Can I keep my email address after I graduate? (Alumni Mail)

Owned by Marc Miller
Last updated: Mar 15, 2024 by Marc Miller
5 min read

What the College of Engineering Alumni Mail Service is...

The UCSB College of Engineering (CoE) provides alumni email forwarding to its graduating students.

This service is available only upon REQUEST.

Important Note

CoE alumni are eligible if and only if they have received degrees and whose accounts have not been expired longer than 30 days.

The Alumni Mail Forwarding only applies to College of Engineering email address only.

The @ucsb.edu and @umail.ucsb.edu email addresses are not part of the Alumni Mail Forwarding offering at this time.

If you are coming back post graduation in a new role, please see section on transferring accounts at the bottom.

Please read this information carefully and completely.

If you are an alumnus of the College of Engineering at UCSB, we will provide email forwarding for email messages addressed to you at your current username@engineering.ucsb.edu address.

Forwarding for departmental aliases (IE: @cs.ucsb.edu) is only set up if the user requests it. Forwarding for departmental aliases is in lieu of your username@engineering.ucsb.edu address.

This means you will have only one address available for your use:

username@engineering.ucsb.edu or username@departmental_alias.ucsb.edu

The above addresses must forward to a single destination.

You must provide us with the email address where you would like to have your email forwarded. It should be a permanent non-UCSB email address.

Note

This service is for email forwarding only.

You will not be able to send under the alumni address.

All other CoE services (Shell Access, personal Websites, software paid for by CoE, etc...) will be expired and no longer accessible once forwarding is in place.

Please do not ask for alumni-forwarding until you are finished using your COE account.

You will no longer be able to access your COE account when forwarding starts!

Please remove all files and emails you want to keep before requesting alumni-forwarding.

CoE and Connect are two different account systems, even if all your email is going through one portal. It is possible for Connect accounts to continue functioning post CoE expiration if you have aliases from other departments such a umail. We warn people their connect account MAY expire when CoE aliases are removed because we do not have access to when said other aliases expire. Connect accounts close when the last alias is removed, and if CoE is the last alias to be removed, it will trigger your Connect account to close as well. Please see Common Account Expiration Questions and Answers for answers to common questions and concerns.


All requests and inquires concerning alumni forwarding should be sent to following:

alumni-forwarding@engineering.ucsb.edu

The request MUST be submitted via your @engineering.ucsb.edu/@ucsb.edu or @umail.ucsb.edu or @ucsb.edu email address to verify you are the proper requestor.

The email must include the following:

  • Your Engineering Account User Name
  • Which Discipline you have graduated from
  • What email address you would like the mail forwarded to
  • Acknowledgment that you have read this FAQ and you have already removed all emails/files from your CoE account that you wish to keep.

After you have sent your email request, you will get a reply when forwarding is completed. If you would like to modify your destination address, just send mail to the same address, from the forwarding email address, letting us know.

Mail that has already been delivered locally will not be forwarded; only new incoming messages will be forwarded.

This forwarding supersedes any .forward file you may have in place.

When your account expires, the alumni forwarding will continue to function. If your degree is not granted or you are not a alumni, the forwarding will be canceled.

As forwarding is done via UCSB Google Connect email servers, forwarding abides by all UCSB Google Connect terms, conditions and policies.

Google reserves the right to cancel forwarding without compensation as per the above line.

If you have any questions, please send mail to help@engineering.ucsb.edu and we will be happy to assist you.

For all other alumni...

The most we can offer to you is Gauchomail which is offered through UC Santa Barbara Alumni at this link

https://www.alumni.ucsb.edu/about/benefits/gauchomail

For further information on Gauchomail, you will need to contact ucsbalum@ucsbalum.com.


Please note that Google connect accounts for students remain active until 13 months after graduation or 13 months after UCSBnetID expiration or till the last alias is removed, whichever comes first. For staff, researchers and affiliates, its 7 days after UCSBnetID expiration or the last alias is removed, whichever comes first. For most students, the condition that closes their Google connect account will most likely will be "last alias removed" and said "last alias" will be their Umail alias as most other accounts, including CoE accounts, expire 30 days after UCSBnetID expiration. To continue using connect.ucsb.edu in the year between UCSBnetID expiration and Umail expiration, you must set up multi factor authentication via 2sv as DUO will no longer work after your UCSBnetID expiration. https://connect.ucsb.edu/training-support/connect-user-guides/google-workspace-email/enabling-googles-2-step-verification

We highly recommend setting up a vacation message on your old Google Connect account as soon as possible, telling people to email you at a permanent non-UCSB email or Gauchomail directly, that way people have time to get used to emailing the new address before your old one closes.

Please also note that 1) umail aliases per their policy cannot be forwarded 2) Umail is not managed by the College of Engineering and all help requests for Umail should be directed to https://www.umail.ucsb.edu/help

Please also note that Gauchomail is considered a "UCSB email", you can have a Gauchomail account and a forward from an engineering or departmental alias to a permanent non-UCSB email, forwarding between UCSB emails however is likely to run you afoul of UCSB Google Connect's terms and conditions and result in the eventual cancellation of Alumni Forwarding. Alumni forwarding is just forwarding that lasts after UCSBnetID expiration and Connect expiration, not a full account. Gauchomail is a full account.

To transfer emails to a non-UCSB google account or to transition between a student account and an account for affiliate/post-doc/researcher/staff/faculty/etc...

General overview when leaving UCSB: https://connect.ucsb.edu/accounts/connect-departmental-administrators/support-desk-guide-employees-and-students-leaving-ucsb

General order of operations for people who are returning to UCSB

  1. Home department hires/offers you a position post graduation
  2. Home department creates UCSBnetID through either affiliate portal (affiliate/post-doc/researcher) or UCpath payroll (staff/faculty). You will mostly likely get a new PERM or Employee number.
    1. Note that anything created in affiliate portal will have a UCSBnetID that is only good for 1 year and will need to be renewed annually.
    2. UCpath is tied to employment or contract and UCSBnetIDs created here will have a rolling expiration date that is constantly extended every time you get paid.
    3. For UCSBnetIDs, ECI can only see active, expired, or 7 day countdown to expiration. Please talk to your home department if you want to know your exact expiration date.
  3. Home department emails ECI about status change. e.g. department: "please extend Joe Gaucho's CoE expiration to 202#-##-## and change status to ####"
  4. ECI either modifies existing CoE account or deletes old CoE account and sends you an invite to create a new one
    1. If you are returning with a new UCSBnetID, we generally will have to create a new CoE account for you as well. In which case we will use the email transfer utility described in the above link as well as backing up your CoE home directory to a zipped archive so it can be easily moved to your new account. Please note Connect and CoE are two different account systems so you have two different locations where data can be stored. In general we are only informed of UCSBnetID or name changes by the main campus when you ask that we be informed. Name listed under CoE is generally not visible to anyone other than yourself. Only username and email is visible to other people. The name next to your CoE alias in connect is actually set in connect not in your CoE account.
    2. If you are returning, but keeping your same username, what you want is an extension and modification, not something completely new. We can change name, perm or employee id, department and role affiliation fairly easily.