University of Wisconsin - Green Bay

University of Wisconsin Green Bay Replaces Three Access Control Systems with PERSONA

PERSONA card-based access control on college campuses has traditionally been relegated to residence halls. But recently some schools have begun expanding their PERSONA system to extend access control to the entire campus. The University of Wisconsin-Green Bay (UWGB) completed just such an endeavor using both PERSONA locks and HID readers – both running on PERSONA Campus Online software.

The university automatically establishes student access privileges by using a combination of stand-alone offline locks on residence halls and hardwired online card readers on academic and housing buildings, all tied into a central enrollment database. PERSONA simplified the school’s objectives by integrating into their existing campus software to automatically assign access privileges for each individual student.

PERSONA initially became involved with UWGB to replace offline card reader locksets on some of the school’s residence halls. At about the same time, the school had come to a crossroad where they knew that they also had to replace their existing access control system for their academic buildings and a second system used for the exterior entrances of the housing facilities. The specification for a single system to replace all 3 systems was sent out and only one vendor had the solution to meet all of their needs.

The plan for this project was previously developed at a meeting between school database administration personnel and a member of the PERSONA Tech Support Group to explain how the PERSONA software could interface with their PeopleSoft class enrollment system, their Blackboard one card system and their RMS housing management system to completely and automatically populate the PERSONA database and assign card holders to the appropriate locks and readers on a near – real time basis.  

UWGB realized this feature would allow them to automatically assign professors and students to access control readers on classrooms and labs - being constantly updated with the enrollment status of individual students should they add or drop a class. The cost savings to their access control operations would be significant – allowing them to take this solution throughout their entire campus.  PERSONA was also able to show the IT team at UWGB how they would run both offline and online access control systems from a single program to further simplify their operations.

UWGB has installed 136 online PERSONA card readers across campus which is an increase of 74 readers to the systems that were replaced.  In addition UWGB has installed 775 Passport stand-alone offline locks on their residence hall doors – replacing every existing lock that they had been using for their individual housing rooms. Just recently they have initiated a test of 4 of PERSONA’s new Passport P1 – Power over Ethernet locks as an alternate solution to using hard wired readers.

UWGB now gets more functionality out of their access control system than what you will find at other schools. And they have accomplished all of this in less than 18 months.