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Services For UW Alumni & Affiliates

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The UW has been providing computing services to its alumni and former students since 1999. In early 2003, the MyUW.net program was instituted and alumni account services were combined into two packages. Alumni who wish to retain computing accounts must register for MyUW.net services when their student services expire.

Services Are Available

Computing services are available for all eligible alumni and former students, even if they graduated prior to 1999.

Currently, alumni have three service options.

Option 1: Alumni without MyUW.net

Alumni who do not sign up for MyUW.net nonetheless retain a small set of services. These automatic services include retaining your UW email address, which you can use to forward email to another email account. However, the automatic services do not include any disk space for storing email, so email cannot be received at the UW.

View the Services Comparison Chart to see how this option compares with your student services and other service options.

Option 2: MyUW.net Complimentary Services subscription

The Complimentary services package is intended as a small personal email account.

The Complimentary package works with your UW email address, with your MyUW.net email address, or with both. Services include your UW NetID, UW email address, and an Email Inbox & Folders subscription with 2 MB of disk space for storing email. You can access your Complimentary package email via your MyUW Personal Portal and WebPine. Email filtering and junk mail filtering are available.

It is important to note that the Complimentary package does not include a connection to the Internet. If you sign up for Complimentary services, you must have your own alternate Internet access.

View the Services Comparison Chart to see how this option compares with your student services and other service options.

Option 3: MyUW.net Premium Services subscription

The Premium services package is available for current Premium Service customers only. No new customers are being accepted.

The Premium services account works with your UW email address, with your MyUW.net email address, or with both. Services include 1000 MB for storing email, files and Web pages; access to Cicero, a server nearly identical to Dante and Homer, useful for reading email and storing files (FTP); space for your Web pages; and technical support. You can access your Premium package email via your MyUW Personal Portal and WebPine, or with any of the other supported email programs. Email filtering and junk mail filtering are available to Premium services subscribers.

View the Services Comparison Chart to see how this option compares with your student services and other service options.

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Alumni Services Eligibility

You are eligible for alumni computing services if:
  1. You are not enrolled in classes for the current or upcoming academic quarter
    and
  1. You are a UW alumnus; or
  2. You are an inactive or former UW student (even if you have not completed a degree); or
  3. You have ever taken a regular credit-bearing class at the UW, including classes taken through the Washington State Employees Tuition Exemption program

Before signing up for MyUW.net, you must have a UW NetID. If you do not yet have a UW NetID, you should sign up for one before trying to register for MyUW.net services.

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Getting from Student to Alumnus

About student services

The Student Technology Fee funded your computing services while you were a student. Once you stop taking classes and are no longer paying the fee, you aren't eligible for to use student-funded services.

The expiration process

Student services expire about a quarter after your last class ends.

You'll receive a warning message in email two weeks before your services are due to expire. Read it carefully. The warning will tell you exactly what services will expire, and when.

Be sure to sign up for your MyUW.net account and move your email and files to MyUW.net before your student services expire. If you don't, you will lose all the email, files and Web pages stored in your student account.

Note: If your "UW Email Inbox" service is not listed as due to expire it is most likely because you are listed in the UW personnel database as an employee. If your employment will continue for more than a couple months you should consider replacing your student services with both employee services (for your work-related files and correspondence) and alumni services (for your personal files and correspondence). See If You're Also a UW Employee for more information.

Signing up for MyUW.net

You may wish to wait until you receive your expiration warning message to sign up for MyUW.net. At that time, evaluate your computing needs, including your need for an Internet connection, and the disk space in use for your email, files and Web pages. Read over the information on the MyUW.net site, select the package that's best for you, and sign up.

Ideally, you should make sure that your email, files and Web pages will fit within the space offered by the MyUW.net package you selected before starting the sign-up process. Provided that they do, as part of the sign-up process you will be given the option to have your email, files and Web pages moved from your UW email space, Web space, and Dante to the MyUW.net servers.

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If You're Also a UW Employee

People who are both employees and alumni are eligible for both staff and alumni services. You may sign up for MyUW.net services at any time. You may find it handy to have an alumni account for your personal mail, since the University's appropriate use policy states that your employee account is not meant for personal use.

The expiration process

If you are simultaneously a student and a UW employee, you should have two sets of services: one set of student services (including services like Dante, student web pages, student modems, etc) and on set of staff services (including Homer, faculty/staff web pages, employee modems, etc). To make things even more complex, some services, such as your UW Email Inbox & Folders, is shared between your two sets of services. For most accounts your file storage space is also shared, so what you access on Dante is identical to what you access on Homer. Consequently, expirations for students who are also employees can be confusing.

When you get an expiration notice, you should read it carefully to determine what is due to expire and what isn't. Make sure that you open employee services to replace the expiring student services if you need those services to do your job. Sign up for MyUW.net services to replace expiring student services that you need for personal use. If you aren't sure which expiring services can be replaced by what, drop an email to help@u.washington.edu to ask.

Multiple expiration notices

If you are leaving your job about the same time as your student services expire, you may get overlapping expiration notices. The second notice is in followup to the original. Only the services listed as "Services you will keep" in the second notice will actually be retained. All other services listed as "Services that will expire" in either notice will expire.

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Returning to the UW as a MyUW.net Subscriber

If you are a MyUW.net Subscriber and you return to the UW as an employee or student, you may wish to speak with a UW Technology consultant before you re-open your employee or student services. Opening employee or student services may affect your mail delivery, URL forwarding, or other services associated with your MyUW.net account.

Moving files from MyUW.net to UW servers

If you are returning as a student and wish to replace your MyUW.net account with a student account, you must contact a UW Technology consultant if you wish to have any files or email moved from the MyUW.net servers to the student servers. Because MyUW.net is for personal use and UW servers are for business use, we do not anticipate moving files for employees, however, if you think your case is a special situation, you should also contact UW Technology if you are returning as an employee and wish to inquire about moving files from MyUW.net to UW.

Cancelling MyUW.net service
Because MyUW.net is intended for personal use and is separate from your UW account, MyUW.net billing for for-fee services will not stop automatically if you return to the UW as a student or employee. You must contact the MyUW.net billing office (1-866-MYUW-NET) to request cancellation of your account.

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Questions?

Many common questions can be answered by reviewing the following resources:

If these resources do not help you answer your questions, visit the Send a Question to UW Technology form or send email to help@u.washington.edu to contact UW Technology.