Students and faculty will have the option to use “gwu.edu” as the domain name for their e-mail accounts starting Monday.

“gwis2.circ.gwu.edu is the Internet address of the computer and we are going to implement gwu.edu as an alternate Internet address or alias,” said J. Bradley Reese, director of the Computer Information and Resource Center.

The new address will be “convenient and easy for the typing challenged,” Reese said. He said the change is a response to numerous requests from the GW community.

“I think that it’s a great idea,” said sophomore Dawn Overby. “Now my family and friends will be able to remember my e-mail address and not complain that it’s too long.”

Students still will have to go through the gwis2 system to access e-mail, but e-mail sent to both domain names will appear. Reese said the longer domain name still will be active and no plan exists to remove it.

Reese said people will be informed of the new domain name through an announcement on gwis2’s announcement section. An e-mail also was sent to some students last week.

Several different e-mail services are used on campus – and Reese said in the future everyone will to be able to use the gwu.edu domain as well as the one they currently use.

He said the new address shouldn’t affect services provided by CIRC, but that CIRC personnel are prepared for any trouble spots.

List serves, addresses for mailing lists, might present a problem, Reese said.

Reese said confusion might arise if the computer doesn’t recognize the new address. CIRC would be able to fix such a snag, Reese said.

Students who use outside programs to receive e-mail, like Microsoft Internet Explorer or Netscape, will need to make adjustments to the setup.

Reese said CIRC is preparing for the future of e-mail and computer services at GW.

“We are looking into providing a World Wide Web-based interface to e-mail, so any member of the University community could have a graphical interface to their e-mail from any graphical Web browser, such as Netscape, anywhere in the world, including computer labs on campus,” he said. “We are evaluating several products that provide this kind of service.”