Best way to keep a gmail based non-gmail email address

When I graduated university, they gave me, and others, graduate email addresses with the domain @institution.edu. The catch is, it's entirely based within Gmail, despite having a unique domain. I want to keep using this address, as it's tied heavily to my professional career, but I'm not sure how to decouple it from gmail ecosystem. Would using a client such as emClient be sufficient in breaking Google's monopoly?