Mass Notification Management Seminar To Be Held at EDUCAUSE 2015

Getting Personal with Mass Notification

Some schools prefer to take a more personal approach to mass notification and launch emergency messages through their BYOD policies.

Providence College, for example, utilizes the CrisisManager app by SchoolDude.com to notify students of a threat via their mobile devices.

The CrisisManager app enables a college to use push notifications out to its student population. Once the student has the app, he or she can access the emergency action plans for whichever emergency is present, including inclement weather, an active shooter or chemical spill.

A college’s action plans, which are located within the CrisisManager app, take up no more space than one song on a student’s device.

Aside from weather and external threats, Providence College uses a solution similar to CrisisManager in conjunction to its Campus Assessment Response Evaluation (CARE) Network.

The CARE Network, an on-campus student network that offers support to peers suffering with mental issues, created the CARE App, which is used to record a distressed person’s current mental state. The app also enables someone to record the distressed person’s symptoms, actions on how to help him or her, alerts administrators about his or her condition, and helps administrators decide if an intervention needs to be scheduled.

Koren Kandanian, Director of Emergency Management at Providence College says the information about a person’s mental health status that is recorded on the CARE App keeps a staff member on hand to help the person in distress.

“No personal information about the distressed person gets out there [to the public], if they’re depressed or suicidal,” he says. “All referrals go through a committee. There will be someone on-call 24/7, and a dispatcher will decide if something needs attention right away.”
Kandanian says the college wanted to make sure that students were referring their struggling peers properly, and that the CARE App helps with this concern.

“They can look at the tiles [of symptoms on the app], walk through and decide if they need to make a referral with their phone,” he says. “Then a secure email goes to the dean and counselling center. It’s great having hot keys on hand. They can make a referral right away.”

Kandanian says the app makes the signs leading to an emergency more transparent, and makes students more aware of when and how they should report an emergency.

“Safety and security is a big picture, it’s not just physical,” he says. “We can help students during a mental health crisis. Everything is transparent; transparency is key.”