An ambitious project to transform campus communications at the University of Notre Dame has won the school a prestigious award presented by the Association for Communications Technology Professionals in Higher Education (ACUTA). Among the project’s many successes is a near doubling of campus Wi-Fi access points.
The project is based on a model for mobile communications that is designed to be continually adjustable to the changing demands of the university community.
“It became very clear to us that students seldom used the in-room phones the university provided, and that continuing to provide them did not track with the habits of our students,” Wishon explained. “Most students rely on cell phones and text messaging as their primary mode of telephone communications, and we really needed to focus our long-term efforts toward enabling that technology.”
Wishon said 95 percent of students arrive on campus with cell phones, and the majority of those phones are text-enabled.
