Emergency alerts

The University of Nevada, Reno offers an emergency messaging system, Emergency Alerts, available to faculty, staff and students.

The program sends a text and/or email message to all enrolled cell phones and email accounts in the event of an emergency at the University. The system is only used during an emergency or unexpected closing of the University.

About the service

As part of the University of Nevada, Reno’s emergency preparedness planning, the University’s students, faculty and staff will receive emergency text and email message alerts in addition to traditional methods of notification. The University employs text and email messaging as another technological solution for communicating swiftly and effectively with our campus community in the event of an emergency on campus.

As part of the service, you will receive a test message at least twice annually to ensure that the service is working as expected. The University will only use the service to send emergency/life-threatening or unexpected campus closure alerts.

Available to all students, faculty and staff

All students, faculty and staff are automatically enrolled in this system through phone and email data contained in University of Nevada, Reno student or human resources systems (MyNevada and Workday, respectively). The Emergency Alert System sends a text and/or email message alert to all cell phones in the event of an emergency at the University. The system is only used during a safety emergency or unexpected closing of the University.

Visitors

The emergency alert system is linked to the University of Nevada, Reno Police Services Facebook and university police Twitter accounts. Anytime an alert is sent, these social media platforms will post the alert. You can have push notifications enabled on your phone to receive this alert.

The service is mandatory

The Higher Education Opportunity Act ( Public Law 110 315) requires institutions to inform their respective campuses of conditions posing a threat to life, safety, and security so that members of the community can take necessary precautions to protect themselves.

Student and employee contact information that is stored in MyNevada or Workday is automatically added to the Emergency Alerts system. This information is only for the use described above and is not made available to third parties.

Students will receive emergency alerts at the preferred email address as well as the eAlert, mobile or home phone number (selected in that order) stored in MyNevada. Employees, as well as volunteers and affiliates, will receive emergency alerts at their primary work email and any mobile phone number (work or home) stored in Workday. If there is no primary work email available, then the alert will go to the employee’s primary home email address. If there are no mobile phone numbers, then the alert will go to the employee’s primary home phone number of type landline.

Updating your contact information

Student

To add or update the phone number and email address used by the Emergency Alert system, log into your MyNEVADA account. Click on My Personal Information and you will see a drop down menu with several quick options to change your personal information.

• To add an eAlert phone number, click on the “Phone Numbers” link. Then, click the green “Add a Phone Number” button. Enter your phone number, including area code, and be sure to select eAlert as the Phone Type. Once done, click Save. You can also update your existing eAlert phone number on this screen.
  When there is no eAlert phone number specified, the emergency alerts will be sent to the phone number of type “mobile”. If there is no mobile phone number specified, then the alert will be sent to the phone number of type “home”.
• To add a preferred email address, click on the “Email Addresses” link. Then, click the green “Add an Email Address” button. Enter your email address, select the email type (Campus, Business, or Home) and be sure and click the Preferred box. Once done, click Save. You can also update your existing preferred email address on this screen.

Employees

To add or update the phone number and email address used by the Emergency Alert system, log into your Workday account.

• To add or update your mobile phone number, follow the instructions in this Workday Knowledge Base article. Make sure you specify “mobile” as the phone type and enter it in either the Home Contact Information or the Work Contact Information section.
  Employee mobile phone numbers are NOT published (unless that happens to be your primary work phone number). In addition, we send emergency alerts to your HOME landline phone number, as this is typically also a mobile phone.
• To add or update your primary work email address, follow the instructions in this Workday Knowledge Base article. When there is no primary work email address specified, the emergency alerts will be sent to the primary home email address.

Student and employee data is updated in the Emergency Alert system at least once a month.

How to stop receiving University Alerts

While we strive to maintain up to date information there are occasions where the data is unreliable. In these cases, please identify which category is applicable and follow the appropriate instructions.

You would like to stop all text messages

• Reply to the text with the word STOP.
  • This will prevent all future emergency text messages from the University of Nevada, Reno.

You feel you have received this information incorrectly and you do not have, or have never had, an affiliation with the University

• Please contact Police Services at unrpd@police.unr.edu.

You are affiliated with the University but you would like to opt out of the system

• Download the Opt-Out Form, fill in all the required information, sign and fax to (775) 784-1695 or email unrpd@police.unr.edu.
• You will need to complete this form every year.

Campus emergency alerts

In order to continue improving the wide range of communication platforms available for your safety, an emergency alert banner message application is installed on all University-owned computers. The application is designed to scroll an emergency message across the bottom of campus computer screens- similar to a "breaking news" banner on many television stations. This application may be installed manually on any other computer.

More information

As with all methods of emergency communication, it is important to remember that Emergency Alerts is just one of the many ways that the University contacts its campus community when an extreme emergency occurs on our campus. Emergency Alerts relies on independent third parties, such as your cell phone carrier to transmit these emergency messages. While this system is deemed highly reliable, there is no express guarantee or warranty that all emergency alerts will be delivered.

Emergency Alerts complements emergency communications and University closure notifications already in place, including campus-wide emergency email, the University’s website, reverse 911 and communications with the local print and electronic media.