STU@SEMO.EDU ENGAGE IN E-MAIL; NEARLY 4,000 SOUTHEAST MISSOURI STATE UNIVERSITY STUDENTS USE ELECTRONIC MAIL

An e-mail letter is displayed on a computer screen.

E-mail is the paperless, stampless way to write letters.

Forget about stamps and envelopes. Paul Broyles doesn't need them.

Broyles is one of nearly 4,000 Southeast students who use the electronic mail or e-mail as it is called.

"I use it all the time," said Broyles as he read his electronic mail on a computer screen in the computer lab at Kent Library.

The Cape Girardeau man, who has a business degree and is pursuing a computer science degree, regularly communicates with a Southern Illinois University professor and church friend via e-mail.

He also has written e-mail letters to a friend in Germany.

Without e-mail, Broyles said he would have to use the regular mail or telephone.

It is cheaper to use the e-mail. There is no cost to Southeast students to send e-mail.

Southeast students can send e-mail for free. The university picks up the equipment costs.

Kevin Mangels of Friedheim has been communicating by e-mail since he arrived at Southeast as a freshman last fall.

"I have two friends at (the University of Missouri) Rolla. I e-mail them every so often," he said.

Mangels said e-mail is more convenient than calling on the phone or putting pen to paper.

All across the nation, college students have rediscovered letter writing.

"There is every evidence that college students all over the United States are constantly communicating with each other over e-mail," said Dr. Dennis Holt, assistant provost and the man in charge of the high-tech changes occurring on the Southeast campus.

Computers have changed the face of higher education. "You can run whole courses using e-mail and electronic conferencing," he said.

Electronic conferencing amounts to an electronic bulletin board.

The World Wide Web computer network allows users to call up a wealth of information almost instantly rather than spend hours searching for it in a library.

There are even courses offered on the Internet.

Some Southeast faculty accept homework assignments from students by e-mail.

"If you have students working on a set of assignments, you can ask them to do it by e-mail," Holt said.

Nationwide, the percentage of college courses using e-mail climbed from 8 to 20 percent from 1994 to 1995.

Syracuse University now offers a master's degree program in information management entirely on the Internet.

Holt envisions that high school students and teachers in the future will be able to seek answers to academic questions by contacting Southeast faculty by e-mail.

"It is kind of quick and easy access," he said.

"I very much believe in the potential of these technologies to improve education," he said.

Some departments, offices and colleges at Southeast use e-mail extensively.

"I use it all the time," said Art Wallhausen, assistant to the president at Southeast.

When Southeast began looking at awarding honorary degrees, Wallhausen sent an e-mail message to about 100 members of the National Association of Presidential Assistants in Higher Education to see what other schools had done.

Wallhausen uses e-mail and the Internet for both personal and business reasons.

On a recent Sunday, he and his family were watching raccoons in their back yard.

They wanted to know more about the habits of raccoons. "I went to look for the encyclopedia and the R volume was missing.

"So I came up to the university, typed raccoon in the (computer network) search engine and was instantly presented with a couple hundred sites where I could find information about raccoons," he recalled.

"The information we got came from the Nebraska Conservation Department computer," Wallhausen said. "It is just amazing what you can do instantly."

Dr. SueAnn Strom, vice president of student affairs, communicates with her daughter in Israel by e-mail about once a week.

Strom received an e-mail letter from her daughter, Mara, describing the situation in Israel after Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated.

With a press of a button, Mara Strom sent the same letter to her father in Kansas City, her brother at the University of Missouri-Columbia, and several friends scattered across the United States.

SueAnn Strom said e-mail offers a quick and easy way to contact student affairs officials across the country.

"This way I can put a question out there and get a lot of answers," she said.

Strom said a lot of employers now list jobs via e-mail.

Loren Rullman, University Center director, and his staff rely on e-mail to communicate with each other.

"We are a really busy department and we are all over the place," he said.

Rullman said e-mail is an efficient way to communicate. "It is also more informal," he said.