Louisiana Tech University has contracted with Google, Inc. to provide their "Google Apps for Education" system to students, faculty and staff. Google Apps provides email, online shared documents and spreadsheets, and calendaring.  Using Google Apps for e-mail provides some advantages over the older Webmail product, including greater storage (7GB (expanding to 25GB soon) versus 500MB), integration with Moodle LMS portal , and  single sign-on.  In addition, while both provide easy access to e-mail from mobile devices such as smart phones, Google Apps provide other services such as calendaring and documents which are also accessible via mobile devices.

Students can choose to use Google Apps as their primary e-mail interface. New students should use Google Apps as their e-mail to avoid a future transition.  Faculty and staff should continue to use their traditional university e-mail accounts as GMail has not been approved for university business use.  Faculty/Staff accounts can access other available Google Apps services.  No configuration is required to utilize the non e-mail parts of Google Apps.