Skip to main content
Add as a preferred source on Google

Electronic Access Control Improves Safety

  • 02/01/17
Jones County Junior College

Lowering lost key costs and reducing thefts were just two of the benefits Jones County Junior College noticed after installing locks from Allegion.

Jones County Junior College (JCJC), an accredited two-year college in Ellisville, MS, houses about 850 students per year in its residence halls.

With new students enrolling each semester, key management can become an expensive security issue. Keys are issued at the beginning of the semester, but several are misplaced throughout the year. Each lost key costs JCJC $150 in material and labor to replace.

This became a recurring issue for Smith Hall residents. Rather than spending thousands of dollars replacing all 108 locks, Joseph Van Tuggle, director of Men’s Housing at JCJC, explored electronic access control. Hoping to increase security but keep costs down, Tuggle turned to the Schlage® NDE Series electronic lock from Allegion.

In July 2015, JCJC’s new system included Schlage AD-400 wireless electronic locks and NDE Wireless Cylindrical Locks with ENGAGE™ technology. AD-400 locks were added onto 26 suite doors and NDE Series locks were installed on 82 bedroom doors.

“After installing the NDE Series, we utilized the ENGAGE cloud-based mobile application to view who accessed specific doors, enabling us to better investigate reported thefts and break-ins,” Tuggle says.

AD Series locks are made for openings that separate public areas from restricted areas, making it the ideal solution for suite doors at JCJC. The NDE Series is easy to install, manage and use, and was developed for facilities — like campus residence and tenant units — interested in upgrading to electronic credentials. With built-in WiFi, NDE Series locks can connect directly to an existing network, enabling automatic updates, access privileges and event history.

In the two years before installing the NDE and AD series locks, JCJC had five thefts reported in Smith Hall, which equated to an estimated cost of $500-$1,000 per incident. Since then, there have been no reported thefts in the dorm.

Due to its success, JCJC now plans to incorporate Schlage products from Allegion in two other buildings.

www.allegion.com

This article originally appeared in the issue of .

Featured

  • Nashville Elementary School Receives LEED Gold Certification

    Goodlettsville Elementary School, part of Metro Nashville Public Schools in Nashville, Tenn., recently achieved LEED Gold Certification from the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC), according to a news release. The 81,750-square-foot school opened in 2023 and was designed by Goodwyn Mills Cawood (GMC).

  • Building Beyond Simulation: Creating Immersive Ecosystems for Healthcare Education

    Health sciences education is one of the fastest-growing facility types in colleges and universities. The demand for medical, nursing, and allied health professionals is driving the creation and renovation of medical simulation training facilities that provide students with real-world experience through advanced simulation-based learning.

  • Planning with Clarity: Using AI to Make Better Campus Decisions, Not Just Better Designs

    Higher education leaders are being asked to make increasingly high-stakes decisions about campus facilities amid greater uncertainty than ever before. Social and economic pressures, shifting enrollment, and evolving learning models compete with growing deferred maintenance needs to strain even the most robust infrastructure budgets.

  • University of Pennsylvania Releases Design of Future Physical Sciences Building

    The University of Pennsylvania (Penn) in Philadelphia, Penn., recently released renderings of an upcoming 350,000-square-foot Physical Sciences Building, according to news release. The facility was designed by CO Architects and will unite the university’s departments of Physics and Astronomy, Mathematics, and Earth and Environmental Science.