The Daily Plan-it / Dean of Students Blog, Columbia J-school

An important tip for anyone using CubMail:
http://deanstudents.blogsome.com/2006/06/14/tech-fixing-your-e-mail-identity/

From Sreenath Sreenivasan, Dean of Students
Re: E-mail lists and subject lines

The high volume of e-mail messages we send out means that at some point in the fall, some students will start tuning out some messages and miss important items. This is particularly important now that we have several cohorts in the building. (As the #1 e-mail sender in the school, I believe I am especially qualified to speak to the issues of people tuning out particular senders.)

It is crucial that we carefully follow the guidelines below in order to have clarity in our subject lines and our communications. We deliberately control the number of people who are allowed to post to these lists, because we have seen problems in the past with inappropriate messages going out to large groups of students. If you would like to be a sender of information on any of these lists and aren’t set up already to do so, please write to me explaining why you need to be on this. Or if you have a message to be sent out, just send that along and we will send it out.

First, a reminder of the various lists we have for students.

[J_school] = the entire universe of students - including all the full-time MS,
MA, PT students, Knight-Bagehots, PhDs, etc.

[PTclass] = all current PT students, no matter when they graduate.

[MAclass] = all current MA students.

[PhD] = all PhD students.

[INTL] = all current international students.

-

SUBJECT LINES: Here are the subject line headers we should be using.

ACADEMICS: this covers registration, how to apply for classes, changes in
instructors, change in class meeting times, etc.

LOST/FOUND: sent by Robert MacDonald only, along with a reminder that we have a
Lost & Found box in the Mailroom; use sparingly.

CAREERS: for all job-related info; posted by Ernest Sotomayor and his team.

MEMO: for major memos only - eg, Spring Letter from David Klatell or
registration information; use sparingly.

EVENT: this signals a J-School event — anything from lectures to panels to the
holiday party to the First Amendment Breakfasts to special speakers to
Breakfast with the Deans to the duPont events. If it’s a specific speaker,
please list the affiliation in the subject line and the date, if possible.

CAMPUS EVENT: for events not sponsored by the J-School but that we think our
students might be interested in such as the park clean up, university blood
drive, programs at SIPA, SAJA events, etc.

NY EVENT: for events outside the campus; use sparingly.

LIBRARY: for library related items; posted by Deborah Wassertzug.

SPJ: for SPJ items; posted by Prof. June Cross, the faculty adviser and Akisa Omulepu, class president and Rubina Madan, pulblicity director.

FINANCIAL AID: for scholarship and financial aid info; posted by Robert
MacDonald.

LEDE: for issues of The Lede; posted by Barbara Fasciani

REQUEST: for reqests of various kinds — volunteers, book donations, etc.

OFFER: for offers of tickets, unscheduled classes, media tours, etc.

ARTICLE: for articles that students should read; use sparingly.

GRADUATION: this covers all commencement related topics and memos; sent by
Melanie Huff & Barbara Fasciani.

There may be other key words that we decide we need and we can add those later.
There will still be times when you send a message and think none of these key
words are appropriate. In those cases, just put in your own subject.

If your message is intended only for the M.S. students and is going out to the
main [J_School] list, please put a ” - MS students” at the end of the subject
line.

When you type in the subject using key words, it should look like this:

ACADEMICS: Law Exam - MS students
or
EVENT: Lecture by David Remnick, The New Yorker, on Tues, 9/19

Thanks for your cooperation on this.

Sreenath Sreenivasan
Dean of Students

From Prof. Sree Sreenivasan, Dean of Students

Dear Students:

With this message, we are launching the [j_school] list for the academic
year. This is the announcements-only list which the deans and other
administrators will be using as the PRIMARY communications tool for all
M.S. (full-time and current part-time), M.A., PhD and fellows at the
school. All e-mail will come with [j_school] and as many details as
possible in the subject line. You are expected to read through any
messages sent through this list.

Your are also expected to keep checking the DOS Blog several times a week:
http://deanstudents.blogsome.com

The school is closed until Wednesday, July 5, but after that, please
expect to see several announcements about the Fall semester.

Meanwhile, please see these other communications resources.

OFFICIAL CLASS OF 2007 STUDENT DIRECTORY:
This is what will be printed and distributed to Faculty, Staff and
students. Please make sure your information is on this directory by
filling in the form here:
http://www.magnoliapresspublications.com/columbia

CLASS YAHOOGROUP
Jschool07: Informal class Yahoogroup, run by Aaron Cahall.
To sign up, send e-mail to jschool07-subscribe@yahoogroups.com
Or go to http://groups.yahoo.com/group/jschool07/ and click on “Join This
Group”
Aaron’s e-mail: aaroncahall@hotmail.com

CLASS FACEBOOK.COM COMMUNITY
“The Ten Month Beat”: Informal Facebook.com community for the M.S.
Class of 2007 (and part-time Class of 2008), run by Rubina Madan.
To sign up, join the Columbia Facebook network at
http://www.thefacebook.com. Then visit the community at
http://columbia.facebook.com/group.php?gid=2204425495. You can use
the group to introduce yourself, view other students’ profiles and
post on the discussion board.
Got questions? E-mail Rubina at rm2507@columbia.edu.

