By: Avry Zow & M.K. Bryant

The University of Montevallo has introduced a new initiative that allows students and faculty to request alternate email addresses based on their preferred names.

Originally, once students, employees or alumni were in the system, their names stayed the same regardless of marriage or change in name identity.

Joe Walsh, Chief Information Officer at the University of Montevallo; Courtesy: M.K. Bryant

UM Chief Information Officer Joe Walsh explained that the process of allowing name changing for emails took about a year to complete. He cited the central challenge as technical and logistical issues posed by Banner, the site where students register themselves into the university’s system.

“That process of figuring out how to not let the system overwrite someone’s name and figuring out how we could identify all email aliases versus regular email addresses and merge all those together so they can work together took a little bit of time,” said Walsh. “But the I.T. staff here are very sharp and came up with some creative solutions to do that.”

The process for students to register their names is different from employees. The registrar will approve students, and human resources will approve employees.

However, Walsh informs that there are protocols when trying to register a new alias.

“For instance, I couldn’t be coolguy@montevallo.edu. It would have to be joe.walsh or joseph.walsh or whatever I prefer as a name. It would have to be a name in the system,” said Walsh.

Walsh says he hopes that the alternate email requests will be taken advantage of by people who are stuck with email addresses that do not make sense or do not accurately reflect their preferred name.

“It’s an easy process and we’re happy to do it and I’m glad we can do it. We’ve had quite a few people here on campus over the years who have been stuck with e-mail addresses that were not reflective of who they were. So this fixes that and so we’re very happy to do it,” said Walsh.

Students and employees who are interested in starting the process should go to Procedures and Forms under the Information Services & Technology section on the UM website and click Alternate Email Address.