Alumni Email Service
Unlock your exclusive @ucsd.edu email! As a UC San Diego alumnus, take advantage of this special benefit with a professional email address tied to your alma mater.
About the Service
The UC San Diego Alumni Email Service provides a free email account that is tied to your university affiliation. With this account, you'll enjoy some of the same features and functionality as a standard Gmail account, including:
- Send and receive capabilities
- 5GB of storage for your emails and attachments
- A professional email address with the @ucsd.edu domain
This service will be available to alumni soon. Update your contact information to stay up to date with new perks and programs.
Contact
Contact the Alumni office at alumni@ucsd.edu for additional information.
Service Eligibility
Recent graduates with student emails accounts being closed
Alumni who graduated in 2023 or after will be able to use the email address assigned when they were students. They will receive an invitation to join the Alumni Email Service and convert from their student account. Any Google account data they wish to retain must be removed prior to their student account’s decommissioning. Data will no longer exist once that process is completed.
A graduate with any other active campus affiliation (e.g., Postdoc, employee, department guest) does not qualify for the Alumni Email Service until that other affiliation ends.
Graduates whose student email accounts are inactive and closed
Alumni whose student email accounts are already decommissioned may submit the Alumni Relations form to request account creation. IT Services will assign an email address that is as close to first initial, last name as they are able and in keeping with the existing campus naming convention. This is necessary due to the reassignment of deprovisioned email addresses prior to 2017.
Graduates who did not have an email address
Alumni who did not previously have a campus student email account may submit the Alumni Relations form to request account creation. IT Services will assign an email address that is as close to first initial, last name as they are able and in keeping with the existing campus naming convention. This is necessary due to the reassignment of deprovisioned email addresses prior to 2017.
What is Alumni Email Service?
Alumni Email Service will include a Gmail-hosted mailbox with 5GB of storage. This program a significant improvement compared to prior UC San Diego alumni email programs since it offers send and receive capabilities. All previous iterations used aliases or email forwarding and allowed only receive capabilities. And it is entirely free!
What if I had a previous email forwarding service?
Alumni currently using the email forwarding service may sign up for the Alumni Email Service via the form link IT provides.
When does the Alumni Email Service become available?
Alumni Email Service will be in a pilot phase through 2024 and become available to all who opt-in no later than early January 2025. Those interested in joining the pilot can email alumni@ucsd.edu requesting to participate.
What other features does this service include?
While the Gmail mailbox also comes with 5GB of storage, it does not include the other Google Workspace features and is not guaranteed forever.
What else should I know about this service?
As with all other UC San Diego email accounts, those in the Alumni Email Service are bound by University of California and UC San Diego electronic communications and acceptable use policies. As such, they are subject to shut down to abuse at any time without warning.
- Users are only permitted to access the IT Resources that they have been explicitly authorized to access and only for the purposes for which access authorization was granted.
- Users granted access to an IT Resource must use it responsibly and comply with applicable laws and policies; access may not be shared.
- Incidental personal use must not burden the University with noticeable incremental costs, nor expose the University to appreciable risks.
- Evidence of illegal activities or policy violations will be turned over to the appropriate authorities.
- Violation of law or policy may result in revocation of access, suspension of accounts, disciplinary actions, and prosecution.
What if I graduated this year?
New graduates should not request the Alumni Email Service. Rather, they will receive an invitation.
What if I have an active @ucsd.edu account due to another campus affiliation?
A graduate who has another active campus affiliation (e.g., graduate student, Postdoc, employee, department sponsored guest) does not qualify for the Alumni Email Service until that other affiliation ends.
I had an email address when I was a student but I graduated before 2017. Why can’t I have the same student email address now?
Due to the practice of reassigning email addresses prior to 2017, alumni from that year and before are not assured to receive their prior student email address. IT will assign an email address that is as close to first initial, last name as they are able and in keeping with the existing campus naming convention.
Alumni Email Service History
The Alumni “Email for Life” program began approximately 15 years ago as a service that provided alumni with an @alumni.ucsd.edu email address that forwarded to an external email account. Having gone through multiple iterations, its first and most major change started with the graduating class of 2017. It was at this time that it became a Chancellor initiative prompting the revamp of the program to an email forwarding service.
Recent email security policy changes by Google and Microsoft concerning anti-spoofing protocols have impacted the functionality of email forwarding services like “Email for Life.” These changes impact not only UC San Diego but also numerous other organizations, signaling a widespread reevaluation of alumni email services across the higher education sector. As of December of 2023, the program as it stands is inactive but available to all those who opted in prior to this date.