About the program

The College of Engineering is a participant in the Microsoft Developers Network Academic Alliance (MSDNAA) program. Through MSDNAA, several of Microsoft's software programs and compilers are made available to College of Engineering students. You will be allowed to download a single installation of each of these programs for free. Software obtained through the MSDNAA program is for instructional and non-commercial research use ONLY. Only Microsoft software listed on the MSDNAA download site is available through this program.

Essentially what this means is that you can use it in your academic classes and on projects related directly to your classes or research. You cannot use any software obtained through this program with the intention of making money off the end product (i.e. you can't sell the programs you have written using this software). Also, only Engineering and Computer Science students, or non-Engineering/CS students currenlty enrolled in Engineering or Computer Science courses using this software are eligible.

Visual Studio .NET (Visual Basic, Visual C++, Visual C#, and Visual J++), Visio, Project, and Access are all part of this agreement as are several other programs. You can find a complete description of the program and the software included by going to www.msdnaa.net.

How this works

At the start of each semester, Engineering Computing Services (ECS) will register all incoming Engineering students with MSNDAA using your Engineering email address. You don't have to do anything to participate. Once you are registered, you will receive an email from e-academy.com with instructions on downloading install images and getting license keys. Each license key is unique, will only unlock one product, and can only be used once. As an additional security feature, once an individual receives a license key for a given product, they will not be issued a second key for the same product. In other words, you are limited to one installation of any given product. Do not share your license keys. This is fully explained in the "Frequently Asked Questions" section of the MSDNAA download site which you can access after you have logged in.

If you are a returning student (sophomore, junior, senior), you will have previously been registered with MSDNAA and will not automatically receive a notice. To obtain a new copy of your login information go to the CoE MSDNAA e-Academy site and enter your Engineering email address as your user ID. Your login information will be resent.