department or another person – and those that are obscene or offensive.

The system will catch offensive words with a built-in filter and immediately reject anything that is not appropriate, Taylor said.

Complaints are also checked out if something gets past the filter.

“If someone said ‘this is inappropriate,’ it would be caught. But no one really monitors them,” Taylor said.

studentlife@cm-life.com