Amy Rock (00:00): Hi everyone, and welcome to this episode of the Campus Safety Voices podcast. My name is Amy Rock. I'm Campus Safety's executive editor, and today I am joined by Adam Reid, director of Public Safety, health and Emergency Management at Montgomery College in Rockville, Maryland. Adam is also a 2025 director of the year finalist, and for those not familiar, Campus Safety's director of the year program is now in its 18th year, and it recognizes leaders in either hospital, university, or school security, law enforcement or emergency management for their outstanding accomplishments. And so today we're going to discuss a few of Adam's endeavors in achievements. And so Adam, I know Montgomery College we were speaking before we got started, it's somewhat unique in that it has three campuses as well as some offsite educational centers in admin buildings, and I'm sure there are many, but what are a few challenges that come with having multiple campuses and how have you addressed those challenges in your tenure?

Adam Reid (00:58): Great. Thanks, Amy. Appreciate it. Yeah, coming from two institutions that were singular campuses, this was certainly a challenge that I looked forward to finding out how I could best tackle this, but also assess what those challenges are. I'll start with just within the department itself. So initially I found that my department was somewhat bifurcated, interestingly enough, right? So we would say we would do it this way at one campus, another campus would do it this way. There wasn't a lot of standardization. Some things were standard within forms, and there was a general policy manual, but it wasn't that awesome. But each campus had its own kind of flavor. It had its own somewhat bit of leadership, which I know can be common for multi-campus institutions. However, the president that I had come in under had put a charge out a few years prior to a one campus model.

So even though we're different campuses, were going to be one campus, one mascot, one name, one set of branding standards. So for me, it was a challenge having folks that had been in the department for so long where it was each campus with its own identity and saying, well, we don't do things this way at Tacoma Park compared to how Germantown does it or Rockville does it. So getting everybody on that same page, and I wasn't unique within just my area. Other areas were having the same challenges too, trying to get their areas in sync with the one campus, one college model, I wanted to really tackle this head on by taking, for example, our patch when I got here, had all the campuses listed on it, that off, I said, it's one college, so just use our seal and our department name in-service training, conducting that together.

So pulling it, having, we would have run three or four in-service a year. They would do it separately prior. So I said, we're going to do things together. We're going to have an end of the year awards and recognition celebration and ceremony. I was blown away to find out that we had people, officers, and staff in our department who had worked like 15 to 20 years and did not know who their counterpart, our colleague was up the road at another campus. So I just could not fathom this. And I'm like, this is, and granted, we're a big department, we're close to 85 folks at the time when I got here. So it wasn't a small operation, but I really wanted to sow in the department together so everybody was familiar with each other, knew each other. Radio communications were individual phone numbers were individual, so we went to a one phone number operation.

Our radios interoperability within the campuses. I mean, they operate separate channels now, but there is that ability to get assistance and also on that assistance front with events that we would have. So shifting of resources, assigning folks, even though if they were based out of Germantown, which is at the very north part of the county, but to Tacoma Park, silver Spring had an event which is 45 minutes away at the bottom of the county. I would allocate resources from the other campuses to come and help and work because at the end of the day, we're all on the same team. We're all the same department. That mindset was not there before that. So that was without a doubt, a challenge to address and pull everybody in under a one department model. Also, embracing the one college philosophy, I'm very happy that here we are. I just went into my sixth year with the department and we are referenced by other departments on campus in totally different divisions as a model of how we've been able to pull together and really unite under that one campus model.

So I'm happy that our work is being recognized even outside of our individual unit and division. And it just aligns with beyond the department with the broader college mission, how we're serving our students, how we're serving our employees. When they would go to one campus and they would have to fill out a form for a temporary parking pass, it looked like one thing, but it wasn't interchangeable at another campus. It was just ridiculous. The level of service that they would get at one campus should not be different from other, from anywhere within our department or across the board. So adapting to that, but also recognizing that this was the climate for a long time and that we have a lot of folks that have been with the college, that this is how they've always known it and maybe some more that were changed adverse than others.

You have to meet them where they are, but also get them to understand that hey, things change. Things progress and move. So that's a college wide piece, and I think we've definitely come a long way as an institution from, like I said, I'm in year six now from where we were in 2019 in time, things phase in and out, but that was without a doubt, probably the biggest thing is coming in a unifying point, moving from a singular identity or moving to a singular identity as a college because it does, it impacts everything down to the departments. And then even when it comes to standardized of training and standardization of expectations between my campus leadership at the time, which has changed from initially when I came in, but the majors who were basically my chiefs that ran the campuses all had different philosophies. So that was a challenge, but getting everybody on the same sheet of music, same page, same standard operating, same philosophy.

