Fairleigh Dickinson University (FDU) now has the ability to quickly send email, SMS (cell phone) text messages and voice messages to its students, faculty and staff using the Verizon Notification Service (VNS). VNS provides the technology to rapidly mass broadcast health, safety and informational messages to keep the FDU community informed and safe in times of emergency and other urgent situations. Examples of unforeseen events and disruptions include snow days, floods, power outages, campus incidents and major schedule changes.

The effectiveness of any alert system depends upon the accuracy of the contact information in its database. As such, we ask all students, faculty, and staff to update your contact information. At the same time, you have the option to add a parent or significant other to the list so they too will receive the alerts. You also have the ability to make some choices about which notifications you will receive, and which of your contact points will be used. In order to review and maintain your contact information, you must first logon to WebAdvisor (http://webadvisor.fdu.edu/), select the Faculty, Employee, Advisor or Student menu, and then click on the FDU Alert system link. A subsequent screen will allow you to enter personal contact information including work phone, cell phone, SMS (cell phone text) address and non-FDU e-mail. See example below.

You are encouraged to review your emergency contact information periodically and update it whenever there is a change. The information you enter is safe and secure, and will not be used for any other purpose. Also note that there is no intent to use this capability for anything other than emergency purposes and very important messages. You will not be ‘spammed’ through this system and you can modify your contact information at anytime by logging onto WebAdvisor.

This system is designed to alert, warn and inform you of what to do in case of an emergency, a disaster, a crisis or any other situation that affects the FDU community. For example, receiving these alerts and messages could keep you from driving to campus only to find out that a power failure has closed the campus.

As shown below, the FDU Alert Registration Form at http://webadvisor.fdu.edu/ allows you to provide five types of information for the system.

A - basic contact points: work phone, cell phone, and SMS (short messaging service, typically known as text messaging). All of these are optional.

B - contact points for someone else you want notified of FDU emergencies (e.g. parent, spouse, significant other). All of these are optional.

C - additional email addresses to which notification should be sent (e.g. addresses you use at yahoo or gmail). All of these are optional.

D - checkboxes for two options regarding FDU Alert notifications: (1) Decline non-emergency notifications. Currently, the FDU Alert system is used ONLY for emergency messages. If in future certain non-emergency messages are provided (e.g. rescheduling of important campus events) this checkbox permits you to decline to receive those notifications. (2) Receive notifications for both campuses. By default you receive only the emergency notifications that apply to your home campus. This checkbox allows you to request notification for emergencies at the other New Jersey campus as well.

E - checkboxes to decline notification via default contact points. Your FDU email address and home phone are part of FDU records and may not be changed within the FDU Alert system. These checkboxes allow you to turn off FDU Alerts on either or both of these contact points. Each of the two contact points will be used if available during an FDU Alert, unless you check its respective box.