NEWS

WIRES

OTHER

Campus Schedulers Quickly Adjust to Natural Disasters Using CollegeNET's R25

Many schools rely on a hodge-podge of spreadsheets, software packages and campus maps to help schedule classes, events and resources. However, in extreme circumstances, these institutions are left unprepared because they lack uniform, complete, campus-wide data about the utilization of their facilities. This inconsistency makes reallocating offices, events and classes to undamaged facilities slow and cumbersome. By contrast, CollegeNET's R25 allows college administrators to quickly access a universal map of all space and events on campus, enabling schools to rearrange facilities with the click of a mouse. Thus, in addition to helping both Kirkwood Community College and USD schedule classes and events efficiently on a day-to-day basis, the R25 solution allowed them to respond effectively during a flood and a wildfire drill, respectively.

Kirkwood Community College used CollegeNET's R25 scheduling system to house government offices for all of Linn County, Iowa-reassigning 300 continuing education classes during state-wide flooding in 2008. According to Amy Ashlock, student development specialist and work-study coordinator for Kirkwood Community College, "R25 allowed our Kirkwood coordinators to quickly see what building space was available and what classrooms were already in use, helping them to rearrange building space and maximize the use of available floor space. Without R25, the amount of time needed to manually rearrange classroom space would have limited our ability to accept as many community businesses onto our campus."

The University of San Diego used R25 in conjunction with its student information system to successfully respond to potential wildfire activity, a realistic threat to the Southern California campus. Jerry Singleton, project manager for Administrative Information Services (AIS) at USD, said, "By merging R25 and our SIS, USD was able to quickly and accurately assess the impact of three academic buildings becoming unavailable due to wildfires, reassign all affected classes to new spaces and publish the new schedule information online. CollegeNET's R25 has helped us to proactively approach our facility planning needs and plan for possible natural disasters-saving time, money and resources."

"Many organizations today do not have a holistic picture of their facility portfolio, making it difficult for them to project the impact of a natural disaster and weigh various alternatives. CollegeNET's R25 system allows institutions to affordably schedule classes and non-academic events-from simple one-time meetings to the most complex, multi-instance classes and conference events. As the flooding at Kirkwood Community College and the wildfires at USD illustrated, R25 can also be a powerful tool during an emergency," said Patricia Summers, vice president of marketing, CollegeNET. "We are pleased to assist colleges and universities as they improve their long-term disaster planning for students, faculty and facilities."

CollegeNET's web technologies address nearly every key service point in the college or university domain, including processing tuition payments, commencement registration, faculty evaluations and alumni contributions. The R25 scheduling system is now available. For more information visit: http://corp.collegenet.com/depts/higher_ed/series/R25/.

About CollegeNET, Inc.

CollegeNET, Inc. builds web-based, on-demand technologies that help institutions improve operational efficiency, enhance communication with constituents and save money. The company's systems are used by more than 1,300 institutions worldwide for event and academic scheduling, prospect and admissions management, web-based tuition processing, IT change management, and alumni development. CollegeNET operates a fast-growing social network through which students create topics, write about them, and vote to determine who will win scholarships. Today, this site-www.Collegenet.com—is one of the Internet's most popular destinations for college-bound students. The company is headquartered in Portland, Oregon.

Schwartz Communications, Inc.
Allison Bedard or Naomi Evarts, 415-512-0770
CollegeNET@schwartz-pr.com