Students and staff at Oakland University, Rochester, Mich., will now receive a text message and a voice mail under a new alert system that has gone into effect. The alerts are part of the school’s comprehensive emergency communications plan to notify students, faculty and staff as quickly as possible if an emergency situation occurs on campus.

“The text message system is designed to quickly alert community members who are not sitting in front of a computer or desk phone,” said Oakland University Police Chief Samuela Lucido.

To take advantage of the service, students and employees must provide contact information, including their ID information and e-mail address, via the school’s Emergency Preparedness Web site. Voice alerts are available for those without text messaging capability.

Read more here.

Students from 48 Chicago, Ill. high schools will be receiving a combined school ID and Chicago transit reduced-fare card this year. The agreement is aimed at increasing transit use among students and cutting CTA’s administrative costs in the existing reduced-fare program and is expected to be expanded to all Chicago public high schools within 18 months.

The student’s smart card is similar to the CTA’s contactless ChicagoCard, which means faster boarding times. Users can add value to the card at CTA vending machines. The CTA expects to save $500,000 annually in administrative costs.

Read more here.  

Some 226,000 students in Montreal are being issued an Opus Smart Card that will give them discounts on public transportation to and from school. The cards, which cost about $12 U.S. a year, will also help reduce user fraud since the card is personalized and non-transferrable. Also, if a card is reported lost or stolen, the card is blacklisted and can no longer be used.

Read more here.  

Gateway Technical College, with campuses in three Wisconsin counties, has chosen New Haven, Conn.-based Higher One, a financial services and payment company focused exclusively on higher education, to distribute refunds to its students.

“We expect students to receive their refunds faster while reducing the amount of labor in the Student Accounts Office and the Financial Aid Office,” says Terry Simmons, student success vice president at Gateway. “We want to make this pervasive throughout the institution so that students will have easier and faster access to the funds they need to pay for books or other school supplies. Being a technical college, we strive to be a paperless, cashless, technology driven campus.”

Higher One currently works with more than 180 campuses in the United States to distribute refunds to students more quickly. Gateway is the fifth higher education institution in Wisconsin to work with Higher One.

“We chose Higher One for a few reasons,” Simmons said. “We wanted to provide students with convenient access to an optional checking account and debit card with ATM access on campus. We also like that the OneCard is created for us; with a design that represents Gateway Technical College. This is more than just a refund vehicle, it is an opportunity for our student population to gain some experience with controlling their personal finances.”

Utilizing changes to the Department of Education regulations surrounding the distribution of Title IV funds, Gateway will be offering each student two electronic ways to receive their refunds from the College: direct deposit to a no minimum balance, no monthly fee, FDIC-insured checking account provided by Higher One or an ACH to another bank of the student’s choosing.

“The decision to offer students two electronic ways to receive their refunds was another in a series of moves we have made to realize our goal of becoming a paperless campus,” stated Simmons. “We want to reduce the use of paper to be both cost-efficient and environmentally friendly.”

Given the increased cost of education and the decrease in public funding available to colleges and universities, a number of institutions are looking for ways to make their business offices more efficient. One area institutions can do this is by eliminating paper check refunds to students; a costly and laborious process.

“We briefly considered building and running our own ACH program, but ultimately decided that it was too expensive and time consuming of a process,” says Simmons. “We chose to go with a company that has a well established program; one that has been successful at campuses across the country.” Gateway will begin issuing refunds to students through Higher One during the Fall Semester
of this year.

Gateway will begin issuing refunds to students through Higher One this fall. About 5,000 full time students are registered in over 65 career training programs.

Stephen Gilfus, a founder of Washington-based campus-card provider Blackboard, and Ron Dinwiddie, a former Blackboard senior executive familiar with the ID card and financial transaction business, have launched Event Innovation, a company aimed at developing software for sports and entertainment venues.

The new company, headquartered in Washington, is concentrating on the way sports, entertainment and performing arts venues interact and communicate with their customers. Event Innovation will develop products that increase a venue’s visibility into its customers’ ticket purchasing, event attendance and in-venue spending and will allow them to obtain detailed information about attendees.

By leveraging the resulting information, sports and entertainment organizations can create targeted campaigns and promotional offers for event attendees while providing greater on-site benefits and conveniences during the event.

“We are in an unprecedented time period in which Internet technologies have the ability to create better connections for organizations and their customers,” said Gilfus, chairman and CEO. “We have identified a unique opportunity to provide greater conveniences for attendees while giving venues insight to their most valuable customers through the combination of proven technologies. The ability to apply proven technologies to the live entertainment industry makes Event Innovation an exciting opportunity.”

“This is possibly the greatest time in entertainment venues history,” said Dinwiddie, president and COO. “Technology today can provide all sorts of creative ways to enhance the overall experience of attending an event … and we fully expect Event Innovation to emerge as the leader in that industry.”

Prior to Event Innovation, Gilfus was a founder of Blackboard, a leader in eLearning and educational software and services. He was a key executive in the development of Blackboard that was born out of a business plan he wrote while at Cornell University. He is a software designer, inventor of Blackboard’s products and author of “The Educational Technology Framework,” a methodology used by hundreds of academic institutions and some of the world’s publishers.

