Spring Break
Alerts go 'multi-mobile'
Stephanie Takach
Issue date: 10/31/08 Section: News
The University's Department of Public Safety has implemented an improved DrexelAlert system that will allow students to receive alerts within minutes to mobile phones, Drexel landlines and wireless PDAs.
"[The alert system] has more capabilities that include voicemails, e-mails, faxes and text messages. It's multi-mobile, and can reach out in different ways that the older system could not," Domenic Ceccanecchio, senior associate vice president of Public Safety, said.
The new system is currently in place so that if there are any serious emergencies, DPS can access the system and get the message out there if they need to, according to Jim Katsaounis, executive director and senior vice president of Student Life and Administrative services.
DPS chose MIR3 as the alert system provider.
"We evaluated a number of companies that we looked at. MIR3 is one of the premiere companies that provide this service," Ceccanecchio said.
He also said Drexel benchmarked MIR3 against other organizations to find out how successful the company was with the products that they were using. The University of Pennsylvania and Temple University use MIR3 for their alert systems as well.
"Because it's [the new system] multi mobile, it allows us to use all of those different services, text messages, voice mail, e-mail all through one system," Katsaounis said.
With the older system, in order to send out a mass emergency alert e-mail, DPS would have to go through a different system to do that along with text messaging. The new system can also be fine-tuned and segmented to inform only the portion of the campus population affected by isolated incidents.
"This isn't a new step for Drexel, but simply the next iteration of the DrexelAlert System," University President Constantine Papadakis said in a news release. "Drexel was one of the first universities in the nation to implement text messaging for emergency notifications in 2007 following the tragic incident at Virginia Tech. The new DrexelAlert system and its multi-modal capabilities replace the previous text-message-only notification system."
"[The alert system] has more capabilities that include voicemails, e-mails, faxes and text messages. It's multi-mobile, and can reach out in different ways that the older system could not," Domenic Ceccanecchio, senior associate vice president of Public Safety, said.
The new system is currently in place so that if there are any serious emergencies, DPS can access the system and get the message out there if they need to, according to Jim Katsaounis, executive director and senior vice president of Student Life and Administrative services.
DPS chose MIR3 as the alert system provider.
"We evaluated a number of companies that we looked at. MIR3 is one of the premiere companies that provide this service," Ceccanecchio said.
He also said Drexel benchmarked MIR3 against other organizations to find out how successful the company was with the products that they were using. The University of Pennsylvania and Temple University use MIR3 for their alert systems as well.
"Because it's [the new system] multi mobile, it allows us to use all of those different services, text messages, voice mail, e-mail all through one system," Katsaounis said.
With the older system, in order to send out a mass emergency alert e-mail, DPS would have to go through a different system to do that along with text messaging. The new system can also be fine-tuned and segmented to inform only the portion of the campus population affected by isolated incidents.
"This isn't a new step for Drexel, but simply the next iteration of the DrexelAlert System," University President Constantine Papadakis said in a news release. "Drexel was one of the first universities in the nation to implement text messaging for emergency notifications in 2007 following the tragic incident at Virginia Tech. The new DrexelAlert system and its multi-modal capabilities replace the previous text-message-only notification system."
Be the first to comment on this story