Embracing the one college mission without a doubt was the largest challenge. And then running in now the current day, obviously within other units of the college, when we talk about conduct and discipline, if there's a student issue at one campus, making sure that information is relayed down to the other campuses if they're still doing things a little bit different that can have its challenges. We're good with our department, with communication. Everybody's getting the same information around bolos and the reporting system is all standardized, but there can be external communication challenges. And even to touch, just briefly on the external part too, when we talk about our relationship with our partner jurisdictions, I have two campuses that are served by municipal police departments and one campus that is served exclusively by our county police. And the county police also serve all three. So we deal with jurisdictional issues when we talk about crime reporting, assistance, Cleary, all that good stuff.

So where one campus, I only work exclusively with the county police. I have another campus where I have three jurisdictions that I work with. So that can create some challenges as well too, because they only see it as, oh, well, this campus is our part, but in actuality, the student is a part of our entire system, so that can run the gamut. So maintaining excellent working relationships with our partner law enforcement agencies is so critical that we've got that strong and information sharing that happens there. So maybe not as much a challenge at times can be depending on the officer that may show up for assistance, but I see it as an opportunity to strengthen our role within the county and with our partner agencies.

Amy Rock (09:11): Just quickly going back to internal operations, I feel like it is a tough line to tow because you want students and staff to feel like their campus is unique in some ways and has its own identity relevant to the makeup of that campus, because not every student population is the same on a campus. It might be within the same state, but there's got to be some variance, and at the same time, you want as much information sharing as you said, and best practice sharing as possible. So kind of ensuring they can connect with someone in a similar role on another campus is crucial.

Adam Reid (09:45): Absolutely.

Amy Rock (09:46): And just one other thought I had is I feel like changing policy and practice is one thing, and it's challenging, but getting people on board is probably even more of a challenge. But it sounds like you've done a good job with that.

Adam Reid (10:01): Thank you. Thank you. So it takes time, right? It's not overnight for sure.

Amy Rock (10:05): Months and months, I'm sure.

Adam Reid (10:10): Years sometimes.

Amy Rock (10:12): Yeah. Right now you also reorganized your department, pulling safety and security out of facilities management and updating it to the Office of Public Safety, health and Emergency Management. What kind of motivated you to do this, and what are some of the biggest benefits that you've seen since doing this?

Adam Reid (10:30): Yeah. No, this was huge. When I arrived in 2019, we were under the Office of facilities. My position reported to the vice President of facilities. The title of the time was Facilities and Public Safety. However, this had been something prior to my time that had been evolving slightly. There was a point there for a while where there was not a director slash chief position, and there was a manager essentially that ran the security and reported to the facilities director on the campus. So facilities was this overarching responsibility for everything and anything operationally essentially, and facilities. They have buildings and all that good stuff. One of the issues is obviously the work that we do in campus, security, safety, police, doesn't matter what your authority zone is, the mission of our work is all the same across the board. You need to have someone who understands the work that we do, champions the work that we do, and encourages the growth and best way to serve our communities.

That was not the case when I got here. We had a wonderful, tremendous person that was in that position, but was a facilities person. They did not have any background on the work that we do, which is a problem because I would equate that to me coming into, I don't know, the art department and saying, I'm going to run the art department and give directives on how we're going to instruct art and art history. I have no background in that. So that's problematic. You put your subject matter experts in charge of the areas to run the areas because that's what they know. And that was not the case. And again, it had been something that they had been evolving a little bit, but it was just a misplacement and an archaic model.

Montgomery College is a champion in so many ways and light years ahead. We are very fortunate with our resources and fortunate to be such a wonderful college, and I was very surprised that the attention, I guess, had not been really put into our area as much as it should have been when I got here. So championing with my boss at the time to say, look, my observations after arriving here for about a month, I'm thinking, this isn't going to work, first of all, because I have a different vision and a plan, and I need someone that's going to support that to get us to pull us up to the modern day. And the fact is, we were just so far behind just running a basic security operation, a lot of great folks and resourced as well. But there was no vision. There was no advancement plans. We were really operating in a 1980s model, which was so outdated, and coming from my prior institution that I left to come to Montgomery for, we ran a pretty good department, would keep it advanced going forward as much as possible, small department. But having that, working in that model, and then just having that experience and doing it before saying, we got to get to at least here because we are really far behind.

So presenting this to my boss along with metrics of where we are in comparison, at least to our comparable community colleges in the state, and when they see us at the bottom or the very close to the bottom in terms of how we're staffed with what our authority range is, how we're organized, incomparable metrics was like, oh, we didn't realize this was the case. Well, of course not, because you don't have someone that's championing for the work that's being done. So we were in the shadows of the facilities department for so so long. Their focus was capital improvements, capital budget, capital, this right state-of-the-art facilities, they do a fantastic job at that. That's their job, right? Their background and their job is not in the protection and security of campus and the work that we do around students, student relations, all of that. So we've been stymied for so long and being able to make that case and argument to senior leadership, we were then elevated.

