Ready, set, respond: the Virginia Tech tragedy prompted college and university leaders to plan in new ways for responding when the unexpected happens. A year later, how much progress has been made in bridging crisis communication gaps?

University Business, April, 2008 by Michele Herrmann

Bryant also uses Campus Manager, by Bradford Networks, a network access solution that reaches out to every laptop and desktop on campus. Through the solutions web-based administration console, a member of Bryant's Safety Office team can send a message to a group of users or all users, who see the message on their computer screen in a special pop-up box. Since Bryant has a student laptop program, Campus Manager helps with deploying information to the student body. "We took this route because this was a way to reach the most people," says Jon Domen, IT support analyst.

North of Bryant, Brandeis University (Mass.) officials concluded after Virginia Tech that a public address system was best for emergency notification. As a Cisco Voice over IP shop, Brandeis University has about 5,000 phones already in operation in classrooms, dorm rooms, and all staff areas. John Turner, director of networks and systems, and his colleagues settled on InformaCast, a server-based system from CDW Berbee, as the best method for delivering emergency messages through Voice over IP. The system enables users to simultaneously push an audio stream and/or a text message to multiple IP phones, along with the system's IP speakers, desktop agent, and overhead paging systems. A user could select a prerecorded message or send a live broadcast through a password-protected webpage or the IP phone services menu.

Georgia Perimeter College, which also already had a Cisco-based IP telephony system in place (with nearly 2,000 IP handsets, including 300 classroom phones), adopted a notification system from Cistera Networks last fall. It involves two IP applications--Event and Alerting Notification (EAN) and Quality Assurance and Compliance (QAC)--which will be used for improving safety communications at its four main campuses in Clarkston, Decatur, Dunwoody, and Newton. The applications serve as a lifeline to buildings: EAN allows for the delivery of information to any communication device, while the QAC records and archives every communication for training and liability purposes. Prior to Virginia Tech, there wasn't an alert system for the classroom setting, notes Chris Burge, an IT consultant. "Not only can we also reach into a classroom and give a notification, a faculty member or staff or student could also pick up the phone and reach back out to public safety, so they can alert public safety of a situation that was happening in the building."

FAMILY CONNECTIONS

When implementing or expanding notification systems, campus officials should consider the need to keep family members of students and staff informed during a crisis. After all, moms and dads who learn of the crisis want to find out what's happening immediately.

Before Virginia Tech, Wilberforce University (Ohio) had clear-cut protocols for a medical emergency or severe weather, as tornados are common in the area, but no method to send instant mass communication. "It was sort of a chain of events. You tried to make sure that whomever might be on the scene at the particular type of emergency knew what to do," says Provost Patricia L. Hardaway.