Relaying Clear Messaging to a Non-Residential Campus During Emergencies
Overview
Location: Mesa, Arizona
Campus Type: Urban
Enrollment: 20,424
Faculty: 1,160
Campus Size: 98 acres
Building Count: 50
Along with the threats urban campuses face, Mesa Community College has to handle challenges unique to non-residential campuses. Thousands of students, faculty and visitors daily frequent the campus, making it difficult for public safety to track each person accurately. After two armed intruder incidents, Mesa Community College decided it was time to search for a better notification system.
Challenge
Steve Corich, Director of Public Safety at Mesa Community College, states, “When I took the job back in 2002, I was in charge of looking at our campus emergency preparedness issues. Early on, we discovered we lacked a timely way to notify our college population in an emergency. We looked at several possibilities and went with a VoIP notification system. When Alertus contacted us and demonstrated their system, we were impressed with the technology. We had numerous areas where the VoIP notification wasn’t effective, and Alertus fits our goals of creating a solid, redundant notification system.”
Mesa Community College is a non-residential community college, meaning students do not live on campus. Since many students and faculty are coming on and off the campus every day, keeping track of everyone at Mesa Community College is difficult.
“I think a significant notification challenge for us is training students and staff about our emergency systems. Since we’re a two-year college, we have students that could be here for a year, and then they’re gone,” Corich said. The Alertus System is easy to navigate for students and faculty and quickly teaches them how to respond to the System’s warnings during an emergency.
Armed Intruder Incidents
We had two incidents before Alertus and the VoIP notifications where an armed individual came onto campus. We encountered a couple of problems. With only a few VoIP notification phones at the time, we could only notify a small portion of the campus. Without clear instructions, people didn’t know what to do.
If we had the Alertus system at the time, the word would’ve dispersed quicker. We realized we couldn’t solely count on one notification system, especially when we didn’t have full campus coverage. The only way to prevent a situation like that from escalating is to provide the entire campus with clear directions during the event.
Solution
Compared to the other systems we were looking at, the Alertus System fits our budget best. With Alertus, you can reach everyone, including the disabled and the hard of hearing. When activated, the Alert Beacon provides visual and audible notifications, including strobe lights, text-to-speech technology, and an LCD. We installed the Alert Beacons in locations where we can’t reach individuals using VoIP alerts — large meeting rooms, gyms, dance rooms, all floors of our library, etc. We improved emergency notification coverage on our campus.
We also utilize Alertus’ digital signage override by connecting our media server to the Alertus System. Integrating Alertus into our campus-wide television system allows us to override the current TV programming and reach more people on campus during an emergency. It’s added enormous value to what we already had on campus.
A Notification System That’s Easy to Use
The Alertus System is easy to use and takes less than ten minutes to demonstrate. People are usually unaware of Alertus, but they understand Mesa Community College’s safety measures after the Alertus System’s demonstration.
Conclusion
The most significant benefit of Alertus for a campus community is peace of mind. Giving your employees and your students the feeling that you’re taking their safety seriously and showing them that you have devices, processes, and procedures to protect them raises the perception around the campus that it’s a safer environment.
Knowing we have these tools at our fingertips and that our trained employees can notify the entire campus in just a matter of minutes gives me confidence as the Director of Public Safety. I haven’t seen any other systems capable of what Alertus can do.