As technology continues to progress and new methods of communication become widely used, the UW-Platteville administration continues to look for ways to improve emergency response protocol. One of these steps includes implementing a new Pioneer Alerts text-message emergency alert system that will start testing members of campus early in March.

The Emergency Planning Workgroup, a group of campus officials who work to approve campus emergency protocol, has set up an alert system that allows campus members who register to receive text messages in case of a campus emergency. Campus members can sign up by going to the Pioneer Alerts Web page at uwplatt.edu/police/pioneeralerts. Here they will be prompted to enter their NetID username and password and then they’ll be able to register up to two phones in their name.

Scott Marquardt, director of campus police and member of the EPW said the system is planned to undergo a stress test, which will make sure the system can handle the amount of cell phones registered, in early March, and another stress test is tentatively planned for April, but no official dates have been set. Barb Daus, special assistant to the chancellor and member of the EPW, said that the system would undergo a general test on a monthly basis as well.

Marquardt said while the school is not charging anything extra for the service, text messaging fees assessed by a user’s phone service provider still apply.

This is just one of several new alerts being introduced on campus. The EPW has also helped institute campus-wide alerts displayed as a banner on UW-P’s Web site, as well as a Novell-based alert that pops up on campus computers, Daus said.
The service is provided by e2Campus, a company that specializes in campus notifications systems, in conjunction with the Office of Information Technology, which acts as a liaison between the company and UW-P. OIT will operate the portal to the Web site, as well as collect data on usage of the system, Marquardt said.

Marquardt said that he hopes campus members signing up and receiving the test messages will encourage their peers to sign up as well.

Marquardt said he wants people to be proactive because it’s much better to be ready for emergencies in advance than only signing up for the alerts after being caught unprepared.