Colorado State Achieves 90% Student Participation in Emergency Notification System
Colorado State University in Ft. Collins, CO, said that 90 percent of its 25,000 student population has enrolled in its emergency text notification system. The campus implemented the system from
Rave Wireless school-wide in September 2007. The program enables CSU to send text messages to subscribers in the event of an emergency.
At that time, the school said that participation for faculty and staff with university-issued cell phones would be required, but that students would have to volunteer to receive messages. Students sign up by registering on a secure Web site and adding a cell phone number.
In a discussion forum posting, CSU said it had several reasons for selecting Rave over other solutions in the emergency notification space. The decision was based on the best price/performance/management combination as well as the options to integrate Rave Alert with its Banner software implementation and add landline notification.
An article that ran in the CSU student newspaper quoted CSU's associate director for telecommunications, Jose Valdes, as saying, "There's a myriad of ways to communicate with people. One way won't reach everyone. But we do think that text messaging is one of the best ways to reach students."
According to a statement released by Rave recently, CSU's high penetration rate among students is due to the school's integration of the service with its course registration process. When students sign up for classes, they're prompted to verify or update their information.
Rave is currently allowing schools in the United States to do a free test drive of the system.
