Client Success Story - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Chartered in 1789, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC Chapel Hill) was the nation’s first state university to open its doors. The university now enrolls more than 28,000 students on its 729-acre central campus.
Flexible Operation
A long-time technological leader in higher education, UNC Chapel Hill is no stranger to campus card technology. The university implemented its first solution in 1990 and upgraded to CS Gold® in 1997. Over time, the university has greatly expanded its use of the technology, which now includes functionality for:
- Meal plans
- Stored value and credit transactions
- Entitlements
- Access control
- Snack and beverage vending
- Laundry purchases
- Copy/print purchases
- And more.
According to Jim Clinton, Director of the UNC One Card Office, CS Gold’s greatest benefit is its open architecture. “In our opinion, CS Gold is the best solution on the market today,” says Clinton. “CS Gold gives us the freedom to add open scripts and develop other in-house areas into the system that meet our needs.”
CS Gold also gives UNC the freedom to tailor its access control for different venues. For example, the university’s Athletics Department uses HandKey® II biometric readers to allow student athletes entry to locker room facilities without carrying cards.
“There are four biometric readers in the basketball center, and the football center has installed 12 in its locker room and other player areas,” says Clinton. “The players and facility managers have been very pleased with the technology.”
Protecting Students and the Bottom Line
Previously, UNC used a Digital Video Recorder (DVR) for video surveillance in the Card Office and Dining Services. When the university decided to upgrade to a more robust solution, the NiceVision® NVR (Network Video Recorder) solution quickly rose to the top of the list. UNC’s NiceVision NVR currently records and manages 52 cameras in various locations, including the Card Office, Dining Services, and Campus Services IT, and will soon expand into the Student Union. Dustin Schubert, Infrastructure Manager for Campus Services IT at UNC, says the university selected NiceVision NVR because of its expansion capabilities and integration with CS Gold.
“We had a simple DVR in our office and in Dining Services, but we knew a more robust NVR solution integrated with CS Gold would be best,” says Schubert.
Using the integrated NICE/CBORD solution, UNC security operators can instantly know when and where a security breach is taking place, and automatically view live video from an incident scene. Schubert also appreciates NiceVision’s expandability and seamless migration path to IP video. UNC is in the process of expanding its use of video surveillance, and will be adding IP cameras. With NiceVision NVR, the university is able to manage its IP and analog cameras through a single, unified interface so it can benefit from IP technology while preserving its past investments.
Bringing a Campus Together
Clinton sees the UNC One Card Office as a vital entity ensuring smooth and secure operations in many parts of campus, and CS Gold and NiceVision help it in this task.
“We provide safe and secure means of performing financial transactions across campus,” says Clinton. “We provide access to academic and administrative buildings and manage parking access for the entire university. We manage camera surveillance, gym memberships, and a host of other activities. Finally, we provide actionable data to a wide variety of stakeholders through the reports we write from the CS Gold database. We touch many areas of our campus through the technology CBORD and NICE offer us.”
