CoE Email Lists

Overview
Lists for CoE Faculty
Lists for CoE Staff
Lists for CoE Students
Moderation of the Official, Unofficial, and Announce Lists
Guidelines for Sending Email to the CoE Lists
Changing Your Listserver Membership Options
Other Frequently Asked Questions

Overview

CAEN maintains several email lists for Engineering students, faculty, and staff. The College of Engineering (CoE) Administration sets the policies for generating the membership of these lists and for moderating list content. Based on these policies, the lists are updated and moderated by CAEN, and serviced by the U-M listserver. The goal is to satisfy the need for centrally maintained email lists for the CoE community. The lists are moderated, which may introduce small delays in the distribution of messages sent to these lists. The lists are also organized hierarchically, to better address the mailing needs of the College.

Existing lists maintained by departments are not affected by these lists. Departments should continue to maintain and use their own lists as necessary for departmental communications.

Lists for CoE Faculty

The mailing lists for College of Engineering faculty are comprised of smaller mailing lists that reflect six different categories of faculty appointments, each with an Official and an Unofficial version.

coe-fac-official@umich.edu (and coe-fac-unofficial@umich.edu) includes all six Official (and Unofficial) lists listed below.
- coe-fac-tt-official@umich.edu (and coe-fac-tt-unofficial@umich.edu) includes all tenured and tenure track faculty with standard appointments.
- coe-prs-official@umich.edu (and coe-prs-unofficial@umich.edu) includes all primary research staff faculty with standard appointments.
- coe-prs-suppl-official@umich.edu (and coe-prs-suppl-unofficial@umich.edu) includes primary research staff faculty with non-standard (adjunct and visiting) appointments.
- coe-fac-suppl-official@umich.edu (and coe-fac-suppl-unofficial@umich.edu) includes non-research staff faculty with non-standard (adjunct, visiting, emeritus and tenured faculty with CoE appointment but for whom the CoE is not the tenure home) appointments.
- coe-emeritus-official@umich.edu (and coe-emeritus-unofficial@umich.edu) includes all emeritus faculty.
- coe-fac-additions-official@umich.edu (and coe-fac-additions-unofficial@umich.edu) includes all faculty not included in the categories above.

The Moderation section below discusses the usage of and differences between the Official and Unofficial lists. Questions about the CoE faculty lists should be emailed to coe-email-help@umich.edu.

Lists for CoE Staff

All regular College of Engineering staff are grouped into one mailing list, with an Official and an Unofficial version.

coe-staff-official@umich.edu (and coe-staff-unofficial@umich.edu) includes all staff with an appointment in the College of Engineering.

The Moderation section below discusses the usage of and differences between the Official and Unofficial lists. Questions about the CoE staff lists should be emailed to coe-email-help@umich.edu.

Lists for CoE Students

College of Engineering (CoE) student email list membership is comprised of students who have the CoE designated as their home school in the institutional databases from which we extract their names (i.e., those used by the Office of the Registrar). Note that this will exclude a number of students who are part of a larger Engineering student community but whose home school is not in the CoE, such as LSA Computer Science majors or non-Engineering students in interdisciplinary programs. The CoE lists are not more inclusive as most messages submitted to the lists are only intended for CoE students, especially those relating to services and resources in the College that are restricted to Engineering students.

It is important that the authors of announcements realize the subtleties regarding the membership of these lists, and target both their Engineering and non-Engineering audiences appropriately.

The mailing lists for the CoE students are comprised of two mailing lists, one for undergraduate students and one for graduate students, each with an Official and an Announce version. The graduate students are grouped into one mailing list, with an Official and an Announce version. The undergraduate student mailing lists are also comprised of smaller mailings lists that reflect the four class standings for undergraduate students, each with an Official and an Announce version.

coe-students-official@umich.edu (and coe-students-announce@umich.edu) includes both coe-grad-students-official@umich.edu (or coe-grad-students-announce@umich.edu) and coe-undergrad-students-official@umich.edu (or coe-undergrad-students-announce@umich.edu), as listed below.
- coe-grad-students-official@umich.edu (and coe-grad-students-announce@umich.edu) includes all graduate students.
- coe-undergrad-students-official@umich.edu (and coe-undergrad-students-announce@umich.edu) includes all four Official (and Announce) lists listed below.
  - coe-seniors-official@umich.edu (and coe-seniors-announce@umich.edu) includes all undergraduate students with a senior class standing.
  - coe-juniors-official@umich.edu (and coe-juniors-announce@umich.edu) includes all undergraduate students with a junior class standing.
  - coe-sophomores-official@umich.edu (and coe-sophomores-announce@umich.edu) includes all undergraduate students with a sophomore class standing.
  - coe-freshmen-official@umich.edu (and coe-freshmen-announce@umich.edu) includes all undergraduate students with a freshman class standing.

The Moderation section below discusses the usage of and differences between the Official and Announce lists. Questions about the CoE student lists should be emailed to coe-email-help@umich.edu.

