Important Information Regarding Alumni Email Accounts
Recently, we sent out an email to all alumni, letting you all know that Google has adopted a NEW policy for the free educational version of their Gsuite software in order to conserve server space. In the past, we were able to provide all alumni with an asburyseminary.edu email address as well as a linked Google Drive and office software, all hosted on their educational servers for free.
Google has informed all educational GSuite users that beginning in January 2022, they will no longer permit anyone other than students, faculty, and staff of institutions of higher education to utilize the free educational version of their software. As a result, we may no longer extend our license for Gmail and Gsuite to our our alumni.
The only way to continue providing this email address and Gsuite software to our alumni is to switch to their paid business version, which would cost the seminary approximately $850k per year to host all alumni. Even if we only hosted the alumni who actually use these resources currently, at $6 per account, it would cost approximately $240k per year, with costs increasing with every graduating class. Therefore, in December, we will begin shutting down all alumni Google accounts in compliance with Google’s changing terms of service.
What Does All This Mean?
- If you are a current student, staff, or faculty member, this change will NOT affect your account. Current students will not be affected until they stop taking classes.
- If you volunteer with the seminary or work under a stipend that is NOT paid under payroll (you do not fill out time on Paycom), please contact our office for instructions, as you will need to fill out some paperwork in order to keep your account.
- This change will only affect the email that ends in asburyseminary.edu and the Google Drive/Google Calendar associated with that email account, not any personal email you may maintain that ends in gmail.com or any other ending.
- All data contained in your asburyseminary.edu email and its linked Google Drive or Google Calendar will be LOST PERMANENTLY. We recommend that you access your account and transfer your data to a new one as soon as possible to prevent losing important information. We will NOT be able to retrieve it after Google disables your account. We have included details below to help you do this.
- This change will NOT affect your Asbury Seminary login account or your ability to access all your other alumni resources.
- If you wish to continue receiving the Alumni Link and other important communications from us regarding your alumni benefits or new resources for ministry and continuing educational opportunities, please update your contact information with us on a regular basis. We also help connect long lost classmates from time to time, so make sure we can get in touch with you!
- This change will alter the way you access our library resources. Please email us for details on how to access those resources!
Helpful Information for Transferring Your Data
If you’re looking for a quick way of making sure you get all the data connected with your seminary G-Suites profile (Gmail, Drive, Calendar, etc), then we recommend using Google Takeout to export everything at once. This data can then be imported into a personal G-Suites account or something else altogether. This would ensure nothing gets lost during this transition even if you don’t need it right away. Be sure to login with your Asbury Seminary Gmail account prior to running Takeout to ensure you are backing up the correct account. (in the event you have multiple Gmail profiles)
CONTACT US
As always, if you have any questions or need assistance with anything related to your alma mater, we are happy to act as y0ur liason with the offices and departments here. Feel free to email alumni@asburyseminary.edu, and we are happy to help. This is the fastest way to get help from our office, but you can also contact us at 859-858-2511 or by calling the Wilmore Campus switchboard and asking for the Alumni Office.
Thanks so much for this information we will do the needful before December.
Blessings