With NC State’s primary communication route is through student email accounts, the university is currently working on ways to continue communication through student emails even after graduation.

Sarah Noell, the associate director of the Office of Information Technology for Outreach, Communications and Consulting, said that students who graduate get to keep their student emails and that students only lose their accounts if they do not graduate from the university.

“Right now, all students who graduate and that have graduated since 2010, since we [partnered with] Google, they keep their NCSU account after they graduate,” Noell said. “If you don’t graduate from NC State, you lose your account.”

Kiefer Edwards, a fourth-year studying physics, said she feels that having access to her student email account after graduation would be beneficial because of all the programs currently connected to the account.

“A lot of professional networking is already linked to [my student email account],” Edwards said.

Colin Gabbett, a first-year studying architecture, said that it would also be helpful for him to have his student email account after graduation. 

“I think I would definitely want to keep [my email] after graduating,” Gabbett said.

According to Noell, NC State is working on a program that will allow graduated students to change their old student accounts to alumni accounts. 

“Now for security and licensing purposes, we are moving to a system where we will offer graduating students the opportunity to an alumni account” Noell said. 

Stan North Martin, the senior director of the Office of Information Technology for Outreach, Communications and Consulting, said she thinks that by moving graduated students to an alumni account will help them stay connected to the university.

“The goal is for them to still be able to maintain that affiliation with the university, but for them to do it via the alumni.ncsu.edu domain,” Martin said. 

According to Noell, this project has been in the works for a couple years now, and that the university is still figuring out the best way to approach it. 

“We want to get it right when we do it,” Noell said.

For more information on student email accounts visit the Office of Information Technology website.