University of St. Thomas selects the fast multi-modal communication service Connect-ED from The NTI Group, Inc. to deliver time-sensitive notifications within minutes through phone calls, e-mails and/or text messages to faculty, staff and students. St. Thomas will implement this service during unforeseen events or emergencies.

“Today we are forced to prepare for situations that we could not have anticipated and recognize the important role that immediate communication plays in keeping our faculty, staff and students safe,” President Robert Ivany said. “As part of our security measures, we have added the Connect-ED service because it has a successful track record and multi-modal capabilities will allow us to keep the community informed.”

The Connect-ED service enables campus leaders to schedule, send and track personalized voice messages to as many as six phone numbers per person, and immediately sends messages via four different modes of communication: 

• Voice messages to home, work, and cell phones 
• Text messages to cell phones, PDAs and other text-based devices 
• Written messages to e-mail accounts
• Messages to TTY/TDD receiving devices for the hearing impaired

The next step in the process is to encourage faculty, staff and students to update their emergency information. The University’s Emergency Task Force is developing procedures for entering emergency data. The projected start date for collecting this data is November 2007. Instructions on how to enter emergency data will be posted in the Star View newsletter, on the UST Web site, myStThom (portal) and via a community email blast.