Graphic by Bell Jackson By M.K. Bryant, News editor
On Feb. 22, the University of Montevallo announced that UM students and employees can now request alias email addresses based on their legal, preferred or professional names.
Joe Walsh, UM’s chief information officer, explained the steps that were taken to make this happen.
“It’s an idea that’s been going around for a while, where people are inconveniently stuck with an email address that they were assigned originally and not being able to change that,” Walsh said. “There’s some technical issues associated with it that we had to work through, and just some logistical ones on how to manage this and make sure that everyone is being treated fairly and has the opportunity to change their alias. I think it’s probably taken us, from the time that we first started talking about it to the time we implemented it, about a year.”
Walsh explained that the process of requesting an alternate email address is simple. All of the information can be found on the Information Services and Technology section of the school’s website.
“There’s a whole page that talks about it, and there’s a form that people can quickly fill out. It gets submitted, and if it’s a student, the name gets verified by the registrar’s office. If it’s an employee, it gets verified by HR. The process is only a couple of days,” Walsh said.
The only limitation, Walsh explained, is that the name in the alias email address is a name that is recorded in Banner, the school’s student information system.
“We have to follow a certain protocol,” Walsh said. “As long as a preferred name is filed with the registrar’s office or HR as a preferred name, then that can be verified and we can use that name.”
Walsh hopes that students and employees who feel as if their name is not accurately reflected in their UM email address will take advantage of this new process.
M.K. Bryant is a contributing journalist for The Alabamian. She’s majoring in mass communication with a concentration in multimedia journalism, and she’s double-minoring in theatre and creative writing. When she’s not busy watering her plants or writing, M.K. can probably be found wandering around an art museum or a library.