Moderation of the Official, Unofficial, and Announce Lists

Email may be sent to any of the above lists. All of these lists are moderated to enhance their value to the College. Since no one can opt-out of the Official lists, they are moderated appropriately to ensure that messages are either official College announcements, related to official College business, or directly related to every addressee's affiliation with the College. The faculty and staff Unofficial lists are moderated only to prevent viruses, unsolicited junk (spam) email, and messages sent in error. No email sent to any of the faculty and staff Unofficial lists will ever be censored in any way unless the message contains a virus or is unsolicited junk (spam) email. By contrast, the student Announce lists are moderated according to guidelines established by the Office of the Associate Dean for Graduate Education (for the graduate student lists) and the Office of the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education (for the undergraduate student lists). No email sent to any of the lists will ever be modified except as specifically requested by the sender.

If a message is sent to the faculty or staff using an Official list, and it does not meet the criteria above, the sender will be immediately notified along with a reminder that the message may always be sent to the corresponding Unofficial list. If agreement is not reached with the sender about whether the message meets the criteria, the issue will be escalated to an Associate Dean or Dean of the College for resolution. If a message is sent to the students using an Official or Announce list, and it does not meet the established criteria for that list, the sender will be immediately notified. If agreement is not reached with the sender about whether the message meets the criteria, the issue will be escalated to the office of the Associate Dean that oversees the particular student list.

Examples of messages that may be sent to the Official lists include announcements of faculty awards, calls for nominations for College or University appointments or elected offices, and College-wide meeting announcements. Examples of messages that may be sent to the Unofficial lists include seminar announcements, job opportunities, and notices of grant opportunities. Similar messages may also be sent to the Announce lists, in most cases. These examples are for illustration only, and are not inclusive.

Individuals will be able to opt-out, or unsubscribe, from the Unofficial and Announce lists. In addition, one may opt to receive messages sent to the Unofficial or Announce lists as a digest. Messages sent to all of these lists will be archived online as well.

Questions about list moderation should be emailed to coe-email-help@umich.edu.

Guidelines for Sending Email to the CoE Lists

If you intend to send one or more messages to any of the CoE email lists, please consider the following guidelines.

Use your U-M email address as the From address.
The listserver has a server-side rule set in place to only accept messages sent from @umich.edu email addresses. This is done to reduce the amount of spam accepted by the listserver, and to ensure that messages are sent from legitimate and verifiable U-M sources. Using off-campus email accounts can also cause confusion among message recipients. If you would like a different address to receive replies to your message, consider using the Reply-To field, or set the From field to a U-M Online Directory group. Messages off-campus From addresses will be automatically rejected by the listserver.
Allow ample time for your message to be moderated, processed by the listserver for delivery, and read by your audience.
Since these lists are moderated, messages may take up to 24 hours to be delivered to individual mailboxes. If your message is sent less than 24 hours before an event, many recipients may not see your message until after the event has taken place. If your message is sent over a weekend or holiday, or is for an event immediately following a weekend or holiday, please allow extra time for moderation, for processing and delivery, and for people to read their email. Many people do not check their email over weekends and holidays.
Verify all of the information in your message before sending it.
Double-checking your message for errors will prevent confusion among the recipients of your message, and save you the trouble of sending a correction. A common problem in this area is mismatching the day of the week with the date of an event. Also make sure any URLs you link to in your messages are valid. If you must send a correction, we recommend that you highlight the corrected information in some way, and include all necessary information for the event in the correction.
Use specific dates and times in your message.
Since your message may not be read immediately upon delivery, please be sure to use specific dates and times. Referring to an event as taking place "tomorrow" may cause confusion among recipients that do not read your message until the next day.
Keep reminders to a minimum.
Feedback from email users indicates that they would prefer to receive as few reminders as possible. In many cases, sending out an announcement with appropriate lead time is just as effective as sending multiple reminders. If a reminder is required, please leave enough time before the event for the reminder to be moderated, processed, delivered, and read. Also, please add a line explaining to the recipients the purpose of the duplicate message.
Check with your organization first to coordinate announcements.
If there is a coordinator, please have them send the message instead. If not, please ask the organization to designate one. A coordinator will help prevent incomplete, inaccurate, overlapping, and duplicate announcements, as well as providing an official "voice" for your organization or event. Effective coordination is particularly important when multiple offices are co-sponsoring an event.
Include your organizational affiliation
If you are the coordinator of an event and are sending a message on behalf of an organization, the list moderators must be able to verify your affiliation to that organization. The easiest way for moderators to do this is if you explicitly include your organizational affiliation in your message; a simple signature with your name and position will do. This will help list moderators verify your ability to send on behalf of the organization, and will prevent delays in distributing your message.
Address your message to the most specific list(s) available.
In many cases, messages intended for subsets of an email list can be sent just to that subset, and not the entire list. To be respectful of everyone's time, please send your message to smaller lists instead of a larger list, if the smaller lists will reach your entire intended audience. If your intended audience can only be reached using a larger list, please indicate whom the intended audience of your message is either on the Subject line or at the beginning of the message, so others can skip over your message. Email coe-email-help@umich.edu if you are unsure where to send your message. Messages sent to a larger list may be delayed during moderation if a more specific list may be more appropriate.
Do not use the Bcc field for list addresses.
The CoE email lists are moderated, so using the Bcc field to prevent unintentional replies to the entire list is unnecessary. Using the Bcc field can also cause confusion among message recipients, since they may be unsure why they received your message. Messages to a CoE email list without the list address on the To or Cc lines may be delayed or rejected during moderation, and may be incorrectly identified as spam by some anti-spam filters.
Use descriptive Subject lines.
A descriptive Subject line encourages your audience to read your message immediately. Messages with vague or misleading Subject lines may not be read in a timely manner, or may not be read at all by many recipients. Also, Subject lines that are overly dramatic, printed in all caps, or with excessive punctuation may be incorrectly identified as spam by some recipients.
Include all relevant information in the message body
Many recipients will expect to find all relevant information in the body of your message, in spite of the Subject line, attachments, or any previous messages. Dates, times, locations, and special instructions are best kept together in the message body to help prevent confusion. Since earlier messages may be deleted, please include all relevant information in any and all follow-up messages as well. Note: Requests for human study participants must include the Institutional Review Board (IRB) number for the study. Information about the IRB can be found at: http://www.irb.research.umich.edu/
Avoid sending large attachments.
Large attachments take longer to deliver than smaller messages, fill up user mailboxes, and many recipients may not even be able to view the attachment without special software, such as Microsoft Office. By contrast, a simple text message is more likely to be delivered quickly, fit into already-full mailboxes, and be readable by everyone. Consider posting your large file on a web site and including the URL in your message, instead of attaching the file itself.
Refrain from using pictures, colors, unusual fonts, or other special formatting in your message.
Recipients may use email programs that do not display messages the same as you see them. Pictures may be displayed as attachments and not shown in the message body, colors may all be displayed as black, different fonts may be used, centered text may be displayed on the left margin, and table columns may not line up. Please make sure your message will still make sense to someone using an email program that displays your message in one or more of these ways.

