University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA traces its early origins back to 1882 as the southern branch of the California State Normal School. Today, the prestigious university teaches 46,000 students and employees almost 7,800 faculty.

Campuses nationwide are unfortunately seeing an influx in violence. According to the Violent Victimization of College Students report, students report about 526,000 violent crimes each year, 128,000 of those which “involved a weapon or serious injury to the victim.” Further complicating the issue is the fact that UCLA’s campus has thousands of people – including parents, campus visitors and sports fans – on the grounds at any given time, which can make it difficult to communicate effectively.

UCLA decided to implement a Critical Event Management platform from Everbridge to overcome these obstacles and help keep students, staff and faculty safe and informed during crisis situations. Everbridge’s Critical Event Management platform enables campus officials to keep the campus community informed and able to react quickly to a dynamic situation such as a school lockdown, criminal threat or severe weather.

“Everbridge makes sending alerts to individuals faster and more efficient while simultaneously activating on premise alerting hardware with the same message,” said Art Kirkland, Director, Office of Emergency Management, UCLA.