Both Gilfus and Dinwiddie left Blackboard in late 2007/early 2008 to explore new opportunities. Event Innovation plans to launch its products in selected test markets with venues and attendees beginning this fall.

Middle Tennessee State University, Murfreesboro, Tenn., has added hand scanning to complement its new ID numbering system, at least for entrance into the school’s recreation facility.

The school has already assigned an eight-digit identification number for the campus “BlueID” card as part of a new campus-wide software system. But in addition, students and staff members are placing their right hands on to a hand geometry scanner that turns the shape of their hands into 9-character templates to access the school’s newly renovated recreation center, where some members have been caught passing their ID cards to nonmembers to swipe through card readers for access.

While the hand scanners will only be used in the rec center this year, the system could be used for 24-hour computer labs and other areas of the campus, according to a university spokesperson.

MTSU issued new ID cards to all students, faculty and staff this summer to weed out decades-old cards that still have Social Security numbers printed on the front. Although the school removed Social Security numbers from ID cards a decade ago, many tenured faculty members still carry around old ID cards that use the numbers.

Read more here.

Rising gas prices plus increased on-campus parking fees are leading to different–and possibly free–options to get to school. For example, the University of Alaska is looking at a partnership with a Fairbanks borough that would provide free bus rides to any student, faculty or staff with a university ID card.

One university system spokesperson said that rising gasoline costs plus parking fees could leave some students and staff paying up to $10 a day to commute and park.

Read more here.  

Customers, in this case students, are not always right, but they’re deserving of more, lots more. That’s the premise at High Point University in North Carolina which, since the 2005 arrival of its president, Nido R. Qubein, a motivational speaker and author of such books as “How to Get Whatever You Want” and “Close Like a Pro: Selling Strategies for Success,” has seen its freshman registration triple even though it now costs more.

An ice cream truck daily circles the campus, offering free goodies. Students on their birthdays receive balloons, a card signed by the president, plus a Starbucks gift card. Employees aren’t left out. They get a phone call from the president on their birthdays. Music is piped into the cafeteria, which also now has flat screen TVs. There’s valet parking and a concierge desk, where a student can request a wake up call.

In addition, the school has hired a director of WOW! to come up with new ways to cater to students. It’s no wonder the college has been featured in the Chronicle of Higher Education, which calls the school “Club Ed,” and at the Boston Globe site, which commented: “Does the idea of treating college students like customers – striving never to disrupt their sense of contentment – give you the willies? Then welcome to your nightmare…”

The Chronicle also reports that Qubein, a High Point alumnus, has helped raise $100 million for the school, which has allowed for a “significant expansion” of the campus’s facilities.

Other WOW frills include snack kiosks located around campus offering free bananas, pretzels, and drinks and gifts that students receive when they return from breaks. The university also tracks each student’s preferences (movies, candy bars, sodas, etc.) so all of them get exactly what they want.

The Chronicle calls all this a “jaw-dropping menu of student services.”

Read the Chronicle article here, or the Boston Globe story here.

A Texas school district, in an effort to protect its students from child predators, has turned to software from Raptor Technologies that will issue guest badges to visitors only after their names have been scanned against databases containing the names of known predators.

The Rockwall Independent School District recently approved installation of the new program from V-Soft, a Houston, Texas company. Visitors will now have to present a valid state or government-issued photo identification card to the school’s receptionist, such as a driver license or military ID.

The ID will be scanned into the V-Soft system and cross-referenced with a database to ensure that the visitor is not a registered sex offender. The system also checks for “private alert” information which has been entered by campus administration. This might include issues relating to parental custodial cases.

Read more here.

Utah Community Credit Union has partnered with Utah Valley University, Orem, Utah, to implement a campus card program that includes keyless building access, a bus pass, access to athletic events and a Visa debit card. The new program was engineered by Runge & Company, a consulting firm specializing in card issuance systems.

The new UV OneCard Plus supports a contactless chip-based door access system, “GreenBucks” campus purchases including discount-dining services on campus, a bus pass and access to athletic events and other activities. Students, faculty and staff can add Visa debit and ATM capability to their cards by linking them to their credit union checking accounts.

The embossed OneCard Plus can be instantly issued on UVU’s campus at the credit union’s branch in the Sorensen Center.

“UVU will be the first school to offer such an array of features and technologies in a campus card,” said Erik Runge, Runge & Company’s president.

“Runge & Company was instrumental in creating the partnership between the credit union and the school,” said Jeff Sermon, president and CEO of Utah Community Credit Union. Runge & Company designed a card issuance system that is compatible with existing campus technology, including integration with UVU’s Datacard ID Works and Blackboard systems, as well as the credit union’s card management system and instant issuance hardware.

“Runge helped structure a financial relationship that includes a revenue plan to build student participation and maximize card usage, as well as scholarships, internships, and campus sponsorships,” Sermon added.

UVU, with an enrollment of 25,000, was formerly known as Utah Valley State College until its name change July 1. Utah Community Credit Union, based in Provo, Utah, operates 17 branches and serves more than 96,000 members.