I was pulled out from that structure model and basically made appear then. So, okay, facilities runs facilities. You run public safety, let's get it up and going. And then seeing that change, that evolution, we were able to do so so much in just two years down to standardizing our dispatch, pulling together a dispatch center didn't exist, standardizing the department. Everything I just talked about with the one department model, things had not been going on in that direction. Our retention increased, our recruiting increased. I was able to put a rank structure into play, which equated obviously to more money for officers, which keeps officers and it promotes officers. There was no structure. It was you were a security officer or a security manager before. And I was able to implement a campus police component to this as well. So moving our department to a hybrid model.

So we have security officers and we've got sworn campus police officers, getting them the training, giving them the opportunity. And what I found was the morale in our department skyrocketed. We had folks that had been here for so long who were just thirsty and hungry to grow. They wanted to grow their careers. They looked at these other institutions around them. Some would leave, some were being paid. So they were paid well. They enjoyed where they worked. They enjoyed working for the college, but they were disappointed because they're seeing what's going on around them and saying, I want to be in this department. I want to be in a growing department, a department that's serving in a different capacity. So being able to bring that opportunity to our folks that we had was just tremendous. And of course, there was a small handful of folks that said, well, I think I want to retire because I didn't sign up for this.

And that's fair. And we also had folks that we've grandfathered in. I mean, no one was forced to make a move. If you wanted to stay as a public safety officer, you're more than welcome to. But the overwhelming majority wanted to go get the training, attend the training to become a campus police officer, go through and promote through the rank structure. So we've promoted so many awesome, fantastic people that are in our department over time because of giving them these opportunities that the equipment pieces that come with that too. Being able to put in a robust camera system, putting a centralized dispatch, expanding beyond just the security components as we know it. I've built an emergency management unit out of this. Parking and transportation has migrated over. I've built an access control system or access control unit out of this, which had also lived in facilities that came over a little bit later, moving under our scope of work and of course the communication side.

So being able then to have our own budget and not have to ask for facilities, can we have some money to put a camera? Can we do this? We're now staffed with the resources that we need. We have that. We can do that and put the technology into play, put the resources into play, but also be able to really reestablish our department with our community. And that was a lot of this too, is going back into the community, going in front of the faculty, in front of the students and saying, we are here. This is our goal. This is our mission. We're here to help you. We're not just somebody that shows up if things are going bad or you need a door opened up, right? We are a very proactive, engaging department and entity at the institution. So moving out of facilities was by far the best thing that could have happened to this department.

And it should have been done a long time prior. We were lagging behind the national model, the national standard. And like I said, the benefit to the college, the ability to serve at a level of professionalism that did not exist before, a level of training that did not exist before the added layer to be able to actually do something instead of just observe and report. Being able to have sworn officers being able to have highly trained officers, have the emergency management, have the communications folks that can reach us. And then, like I said earlier, the morale, just the simple morale of the department to increase the way it did. By far all major benefits of this. I'm a strong believer of staying in your lane and having folks that are running the areas that they know. And sometimes I think things can get polluted or clouded.

They start if you shuffle too much. And again, I used the example I used earlier if I was put to say, you run the art department. I just don't have a background in that. That's not my bailiwick. So having someone running a security safety police organization on a campus with no background is problematic. So being able to get this move completed and making us a standalone entity that is on par with all of our colleagues, our facilities, our business services and recognized is just been tremendous across the board. So yeah, my motivation was, again, just seeing where I'd come from, knowing my background. I mean, being in the business for, I guess at that point, 17 to 18 years in college, law enforcement, knowing what's best and knowing that this is where we needed to go. And fortunately, having the support of the administration to see my vision, understand my vision, understand the need, and enabling me, empowering me to be able to take our department then to where we are, and we continue to do that. We haven't stopped, right? The work's never done, but just to continue to progress and grow.

Amy Rock (21:21): Yeah, everyone always says senior leadership loves data and numbers. So that list where you were towards the bottom obviously helped a lot in opening their eyes to the need for change. I can only imagine.

Adam Reid (21:33): Big time.

Amy Rock (21:35): They also love anything that saves them money. Understandably, it's a profitable business. And you also applied for a grant through the Maryland Higher Education Commission and were able to obtain a $525,000 in grant money. What did you use that money for and how were you kind of able to prioritize? Or was the grant specific to using the money on certain things?

