NOVA, the second-largest community college in the country is located in the heart of Northern Virginia’s technology corridor just outside Washington, D.C.; with campuses in Alexandria, Annandale, Loudoun, Manassas, Springfield and Woodbridge. With RSAN, the entire student body or those at selected campuses, both on and off campus, can be notified in seconds. The system is capable of reaching any text-enabled device including cell phones, pagers, e-mail, and BlackBerry. RSAN also integrates easily with other communication media that may be deployed such as message boards, sirens, and speakers providing a single interface with maximum reach using a layered approach to mass notification.

“NOVA has a very mobile student body with many full- and part-time students spread across the greater Washington region on campus, at work, home or on the road. Reaching our students quickly with emergency information is very important and we have taken great strides to keep our students, staff, and faculty informed via a variety of methods and technologies. Our students communicate at home, school and work through e-mail and text alerting on a daily basis. Now we can reach out to them quickly using Roam Secure. The system also integrates with the other alerting systems in the surrounding local jurisdictions via Roam Secure’s emergency information exchange,” said Dr. Steven Sachs, NOVA’s VP for Instructional & Information Technology.

NOVA purchased RSAN using the Virginia Statewide Alerting Network contract. They join 10 other colleges and more than 140 RSAN systems across the country in major city, county, state and federal government agencies, as well as hospitals, airports, refineries and businesses for routine and emergency communication.

The Roam Secure Emergency Information Exchange (RSIX) enables NOVA to automatically and securely share public and private emergency information with first responders, as well as the 17 local jurisdictions of the National Capital Region. In case an incident unfolds at another college or in the region, NOVA can stay informed by sharing information via RSIX and RSAN. Local weather, traffic and other information can also be automatically pulled, filtered and sent to NOVA’s students using RSAN and RSIX. (Every Roam Secure customer is RSIX-enabled and can join the growing national emergency information exchange and share private and public all hazards emergency information regionally, statewide and nationally at no additional charge.)