PhD Students at the McCombs School of Business work as both employees and students.
To meet the needs of their status as TAs and RAs, beginning in Fall 2015 all PhD students will be automatically given Office 365 mailboxes just as other McCombs Faculty and Staff are. These mailboxes will be configured with the normal employee email address in the format: [firstname].[lastname]@mccombs.utexas.edu.
In addition to this, PhD students will still be assigned student lifetime email addresses in the format [firstname].[lastname]@phd.mccombs.utexas.edu. These addresses were previously assigned to McCombs Exchange student mailboxes. However, from this point forward these lifetime email address will be associated with the students' UTmail accounts.
More general information about UTmail and McCombs student email can be found at McCombs Student Email Addresses in UTmail.
Employee Mailboxes
The purpose of the employee mailboxes is for the PhD students to conduct business in their capacity as TAs and RAs. PhD students will show up to other faculty and staff in the McCombs global address list with these addresses. Just as with other Faculty and Staff, these mailboxes will be required to view the McCombs global addresses list, see the free/busy time of other McCombs employees, and reserve resources such as conference rooms. Just as with other Faculty and Staff, these mailboxes will be deleted when PhD students are no longer affiliated with the school as TAs or RAs. In most cases this will happen upon graduation. However, in cases where PhD students continue to assist in research after graduation these accounts will continue to persist as long as is needed. The [firstname].[lastname]@mccombs.utexas.edu addresses associated with those accounts will also cease to function when the mailbox is deleted.
Student Mailboxes
Lifetime student mailboxes are intended as a benefit to all UT students. All current and graduated students are eligible to claim one. They are purely optional, but all students are encouraged to get one. Addresses in the format [firstname].[lastname]@phd.mccombs.utexas.edu are reserved for all PhD students, but they will only work when a student claims a UTmail account, since these addresses need to be attached to a UTmail account. UTmail accounts and associated phd.mccombs.utexas.edu addresses are lifetime benefits for graduated students. The will only be deleted in cases where a student leaves the university without graduating.
Forwarding
University policy does not permit employees to forward email to non-UT mailboxes. Students are permitted to forward email wherever they wish. As a result, the McCombs school of business does not offer automatic forwarding for PhD employee mailboxes. Individual PhD students are capable of configuring forwarding rules within their own mailboxes, but PhD students who do so should not forward their mail to anything other than another university mailbox, such as UTmail.
Students who wish to forward student email from their UTmail account should visit McCombs Student Email Addresses in UTmail (Aliases) for more information.