Changing Your Listserver Membership Options

There are a variety of ways to use the listserver, besides sending messages to one of the lists. You can view archived messages of the lists, change how you receive list messages, and unsubscribe from unofficial lists.

Determining Your List Membership

It is not always easy to determine your list membership, since the To: field may contain an umbrella email list (such as coe-fac-unofficial) instead of the list you are a member of (such as coe-fac-tt-unofficial). For Unofficial and Announce lists, the bottom of each message contains the name of the list that caused you to receive that message. That is the list you are a member of.

Logging Into the Listserver

In order to view archived mailings, receive message digests, or unsubscribe from an Unofficial or Announce list, you must log in to the listserver. To do so, go to http://listserver.itd.umich.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=list-name, where list-name is the name of the list you are a member of. For instance, if you are a member of coe-fac-tt-unofficial, go to http://listserver.itd.umich.edu/cgi-bin/lyris.pl?enter=coe-fac-tt-unofficial.

You will then need to get your list password. This is not the same as your CAEN or ITCS Kerberos password, and is intially set to a random string. On the login page, scroll down to Did you forget your password? and enter your email address as uniqname@umich.edu. After a minute or two, you will receive an email with a randomly-selected new list password. You may then log into the listserver with your email address and this password. You may change your list password by clicking on Your Settings after logging in. For security reasons, do not set your list password to be the same as your CAEN or ITCS Kerberos password. Your list password is only good for entering that list, and is not used for anything else.

Viewing Archived Messages

If you are a subscribed member of a list, you can view online old messages sent to that list. Simply log in to the listserver, and click Read Messages. Select the message you want to view, and click View Message. If you cannot find the message you are looking for, you can search the archive. You can also sort the archive, and browse it by subject, date, or author. When you are done, close your browser window to log off of the listserver.

Receiving Messages as a Digest

If you are a member of an Unofficial or Announce list, you can receive messages from that list as a digest. Instead of receiving messages as they are sent, you can receive them in a daily digest. To do so, log in to the listserver and click Your Settings. Then, select one of the digest options under Status. There are five options:

mail - This is the default setting. You will receive individual messages, not a daily digest.
digest - You will receive one message per day with all the contributions from that day.
mimedigest - Same as above, but each contribution is included as an attached message.
index - You will receive one message per day with only subject lines of contributions. You must log in to the listserver to view the full text of messages that are of interest to you.
nomail - You will not receive any mail from the list, but you will still remain a subscribed to the list. This option will still allow you to login to the listserver at your leisure and view archived messages.

When you are happy with your selection, click Save, and close your browser window to log off of the listserver.

Unsubscribing From Unofficial and Announce Lists

If you are a member of an Unofficial or Announce list, you can unsubscribe from that list. The easiest way to unsubscribe is to follow the instructions at the bottom of every message you receive from the list. Or, you can log in to the listserver, and click Leave (unsubscribe). Close your browser window to log off of the listserver.

Unsubscribing from an Official list will have no effect.

Access Keys: