New system notifies campus in emergency

From Staff Reports

Santa Clara is launching a new system today that will allow the school to alert the entire campus during an emergency.

The system, called "SCU Campus Alert," is able to send time-sensitive alerts through e-mail, phone and text messages to thousands of people within minutes, said Jeanne Rosenberger, vice provost for student life.

Students, faculty and staff can sign into the alert system starting today through eCampus. There will be a new link for "SCU Campus Alert" on eCampus, which will let users list a preferred e-mail and phone number for notification and if they would like to receive a text message alert.

The university purchased the system, Connect-Ed, from the NTI Group in early February and began discussing how to implement the idea for a notification system in the fall.

The university originally planned to start using the notification system in fall 2007, but with last week's Virginia Tech shootings in mind, Santa Clara moved forward with testing the system so it would be operational starting today, Rosenberger said.

Campus Safety and Information Technology both dedicated staff this past week to put the system in place.

"In light of the recent events, we've stepped up our efforts," Rosenbger said.

Santa Clara is one of hundreds of schools implementing a notification system for emergencies after Virginia Tech administrators did not notify students for more than two hours after the first shooting occurred. At Penn State, where a text message system was implemented in August, more than 6,200 students signed up to receive alerts in the last week, USA Today reported.

Rosenberger said she hopes setting up this system now will encourage students, faculty and staff to opt-in to receiving the alerts.

"We hope to strike while the iron is hot, so students, faculty and staff want to get in and not be missed," Rosenberger said. "Obviously, we want as much info in the database as possible."

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