The BenAlert emergency notification system enables students, faculty and staff to receive alerts and notifications within minutes by phone, text and/or e-mail messages regarding emergency situations affecting Benedictine University. Alerts are short messages about an urgent or immediate situation. Notifications are follow-up messages that may contain more detailed information that are not as time-sensitive.

BenAlert enables Benedictine University's Emergency Response and Recovery Team (ERRT) to schedule and send personalized voice messages to up to six phone numbers per student, faculty and staff member, and immediately sends messages via four different modes of communication:

• Voice messages to home phones, work phones, cell phones and even e-mail addresses from (630) 829-6622
• Text messages to cell phones, PDAs, networked digital signage and other text-based devices from 23177 BenAlert
• Text messages to e-mail accounts from BenAlert ERRT
• Messages to TTY/TDD receiving devices for the hearing impaired from (630) 829-6622

Your first name, last name and primary phone number that exist in Benedictine’s Peoplesoft system have already been entered into the BenAlert system as BenAlert and Notifications 1.* However, you must go into Peoplesoft's self-service portal through MyBenU to confirm or update your information, add additional contact information or opt out of this service.**

Instructions for how to manage your BenAlert contact information

Notifying students, faculty and staff immediately is crucial in time-sensitive situations, such as a severe storm or campus closure; therefore it is essential for campus community members to confirm the accuracy of their contact information in the BenAlert system. The BenAlert system is one of many forms of communication the University uses in emergency situations. The more ways the University can communicate, the better for spreading timely information and updates to keep everyone safe. Although we do our best to make contact with everyone, we cannot guarantee that any or all methods will reach everyone.

Contact information included in the BenAlert system will only be used for campus alerts and notifications and will not be made available to any other service.

Students – you may wish to add your parents or other interested parties as additional contacts if you want them to receive alerts.

Faculty and staff – please note that the BenAlert system will NOT replace departmental calling trees. Those will continue to be used in addition to the other communication vehicles already in place.

If you don’t receive a message, students should follow up with Student Life. Faculty/staff should follow up with Personnel Resources.

The BenAlert system does NOT include Benedictine University at Springfield.

*Excluding Sodexo, Barnes and Noble, Deltak, Wackenhut and other Benedictine partner staff. New partner employees will be added into Peoplesoft when they submit their bio-demo form to Personnel Resources.

**The BenAlerts and Notifications 1 primary phone number cannot be opted-out. The BenAlert system is one of the University’s primary communication vehicles in the event of a campus emergency, therefore, University policy requires at least one contact phone number be in the system for each student, faculty and staff member.