Student Policies to Review Upon Matriculation

I. Requirements Upon Matriculation

University policy requires students are responsible for knowing all program requirements of their master's programs when they matriculate. Upon matriculation, programs: 

1. Provide each student a current graduate handbook (the PFE program uses this online program manual), specifying the program's requirements and policies governing successful degree completion.  Students must fully read through the online program manual before starting their program. 

2. Assign each student an adviser. 

3. Provide students with the University dates and deadlines page. Students are required to become become familiar with this page. Our program recommends bookmarking this page. 

II. Using Email as Official Student Communication

The University provides students with an email account upon matriculation to the institution. This account is free of charge and remains available at minimum while  the student is enrolled  or is active in their degree program.

The University-assigned student email account is the University's official means of communication with all students. Students are responsible for all official information sent to their University-assigned email account. If a student chooses to forward messages to another account, the student is still responsible for all information, including attachments.

Frequently Asked Questions Regarding Using Email as Official Student Communication

1. Are other forms of communication (e.g., social media, texting, or websites) considered official communications?
   While the content found in these forms of communication should match information included in emails sent to students, the email is considered the official information.

2. Can faculty or staff use an alternative email address for students?
   In order to be certain that private student information is secure, any messages that contain private student data need to be sent to the student’s umn.edu email account, which meets the security and authentication standards. Similarly, staff and faculty should use their umn.edu accounts for business purposes.

3. May students forward their umn.edu email to another email address?
   Yes. However, students are still responsible for the official communications sent to their University email account and should be aware that email forwarding could cause information to be missed due to spam filtering or other forwarding issues.