Office of University Communications 

New tool allows university to rapidly communicate safety, weather issues

SPRINGFIELD, MO. – Missouri State University has a new tool to notify students, faculty and staff of urgent safety or weather situations. The mass notification system uses a variety of methods to quickly contact campus subscribers and will be broadly tested for the first time on May 6.

When activated, Missouri State Alert will cycle through each subscriber’s contact methods to deliver the message. The system is capable of contacting users via land or mobile phones, email, pagers and text messages. More than 9,000 students, faculty and staff have already subscribed to the system.

“We are very excited about the number of people who have subscribed to Missouri State Alert,” said Ken McClure, associate vice president for administrative services. “This tool will allow us to notify our campus community in a timely and efficient manner about emergency situations or weather alerts.”

Missouri State Alert is open to students, faculty and staff. It will only be used in the following situations:

• Immediate threat/violent situation on campus
• Security alert
• University closings, early dismissal, delayed start
• Severe weather alerts
• Other emergency situations of an extreme nature
• Periodic testing of the system

Follow-up information about alerts will be posted to the Springfield campus homepage or West Plains campus homepage, depending on who the alert affects.

A test of the Missouri State Alert system will be conducted at 1:50 p.m. May 6. All messages will clearly indicate that the contact is a test. The system is set to cycle through each subscriber’s contact methods up to three times. Users can stop the notification process by responding to any of the messages.

In addition to the Missouri State Alert notifications, the university may also warn the campus community through other methods, including messages on the http://www.missouristate.edu/ and http://www.wp.missouristate.edu/ home pages, blue-light safety phones, two-way radios and vehicle public address speakers. More information about Missouri State Alert is available at www.missouristate.edu/alert

A recent Missouri State University class project on a related subject indicated that two-thirds of the students contacted opposed allowing students, faculty and staff to carry guns on campus. The students questioned preferred to have an armed presence on campus, which is in place now with the Springfield Police Substation officers, according to McClure.