UMass Lowell recently launched a new system to communicate with students, faculty and staff in the event of an emergency on campus.
While UMass Lowell has been able to issue campus-wide alerts via text-messaging under a pilot program, the new system, called DCC, allows officials to notify everyone in the University community of an emergency using several means of communication.
E-mail, cell phones, home and office telephones and text messages are all used by DCC to notify people of up-to-the-minute information on emergencies, school closings, power outages and more. All members of the campus community have been asked to register online to receive the notifications.
“We take the safety of our students very seriously,” says Chancellor Marty Meehan. “The new emergency communications system will complement the existing notifications in the event of a crisis or closing.”
UMass Lowell is one of 29 state universities and colleges around Massachusetts that is using DCC, according to Rich Lemoine, assistant director of environmental health and safety. UMass Lowell has been able to work together with the other schools on workgroups to combine expertise to put the new system in place.
Sign-up takes only minutes, and can be done from any computer. The portal is www.uml.edu/notify. For more information, contact the help desk, Ext. 4357, or e-mail help@uml.edu.
In addition to the emergency alert system, the University is responding to increased concerns about security issues of all kinds on campuses nationwide by also initiating a process to require students to provide and/or verify Emergency Contact Information on a regular basis. This information will be used to contact designated individuals in the event of an emergency involving a student on campus.
The administration encourages students to be proactive and verify this information before they actually need to register for classes or use Add/Drop/Swap a Class functionality in ISIS. For assistance, a Help document has been posted on the ISIS website.
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