Published: June 18, 2008 10:31 pm         

MSU announces notification system

Coming in the fall semester, an emergency notification service will be in place at Mountain State University, school officials announced Wednesday.

“Students, faculty and staff on the Beckley, Martinsburg, Center Township and Orlando campuses will be able to be contacted through a service purchased by the university from SchoolMessenger,” said Everette Steele, director of security and campus operations at MSU.

The service is free of charge and, initially, the school is hoping that as many as 3,400 on-campus students will provide an emergency contact number for the service.

“This notification system was chosen because of the company’s focus on schools. It is a great solution and we are happy to be moving forward with it,” Steele said. The system will be used only in the event of an emergency, Steele added.

“The university campus safety department and local branch campus administrators will direct SchoolMessenger to automatically call a predetermined list of individuals to provide important information in the event of an emergency on a particular campus,” he explained.

Steele says the university will collect emergency contact telephone numbers through the student Web site, Cougar Web.

“Students will be prompted to either provide a current cell phone number or choose to opt out of the service,” he said. “In addition to this, posters will be available at each campus to ensure all faculty, staff and students are aware of the new service.”