Enhancing Emergency Communications to Support Campus Safety
Overview
Location: Bethlehem Township, PA (main campus)
Enrollment: 20,000
Faculty/Staff: 1,000+
Northampton Community College (NCC) is located in eastern Pennsylvania, with campuses in Monroe County, Bethlehem Township, and South Bethlehem. The college serves nearly 20,000 students each year and is the only community college in the state to offer on-campus housing.
We spoke with Scott George, Assistant Facilities Director, who installed the Alertus System alongside the college’s IT group, and Brad Drexler, Executive Director of Marketing & Communications, to learn about their experience with Alertus.
Challenge
The college continually evaluates opportunities to enhance its emergency communications efforts to support campus safety. After learning grant funding was available specifically for emergency notification, NCC campus safety leadership began exploring options for a mass notification system (MNS) to add another communication layer to help protect the college community.
“We learned mass notification systems are different from fire alarm systems and that we could use multiple platforms to send messages out,” said George. “As a publicly funded community college, we drafted an RFP and issued a public bid for an emergency notification system. This brought several vendors to the process, and we ultimately decided to award the RFP to Alertus because of the cost and functionality their system provides.”
Solution
The wall-mounted Alertus Alert Beacon® sounds, flashes, and displays an alert message in the event of an emergency.
Since then, the community college has installed over 300 Alert Beacons® in all classrooms and common areas, installed DesktopTM Notification on all campus computers, and installed a panic button in the main Bethlehem Township public safety office.
They’ve also integrated the Alertus System with an additional activation method of campus-wide emergency message system hosted by Omnilert.
Trained NCC representatives can trigger alerts using the Omnilert system, which sends custom messages to specific groups through email, SMS text messages, web-based messages, social media, and, when appropriate, through the Alertus Server to the Alert Beacons and desktop computers. NCC’s public safety department coordinates with its communications team to issue notifications.
“The fact that Alertus can integrate with other systems such as Omnilert was ‘icing on the cake’ for Northampton when selecting Alertus in the bidding process,” said George.
Alertus Activation Buttons provide immediate, easy, single-point activation for emergency notification
The Activation Buttons in the NCC main public safety office contain four panic buttons – three are preset for active shooter warnings, and the fourth button issues an all-clear message. Each button is programmed to distribute messages to the other campuses, so they can target which campus to send the alert to.
The Alertus activation buttons, with the integration to Omnilert, allow for simultaneous notification to Alert Beacons, desktops, and personal notifications via text and email.
“Because our campuses are far enough apart, different alerts can get distributed to each campus, such as severe weather alerts, which may only be affecting one of our campuses at that time,” said George.
Conclusion
George and Drexler note that the Alertus System has given the college another option to get emergency messages to the campus community. “It is an important element in our emergency communication efforts that have been well received,” said Drexler.
“The system has been beneficial,” said George. “Alerts have been triggered for public safety and urgent situations, such as tornados or other severe weather events.” They have also used the system for non-emergency alerts and annual testing.