CLASS BLOG
The Tabloid: Class of 2007 group blog, run by David Ressel, PT student and
J-school rep to Columbia Senate
http://the-tabloid.blogspot.com/
David’s e-mail: dlr2113@columbia.edu

Looking forward to seeing you all soon.

HOW TO FIX YOUR E-MAIL IDENTITY
One of the more frustrating things with our e-mail system is that Cubmail doesn’t automatically put your name in the “from” lines. So faculty and administrators end up getting e-mail from, say,
“srt2879@columbia.edu” and we have no idea who it is (especially when there’s no signature file in the message itself). Worse, some e-mail programs treat such senders as spammers and dump the message automatically into junk-mail folders. There’s a one-time, two-minute solution, and it is explained below. Please take time to do this.

If you try this and it doesn’t work, please e-mail consultant@columbia.edu explaining what you did. Also, while the problem is being fixed, please write your name and affiiliation in the subject lines of messages you send to DOS, faculty, etc. eg, “Marie Jones - M.S. print - with question about housing.”

Lauch CUBMAIL at https://cubmail.cc.columbia.edu

Go to OPTIONS

Go to PERSONAL INFORMATION

Go to EDIT YOUR IDENTITIES

Choose DEFAULT IDENTITY

Add your full name there, and any other details you wish.

[You can have a different “reply-to” address, add auto signatures, etc].

You need to do this only if you plan to use CUBMAIL (which almost all
students do at some point).

And please don’t forget to routinely sign your messages with your full
name in the body of the message - and to include a phone number, too.

Thanks and good luck with your e-mail (or if you prefer, email).

- Dean Sreenivasan

Dear Students:

In order to have SPJ and extracurricular items get to you in a timely
manner, you will soon start seeing e-mail messages on this, the [j_school]
school list for all students, from SPJ Class President, Rebecca Castillo.
This marks the first time that a student has been given permission to post
to the list (otherwise, only certain administrators were able to do so).
It’s a test run and we will decide about extending it to future presidents
depending on how this goes.

Rebecca is aware of the need for judicious use of the list and will likely
average one message a week or so. I am encouraging her and other students
who have less pressing items to share (including summer housing
requests/shares) to use the Ten Month Beat blog, run by Ed Krayewski
at http://thetenmonthbeat.blogspot.com/ or to send
items to the DOS blog via dos@jrn.columbia.edu

A reminder from an August 2005 DOS blog posting intended for admin folks
about the subject lines you should look for
http://deanstudents.blogsome.com/2005/08/22/memo-e-mail-procedures-subject-lines/
-

SUBJECT LINES:
Here are the subject line headers we should be using.

SPJ: for SPJ items; posted by Prof. June Cross, faculty adviser [and now,
2006 class president, Rebecca Castillo].

ACADEMICS: this covers registration, how to apply for classes, changes in
instructors, change in class meeting times, etc.

LOST/FOUND: sent by Kathy Palagonia only, along with a reminder that we
have a Lost & Found box in the Mailroom; use sparingly.

CAREERS: for all job-related info; posted by Ernest Sotomayor or Julie
Hartenstein.

GRADUATION: this covers all commencement related topics and memos; sent by
Melanie Huff & Barbara Fasciani.

MEMO: for major memos only - eg, Spring Letter from David Klatell or
registration information; use sparingly.

EVENT: this signals a J-School event — anything from lectures to panels
to the holiday party to the First Amendment Breakfasts to special speakers
to Breakfast with the Deans to the duPont events. If it’s a specific
speaker, please list the affiliation in the subject line and the date, if
possible.

CAMPUS EVENT: for events not sponsored by the J-School but that we think
our students might be interested in such as the park clean up, university
blood drive, programs at SIPA, SAJA events, etc.

CAMPUS EVENT: for events outside the school, on campus.

NY EVENT: for events outside the campus; use sparingly.

LIBRARY: for library related items; posted by Deborah Wassertzug.

FIN. AID: for scholarship and financial aid info; posted by Robert
MacDonald and Kathy Palagonia.

LEDE: for issues of The Lede; posted by Barbara

REQUEST: for reqests of various kinds — volunteers, book donations, etc.

OFFER: for offers of tickets, unscheduled classes, media tours, etc.

- Dean Sreenivasan

From Dean Sreenivasan

Dear Students:

From now on, we would like all of you to use dos@jrn.columbia.edu when
communicating with the Dean of Students office. That way, both Dean Huff and
I will get copies of the message and whoever needs to handle it will do so.
Of course, if you are writing about something unofficial or want to
communicate with just one of us, please use ss221 or mgh2.

Meanwhile, I am going to be on the road Wednesday night through Tuesday,
Jan. 10. Please keep using the DOS e-mail address and stop by to see Dean
Huff if you’d like to come up for a visit.