The Gchat bells are ringing.

Vanderbilt is partnering with Google to offer its undergraduate students Gmail, a press release reported on Thursday. The service will be launched in early summer.

Many students have already taken the initiative to forward their VUmail to Gmail, and their recommendation of the service together with Vanderbilt Student Government were key in leading to the collaboration with Google.

"Students have expressed great enthusiasm for this e-mail option. The Gmail interface is one with which they are familiar, and they appreciate the increase in storage capacity as well," Mark Bandas, associate provost and dean of students, said in the report.

“And the numbers of students who already use GMail to forward their mail shows how user-friendly it is,” VSG President Joseph Williams said. “No more annoying quotas. List-serv e-mails can now be clustered by conversation. It's a great step.”

Under the partnership, students will use their existing VUnetID to access the service and will maintain their vanderbilt.edu e-mail address. There will be no disruption to their e-mail as they migrate from the existing VUmail service, and students who choose Gmail will have a month to migrate their VUmail archives if they wish.

In addition to Gmail’s expanded storage capacity, students will have access to all of the cutting-edge Google Apps for Education, which includes Google Calendar, Google Talk, Google Chat, Google Sites Web site builder and Google Docs, which Williams said “can be shared for working on a group project together.”

After implementing the Google services for undergraduates, the university plans to explore expanding the program to include graduate students, faculty and staff.

“If the system works smoothly, as I'm sure it will, it will be expanded to faculty, who also currently have WebMail as their default,” Williams said, “and will become a great communication tool through all levels of the university.”