2. Understand the budget process, and develop a strategic plan for the campus executive team to expand security. It can take several years for a campus to develop the ability to pay for a security upgrade, and planning accordingly can help the process go smoother.
For example, nearly 16 years ago, Christopherson identified the need to install a campus-wide public address system for UW-GB. “It took us eight years to get the appropriations to pay for this notification system,” Christopherson says. “People promise a lot of stuff when they are selling a product. We are not the type of school to rush into something. We evaluate it first and determine if we have the budget to maintain and keep track of it. We want to place ourselves in the right place for the future needs of our students.”
Today, UW-GB can issue an emergency security alert or severe weather notification to students in their residence halls, classrooms and even in the public restrooms via a campus wide public address system.
In Quinnipiac’s case, when officials were weighing their access control upgrade options, the committee provided to their vice president of finance and administration a well-defined strategic plan of the advantages of switching from the traditional key set to the identification card.
According to Jon Terry, the university’s facility administrator who manages its identification card access control program, “When we told him that we could switch the entire system from keys to access cards in one summer, he only asked if we could meet the deadline.”
As the Connecticut private school adds more facilities, the requirements to use the ID access control system are programmed into the building costs.
UW-GB’s security team focused initial access control purchases on their residence halls, labs, classrooms, music and athletic facilities but continue to find other applications as needs arise. “Students who are qualified for access to almost any of our facilities with the PERSONA system are given (or denied) access automatically based on information maintained in our other systems,” says Erek Steliga, UW-GB’s IS business automation analyst for residence life. “This lends itself nicely to many applications.”
