May 22, 2007
Contact: Rita Mitchell , University Relations
UT Martin emergency text messaging system being used by other schools
MARTIN, Tenn. – Using technology services already available at the University of Tennessee at Martin, the Office of Information Technology Services and the Department of Public Safety have implemented an inexpensive method of sending emergency TXT message notifications to students, faculty and staff.
“Lessons learned from the Virginia Tech tragedy say that TXT messaging is a valuable method of communicating with the campus community,” said Shannon Burgin, UT Martin assistant vice chancellor for academic affairs and chief information officer. “The addition of TXT messaging to current methods of emergency notification will provide a valuable piece to our communication capabilities in an emergency situation.”
In April, Seung-Hui Cho, a Virginia Tech student, killed 32 people and wounded others before committing suicide, making it the deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history.
Following the tragedy, ITS staff members, Terry Lewis, Andy Rivers, Bruce Harrison, Ken Blankenship, Brenda Wright, Larry Holder, Mark McAlpin, Roger Elmore and Burgin reviewed the alternatives to quickly reach students, faculty and staff. They considered logistics, process, cost, implementation time and impact, with a goal of quickly providing a method of sending emergency TXT messages.
Larry Holder, IT administrator IV and database administrator, developed a program on the UT Martin student information system Banner Web, which provides a simple opt-in Web page for each UT Martin students, faculty and staff to voluntarily provide his or her cell phone number, cell phone provider and select a message level for TXT messages sent from university administration, primarily intended for emergency notifications distributed by the Department of Public Safety.
“The program source code was offered free of charge to other schools, who also use Banner for their student database,” said Holder. “The software sharing offer received an overwhelming response from universities across the U.S. and Canada.” Of these, Eastern Kentucky University officials recently reported successful testing the feature, sending a TXT message to more than 1,700 cell phone users on their campus.
Recently, the system was tested with the 600 initial subscribers on the UT Martin campus. A subsequent test is planned after more subscribers are enrolled.
“The test was a great success as the message was received by most subscribers in less than two minutes,” said Scott Robbins, Department of Public Safety director. “Having a communication tool like this in place will be very valuable if we ever have an emergency situation on campus. I’m appreciative to all the ITS members who got this in place in such a quick time.”
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