An E-Mail System That Works With the help of some "guinea pigs," the new campus system is up and running. The time: last spring. The mission of the College’s Office of Information Technology: to replace several different, cumbersome, and outmoded e-mail systems for faculty and staff with one new, fast, powerful system. The debate: The staff has already decided to use a group of in-house pilot testers before making the system available to everyone. But who should these pilot testers be? Should OIT ask for help from only the computer-savvy? The staff decides that only computer tolerance is required, plus boatloads of patience, a good sense of humor, and a willingness to help the College. Certainly, they’ll include sophisticated users such as Park Distinguished Chair in Communications Christopher Harper, whose research area is digital communication, but a sprinkling of distinctly nonsavvy computer users will also be welcome. That might be where self-deprecating vice president for business and administrative affairs Tom Salm comes in. Salm claims he was chosen to represent the "thick, very low- end user. I’m sure they figured if I could get it, anyone could." OIT staffers won’t say if that was why they chose Salm, but he, along with Harper and about 75 others, was asked to help out. Once the alpha testers’ cooperation was secured, the staff of Academic Computing and Client Services, which is part of OIT, got them up on the new system (which, unlike the clunky earlier systems, conforms to Internet standards) and created an extensive support infrastructure, with phone numbers, Web pages, and an on-line discussion list "so people could post problems and solutions," explains ACCS systems programmer David Rutherford. Then they watched to see what problems would emerge. Questions arose. And ACCS staff’s explanations sometimes were too technical. Rutherford says he tried to be the one to answer each question, but usually, by the time he got to it, another tester had already answered it. That was encouraging — it meant people were figuring out the system themselves. After about five months, the kinks were out. The new e-mail system was ready for all faculty and staff to use, and last summer they were invited to move over to the new system. Because the process of "migration" isn’t completely seamless, ACCS was concerned that faculty and staff, out of sheer inertia, would resist the move. But a funny thing happened. The guinea-pig alpha testers became promoters of the new system. "That wasn’t our original goal," says OIT director Ed Fuller, "but we were pleasantly surprised." It turned out that many faculty and staff were more than ready to go to the new system because they’d heard it was a lot easier to use, especially in sending and receiving attachments. Almost all faculty and staff campus users are now on the new e-mail system, with the remaining few slated to move over by February. Will having everyone on the same system mean that Ithaca College will never have to upgrade again? Not a chance. "We’ve been studying e-mail for literally years," says Fuller. "We are constantly upgrading. In the technology field, the one thing you can be certain of is change. If you don't like what you’re doing, just wait a minute."