Email Overview

@ UCSD Mail Accounts

E-mail is the normal means of communication among the School of Medicine's students, faculty, and administration and its use is subject to University of California regulations, described at: http://www.ucsd.edu/email.html.

Students are accountable for information in e-mail messages that have been sent to them by UCSD faculty and staff. It is therefore expected that every student will check his or her e-mail regularly and frequently - daily is highly recommended when courses are in session, but at least every 48 hours (unless on vacation).  It is recognized that students who are off-campus at very remote locations may not have reliable internet access, but they are encouraged to take advantage of any opportunities they may have to access email.

Every medical student is provided an email account on the UCSD mail server. This account is accessible from any of the publicly available computers in the school and from any computer with internet access and a World Wide Web browser - read the Email Program Options section below for more information.

Students may arrange for email to be forwarded from their UCSD account to another email address - please refer to the Email Forwarding page of this site for details.

Usernames & Passwords

Your email and your other UCSD SOM accounts are coordinated by all issuing offices, to ensure you have a single username and password across all systems. Once issued, the username is changable only under rare circumstances, but you can (and should) change your password frequently using the MedEd Global Password Change utility - currently being updated to comply with the Campus Systems' new protocols (should be available in Fall Quarter).

Usernames vs. Mailnames

The terms username and mailname are often confused as are email account and email address. Refer to the Email Terminology Helpsheet for more clarification.

Email Program Options

EdCom provides a FREE web-based email system called MedEd WebMail (for the Classes of 2009, 2010 & 2011) and MedEd Student Exchange WebOutlook (for the Incoming Class of 2012) and recommends that students use this system as their primary email option. Using either web-based email system, the student can keep both incoming and outgoing messages on the server. This can be handy when students are accessing files while at school or studying away from home.

If students choose to install an email client on their home computer, it should be considered as a secondary method of email communications. Email clients we suggest for this purpose:

• Eudora "Light" - a FREE client package that can be downloaded at http://www.eudora.com/download  
• Microsoft Outlook - a client package Included in the Microsoft Office retail package.
• Microsoft Entourage - a client page similar to Outlook for the Mac users
• Apple Mail - available on all Macs running OS X
• Mozilla Thunderbird
• Windows Mail - available on all PCs running Windows Vista

Laptop users have additional factors to take into account and should read the note at the bottom of the Email Client Configuration HelpSheet before deciding on whether to use the MedEd WebMail program alone or in combination with a client package.