Three weeks after Google began surveying college students' satisfaction with their school e-mail systems, a Penn State official said the university has engaged in discussions with the company.

Kevin Morooney, vice provost of information technology, said Penn State has "been in gentle dialogue with Google for a fairly long time now about a lot of aspects about their business."

After receiving negative feedback regarding Webmail 2, Penn State implemented Webmail Lite, Morooney said. Since then, student reaction has been "exclusively very positive," he said.

However, about 57 percent of Penn State students surveyed by Google said they are still "very dissatisfied" with the school's current e-mail system, citing slow service and frequent periods of unavailability.

Through the online survey, Google is trying to discover how to improve current school e-mail systems and also how current users of Gmail, Google's e-mail service, feel about what Google has to offer, said Jeff Keltner, an enterprise specialist.

According to Google.com, the survey has had more than 4,000 responses nationally so far.

Google Apps Education Edition offers colleges communication tools such as Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar and mobile alerts as well as publishing tools such as documents and spreadsheets, Keltner said.

Keltner said the services are offered to schools free of charge and students and faculty can keep their existing e-mail addresses.

Arizona State University, Lakehead University in Canada and schools in Japan have already introduced the Google application to their students, and Northwestern Univer-

sity is in the process of adopting it, Keltner said.

Morooney said Penn State is approached on a regular basis about outsourcing student e-mail and the school explores each opportunity to see what they have to offer.

"[Google] is a fascinating company and does interesting things in big ways. They offer compelling services and people are starting to use them," he said.

Morooney said while studies have shown Penn State students do like to use other services such as Google, Yahoo and AOL, they are still largely using the Penn State WebMail accounts.

Lauren Bello (freshman-division of undergraduate studies) said she is satisfied with Penn State WebMail but thought the idea of having all applications on one Web site would be more convenient.

Paul Schubert (sophomore-bio-behavioral health) said he probably wouldn't use the additional Google applications and thought WebMail was working well.

"It would be another hassle. I'd rather keep what I already know," Schubert said.

Jackie Generotti (freshman-mechanical engineering) said she prefers to use her Microsoft Outlook e-mail account because of certain features, including separate folders for different e-mails.

She said she also enjoys e-mail forwarding from all of her e-mail addresses and the ability to preview messages without having to read the entire message, which makes it easier to delete.

"I think it's easier to use, and I sometimes have trouble logging into WebMail ... I don't have to deal with that with Outlook," Generotti said.

Although Generotti said she would stay with her current e-mail service, she said she has downloaded some of Google's services and is pleased with them.

Regarding improvements to WebMail, Morooney said the process is never complete and all products are constantly being upgraded.