Adam Reid (21:59): Yeah, this was an incredible opportunity, and I know many of my colleagues across the state were able to apply and were awarded as well. This is the first time I've ever had anything been aware of anything like this from the state. So our Maryland Higher Education Commission, the governor had put a big emphasis on school safety, and this was kind of thrown out to say, Hey, compete. There really weren't a lot of restrictions on it, which was nice because sometimes grants can be very limiting. You can X, Y, z, that's it. This was, here's some ideas, but you all are the practitioners and you all know what you need, where you have deficiencies and gaps and things that we can kind of help support. It, I think was kind of the state's philosophy, which was awesome. So what I did was I took a real high level assessment and saying, what are some things that I can feasibly accomplish? Right? Because obviously as all grants are, they run on a cycle. There's certain things that are going to take more than a year to do other things that are going to be a little quicker to do. So that was a consideration point. But then I also looked at areas where I have maybe some challenges with getting resources or certain pieces in and areas that I also have consistently been trying to expand and approve. So using that lens is how we determined the three major things that we were going to put in. So the first was to buy five brand new police interceptor explorers, the IU vehicles. My fleet had been, again, part of that whole rebuilding and expanding. We had a very small fleet every year. I was buying as many vehicles as I could with end of the year funds to expand to get us where we needed to be.

But obviously vehicles are very expensive. Vehicles had been and still are co-managed under facilities. So again, there was some of that residual hangover like, well, if we can buy some facility pickup trucks, we're probably going to do that, maybe we'll, so it's a lot of this money finding and shuffling. So being able to buy the patrol vehicles was tremendous because again, that wasn't really a line item. I had staffed and I was able to help build our fleet up with that, the acquisition of those five new patrol cars. The other part is I've been continuously expanding on our camera coverage. We were woefully under equipped with exterior cameras when I got here. Interiors were decent, but we still had to do some follow-up work in some buildings that didn't have anything. But doing very robust mapping of the campus exteriors has been my work for the last three years.

And the other big bucket of this money I was able to use to expand, we were able to add close to a hundred additional cameras between the three campuses to help fill in the gaps of our campus mapping. So my ideal, my goal is the minute someone comes onto campus, I can follow them from wherever they're going from point A to point B within reason, obviously, and it's saying every little move, but you can track that, right? You can see where they're going, what buildings, what parking lots, the activity in the parking lots. It was a major problem with vehicle break-ins, even car thefts. So I implemented LPRs earlier this year, so we're getting tag numbers as they're coming in, but once that car is on campus, being able to see who gets out of that car, what they're doing or what car is leaving or what that looks like.

So the patrol cars and the added cameras, the two largest. And then the other part was really a smaller thing, but we had opened up an education center in the east part of our county, which is not staffed 24 7. We staff it while it's open, and it's kind of in an isolated area. It's more of a, I mean, it's an upcoming area, but an opportunity where if someone wanted to break in, we have a lot of nursing equipment and high-end technology in there. So I used a small, very, very, very small part of the grant money then to put an alarm system to that building, our East County educational center. So that way overnight and weekends when it's not being staffed by one of our officers, it is tied to our dispatch center. So they're monitoring it, they get notification if anything happens and we've got a response plan then for anything break in or anything like that, that might happen. So that was just I think a missed opportunity earlier on when some of the initial groundwork was being done on it, and I saw it as a chance to kind of come in behind us, let's add this in now. But the cameras in the patrol car is definitely the two largest things by need, prioritization of needs and accessibility, really, we were able to get those done and accomplished.

Amy Rock (27:16): Well, now that you're obviously on other side of applying for that grant, do you have any recommendations or tips for campuses that might apply for similar grants in the future?

Adam Reid (27:25): Yes, do it. Don't opportunity. I know there are other beyond if your state offers it, get with your grants. Folks, I'm so fortunate at Montgomery College that we have a wonderful grants team that works for the college. So I would recommend connecting with your grants department because there's a good chance that you may not see something, you may not be aware of something, but they are the way these things flow and say, Hey, I'm interested in anything to enhance X, Y, and Z or anything in this bucket. Have that conversation. Get on their radar that you're interested in getting funds. They're a tremendous asset, and I would definitely recommend that you keeping your eyes open, seeing what's out there. Sometimes these can slide by, they don't usually put neon lights around grant opportunities. Sometimes private industry will do these as well to sponsor because they want to sell their product.

There's federal money. Sometimes that's available. But just be aware. And then in terms of your planning, think about where you have deficiencies. Think about where you have needs, because if you do have the opportunity to swoop in on a grant and apply and get awarded, that clock starts and that time goes quick. And we all know how much time it takes sometimes when you're dealing with vendors and contractors to get in and get the work done. And the last thing you want to do is run up against the clock and have funds expire or go unended. So having a plan with what you are interested in doing, areas you need help, looking for those areas, looking for those opportunities, making those connections with your internal folks, making connections with external folks. I mean, I know, I'm sure all institutions are a little different with how they manage the grant portion, but there's a lot out there. I've seen numerous opportunities through different channels, but it's worth it. It's totally worth the time. And as you said before, administration always likes budget savings, budget neutral. It's a great, great opportunity to really enhance the safety on your campus for potentially no money out of your pocket.