Picture this: it’s a boiling hot day in August. The campus is starting to fill up with staff and student workers. Your job is to assign access to the thousands of students moving in tomorrow and make sure their transition into the residence halls is seamless. No problem, right?
Many campuses across the country would argue this isn’t seamless... yet. In the past, and maybe not so distant past for some schools, move-in day consisted of a folding table set up outside the dormitory with alphabetized boxes of brass keys or plastic cards or fobs. What could go wrong? Nearly everything. Now imagine before move-in day students are sent a mobile credential directly to their phone. Now when they arrive on campus, they can walk directly to their residence hall door and open it seamlessly. If there are any issues, the problem can usually be solved with a few clicks.
Students and parents today expect a premium experience for the tuition costs they are paying. This applies to their access across campus as well. Parents want to guarantee their children are safe when they drive away and leave them on campus, and students want to move across campus without friction. With mobile credentials and cloud-based access control systems offered through Allegion like Zentra, parents and campus security can rest easy with the major upgrade in safety. No longer are lost keys or fobs a safety concern, mobile credentials are as secure as the device they are stored on. And meanwhile, students enjoy the convenience of being able to freely walk across campus with only their smart devices.
Modern Access Control in Action
The team at Residential Village, the on-campus housing community at the University of Washington Bothell, was looking for a better way to manage access across its three residence halls. The 304,000-square-foot community houses about 130 students during the summer and up to 750 students during the fall and spring semesters, making move-in periods especially busy.
The team recently implemented Zentra, bringing perimeter, amenity, and residential door controls into a single system. One of the biggest improvements came during student move-ins. Staff could upload student information in bulk, significantly reducing the time spent managing credentials.
The change has had a noticeable impact on day-to-day operations. Residential Village's team of 10 staff members adapted quickly to the new system, with the Community Manager using it regularly for student check-ins and door management.
With today’s technology, seamless access across campus is definitely possible, but for some schools it can be easier said than done. With multiple departments weighing in, pressure from families, budget constraints, and more, access is increasingly an issue everyone has an opinion on. With fragmented and siloed stakeholders, it requires coming together to make big decisions that impact the entire campus. And it requires hardware and software that speak the same language across a multitude of use cases. This is the work needed up front, but the benefits of unifying far outweigh the struggle of staying in the disconnected past.
Enhancing Student Experience
Beyond housing, students’ expectations for seamless access extend to the entire campus. If they can scan into dining halls with their phone and tap into their school buildings with their phone, why not their residence hall as well? Better yet, why carry a fob or phone at all? With mobile credentials, students can experience the freedom of walking campus with only their mobile device or smart watch.
There are security benefits as well. Smartphones have strong encryption built in, providing better protection against unauthorized access. They are also less likely to be shared.
“Mobile credentials are simply harder to lose or share inappropriately. While a resident might loan out a physical key or fob, they’re significantly less likely to hand over their smartphone,” said Robert Gaulden, Go-To Market Director at Zentra. “If a phone is lost, the mobile credential can be deactivated remotely immediately, eliminating the need to rekey locks or replace physical devices.”
Delivering Peace of Mind
As residence halls modernize their look and amenities, access control is top of the list when it comes to major upgrades. A quick online search will show you pages of complaints about the nightmare of moving in thousands of students in one day. It doesn’t take much of an imagination to understand the high stakes in that moment. Ultimately, we are speaking about people’s homes. The move-in process should be as seamless as any other multifamily property and bring the same level of security and convenience expected of those spaces.
Transitioning to this intelligent infrastructure used to be a heavy lift, but purpose-built platforms are changing the equation. Discover how Zentra is helping campuses unify their systems and explore Allegion’s student housing solutions. When a campus gets access right, most people aren’t thinking about the technology and infrastructure it took to get there; they are simply experiencing the peace of mind that comes with seamless access.
