Spring Arbor University is moving away from providing lifetime email accounts to alumni, but official communication or a migration path has not been started and is only in the discussion phase. In the past, this is a service that SAU offered, but we are slowly moving away from providing this service for a couple of reasons.
- Email is free through a number of providers, and widely available now through Google, Microsoft, and other providers. This was not the case ten years ago.
- Most people already have a preferred email account before coming to SAU, and it is easier to maintain communication with an alumnus through an email account that is actually being used by that alumnus.
- Due to licensing changes from Microsoft, we can longer provide this type of licensing to alumni. We are in an undefined grace period at this time, and Microsoft could force us to stop providing this type of account with limited warning.
- Security best practice says that we should not provide email accounts with our domain name (arbor.edu) to people that are not current staff, faculty, or student.
- Few other universities allow alumni to keep accounts when they graduate, and most require the email address to be changed when it is migrated for security reasons.
Spring Arbor University email is only intended for academic use, and should not be connected to any personal websites, social media, or online shopping sites. By connecting your SAU email to a social media site, you are accepting the risk that you could permanently lose access to that site if you lose access to your SAU email or your SAU email address is changed. Most emails from sites like this have a large warning banner added to the email reminding you that this is the case.
While a timeline has not been determined yet, it is likely that alumni will lose access to their SAU email between 1 and 3 months of when they graduate. To stay in compliance with Microsoft, access must be removed before the next "full" academic year begins.