Electronic communication has become a way of life at Penn State. E-mail has become the major means of communication for our faculty, students and staff. They do little by way of telephone or regular mail. They have found electronic communication to be a lot easier and more effective.
Every student is given an e-mail account without charge.
We want them to learn how to effectively communicate electronically since that is something they will need to do in the future. Vaught said the University's e-mail files have increased tenfold in order of magnitude in the last five years. Over that period, the Center for Academic Computing has been upgrading its equipment and last month installed a new large computer to help handle the load. We continually monitor the number and size of our e- mail files and will add new computers when necessary to handle the growth. At the same time, we continue to address privacy concerns.