Email for Life (EFL)

All Ohio Wesleyan alumni are eligible for an Alumni Email for Life (EFL) account, with all the features and benefits of OWU BishopApps.

You become an alumni when the Registrar’s office updates your academic records to show that you’ve graduated. That typically happens by the end of the week after Commencement. Also, if you’re taking summer classes, or enrolled in a course with a summer travel component, your records may not be updated to show that you’re a graduate until later in the summer, after grades for these courses have been processed.

Graduating seniors will lose access to MyOWU and Self-Service on the morning after the Registrar changes their latest enrollment status to Graduated. This also applies to any student who is given a terminal enrollment status, such as withdrawn or de-registered.

New graduates and other seniors should continue to have access to BishopNet and BishopApps until their account is removed or until they convert their accounts to EFL, whichever comes first. Accounts are removed on a monthly cycle. Removal warnings are sent on the third Tuesday of the month with a projected grace period of about two weeks. Recent graduates will be exempted from the removal cycle for 2 full cycles after graduation.

Typical new graduate timeline:

  • In May, the night after your records are updated to show that you’ve graduated, you will lose access to MyOWU and Self-Service. Your affiliation to OWU will change from current student to graduate and alumni. You will still have access to BishopNet and BishopApps.
  • In the third week of May, we’ll send you an email inviting you to convert your account to Alumni Email For Life (EFL). After converting to EFL, you may continue to use your OWU BishopApps account for as long as you wish. You will cease to have access to OWU systems that are only for students, including MyOWU, Self-Service, Blackboard, and BishopNet.
  • In the third week of July, if you haven’t yet converted your account to EFL, you’ll get an email from Information Services <webadmin@owu.edu> saying that you may no longer be eligible for your student email account. The message will include the link to convert your account to EFL.
  • If you receive an account removal warning, you’ll have a grace period of about two weeks before the account is locked for removal. During the grace period, you can either convert your account to EFL or contact us if your access to the student account should be extended for any reason.
  • If you still haven’t converted your account to EFL at the end of the grace period, the account will be locked for removal, and you will lose access to BishopApps, BishopNet, and all of our other systems. The student account will eventually be removed, and you will lose all of your data in OWU BishopApps.
  • Note that if you’re staying on campus past the two week grace period, and if Residential Life has contacted Information Services to let us know, then you’ll receive an appropriate extension to your grace period and will continue to have access to BishopNet and BishopApps.

Please click the expandable links below for more information.

Forwarding mail addressed to a former student address

If you are a recent graduate converting your account and would like to continue receiving emails sent to your student address,  select the option to create an alias when following the steps to convert.  Forwarding is only available for 2 months, so please notify your contacts of your new email address.

Sign-Up for New Graduates

If your academic record has been updated to show that you’ve graduated, and if you already have an OWU BishopMail account, you can convert it to EFL right now from this Web page. Log in with your current OWU account username (without the “@owu.edu”) and password. Then follow the instructions on that page.

What Happens When you Convert to EFL

Upon graduation, you’ll have the opportunity to convert your existing student email account to Alumni Email For Life (EFL). The conversion takes place under your control via a special web page. During conversion, the account username and email address will change (to something like ‘jane.doe.2015’ and ‘jane.doe.2015@owu.edu’, respectively) and you’ll assign the account a new password and secret Q&A combination.

You’ll also have the option of creating a special mail “alias” that will temporarily forward mail sent to your old address so that it arrives at the new address. This is to give you time to notify your correspondents of the change of address.

Everything else about the account will remain the same. All of your existing email, contacts, calendar entries, docs, sites, and settings will still be there, so you won’t have to move your stuff. You’ll still be able to send from and receive to the account, just like before. It will still be hosted by Google.

Sign-Up for Alumni Without A Current Account

If you do not have an OWU email account, contact us at helpdesk@owu.edu or (740)368-3120 to get started, then follow these steps:

  1. To set up your EFL account, first click to read the EFL Terms of Service.
  2. Then click here to go to the password reset page: I have read and agree to the EFL Terms of Service.
    • We will need to have an alternate, non-OWU email address on file for you.
  3. You will be prompted for your alternate email address. Just type that in and click the Subit Request button. A password reset link will then be sent to that address.
  4. Follow the link to create a new account password.
  5. Once your EFL account is set up and you have your password, you may begin using your BishopMail.

Note: Once you activate your EFL account, it will automatically become your primary email address in the OWU system. It is not necessary to contact Alumni Records to update this information.

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