UW-Stout's official form of communication is via email, sent to a user's Stout-issued email account. It is imperative that students check their email regularly for billing notices, course and enrollment information, as well as notices relating to safety, governance, and other communications about the Stout community. It is the responsibility of all campus users to understand and monitor their email. Failing to check email can have serious negative repercussions, including fines and holds, and as such the following practices are recommended.

Check email frequently

Daily is best when enrolled in a class, but even when classes are not in session important messages regarding upcoming semesters, due, or past-due activities may still be sent. Checking your email at least weekly throughout the year is highly recommended.

Monitor Junk and Clutter

UW-Stout utilizes Office365, from Microsoft, as our email provider. Two features of Office365 are Junk and Clutter. Users are responsible to check Junk and Clutter. Junk mail processing is a generally-applied service that is intended to remove inappropriate or dangerous email from a user's inbox. Clutter is user-specific, trained by the end user to move less-important email to the side for later viewing. UW-Stout's ability to prevent campus emails from being moved to Junk and Clutter folders is limited and thus it is the responsibility of the user to monitor both Junk and Clutter. More information on both Junk and Clutter can be found in the Tech Desk Knowledgebase.

"Train" Clutter

Opening and reading messages from Stout senders "trains" Clutter that those messages are valuable and belong in the Inbox. Drag messages that go to Clutter to your Inbox to train it that those messages are important. Clutter is a nice feature, meant to allow you to read less-imperative messages at your convenience, but training Clutter not to flag Stout senders at all is best.