University-Wide Electronic
Communication Guidelines

Overview

Many departments would like to communicate with targeted populations of students and/or faculty and staff for a variety of reasons. The options for doing this include:

• Temple Today
• TUportal
• Targeted E-Mail Announcements via Computer Services
• Targeted E-Mail Announcements via Listserv Lists

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Temple Today

A Temple Today announcement is sent to over 60,000 university accounts and has the widest audience reach of any list at the university. Temple Today is Temple University's daily e-mail to keep staff, faculty, students, alumni and friends of the university abreast of Temple news, announcements and events.

All university email accounts are automatically subscribed to Temple Today initially. As a member of the Temple community, you are encouraged to read these announcements to stay informed. Subscription is voluntary. You can at any time remove yourself from, or add yourself, to the list at any time.

Temple Today delivers a sampling of events selected from the TUcalendar, as well as announcements and top stories from the Office of News Communications.

For information about including your university-sponsored event in the TUcalendar (and considered for inclusion in Temple Today on the day of the event), go to the Temple Today web site.

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TUportal

The TUportal web site allows for two types of announcements:

• Front Page announcements, which apply to the entire Temple community and appear on the portal login page
  
  
• Targeted announcements, which apply to one of the following audiences (students, faculty, staff [employees and faculty], applicants, or student workers) and appear by clicking on the "MyPortal" tab.

For information about requesting an announcement, go to the Request a Portal Announcement web site.

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Targeted E-Mail Announcements via Computer Services

Computer Services often receives requests to send out announcements to the university through the use of the university listserv system. Please be aware of the following if your department is interested in requesting this service:

• Targeted mailings by Computer Services to large segments of student and employee populations are restricted to urgent university business announcements.
  
  
• Computer Services will not send out announcements regarding individual department offerings, such as events or symposiums, new course offerings, etc.
  
  
• Targeted mailings must receive approval from the Office of the Vice President for Computer Services.
  

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Targeted E-Mail Announcements via Listserv Lists

One way to effectively reach a large group of individuals is by the use of a listserv list. By sending one message to an address that corresponds to a list of e-mail addresses, mail can be quickly dispersed. Three kinds of lists can be created: official, unofficial, and voluntary.

• Official Lists

An official list is one where a particular office has Vice Presidential/Provost level permission to distribute messages to various populations across the university. Individuals cannot remove themselves from official lists.

A department may request to have an official listserv list created; however, the Vice President for Computer Services must approve the initial creation of any official list. The department in charge of the list is responsible for keeping the list updated with @temple.edu addresses.

All requests to contact various populations of faculty outside of one's school/college are directed to Jodi Levine Laufgraben in the Provost's office. The Provost's Office determines whether the announcement is appropriate for mass distribution to faculty on one of its official lists.

• Unofficial Lists

An unofficial list is one that a Dean's office or other high-level administrative unit can create. A student or employee can opt out of an unofficial list. Therefore, e-mail from an unofficial list should provide instructions at the end of the message explaining how to unsubscribe from the list.

• Voluntary Lists

A voluntary list is one to which an individual initiates membership. Anyone can subscribe to a list at Temple that is of interest to them by going to http://listserv.temple.edu/archives. Some lists are configured to restrict membership, so not all the lists at this location are available for open subscription. A voluntary list can be created for an employee or student organization at the Computer Services Help Desk. The owner of such a list must be an @temple.edu address.

Anyone using a University listserv list (or any other method used to disperse mass mailings) must adhere to the Student Electronic Information (E-mail) Policy and Temple University Computer Usage Policy, as well as to the rules set forth in the Employee Manual, Section 14.9, Voicemail, E-Mail, Listservs and Discussion Forums. Messages must also be FERPA, HIPPA and GLBA compliant.

All listserv lists must be owned by a current Temple university employee or student with an @temple.edu e-mail address. If a list is found that no longer has an owner with a current faculty, staff, or student @temple.edu e-mail address, the list will be removed.

Any list that remains inactive for more than a year will be removed from the system.

Attachments should not be sent out to large groups. Instead the attachments should be located on a web site and referenced by the email message to be sent out. (This rule applies to any large mailing.)

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