Northwestern College, a private liberal arts college in St. Paul, MN, has deployed the Univerge 3C unified communications and collaboration (UC&C) suite to enable collaboration and unify multiple sites including numerous radio stations owned by the college.

Northwestern has approximately 3,000 students and owns 14 radio stations at seven different sites throughout the upper Midwest. The campus and radio stations needed to be able to communicate seamlessly and, through  3C servers are now virtualized, making it easier for the limited IT staff to maintain. Additionally, the college’s contact center now connects callers with a variety of departments including events, technology, institutional advancement and gift receipting.

Sarah Grudzinski, Network/Telecom Team Lead, said, “We now have a fully-redundant system and no longer worry that communications will be down during a radio station funding call drive or important campus event. Additionally, 3C and call center reporting functions have been extremely helpful in forecasting staff and call volumes for event drives.”

She added that other college departments are asking for the system to manage outgoing calls and help receptionists provide better student and parent services. It allows hand-off calls and visibility to all on-campus numbers.

“As the Northwestern campus grows in the coming years, 3C will help by accommodating the influx of a younger generation of faculty and staff who are much more mobile and have grown up using Internet-style tools,” said Larry Levenberg, Vice President of Channel Sales and Marketing, Communications Technologies, NEC. “The system will be further adapted to support new buildings, additional radio stations and other areas of acquisition, so faculty and staff can focus on educating tomorrow’s leaders.”

More at www.necam.com