Cards serve multiple purposes for D.C. university

Jun 1, 2004 12:00 PM

Gallaudet University in Washington D.C., offers educational programs for hearing impaired students — from infants and their parents and through middle and high schoolers and undergraduate students.

Even though Gallaudet was founded more than 140 years ago by an Act of Congress, high technology has always been a key component of its academic programs and services.

Because of the school's commitment to implement innovative technology that makes the students' lives easier, officials decided to integrate existing student access control HID proximity cards to support various new applications within the university through deployment of a cashless payment system from ViVOtech.

As new students enroll, they are issued HID proximity cards. Each semester, a prepaid amount of money is logged into a database that is matched with the student's card, and the funds are deducted each time purchases are made at ViVOtech readers using HID's embedded proximity reader technology at various point-of-sale (POS) systems on campus.

By enabling cashless payment coupled with access control, the ViVOtech-HID solution transforms the proximity cards into multi-purpose cards; which then can be used during the student's yearly registration, avoiding a previously cumbersome process. The cards also enable students to purchase books in the bookstore, gain secure access to dorm rooms, and for purchases through ViVOtech readers for tickets and food items. The cards can also store meal plan data as part of a student's record.

“The program has saved the university time and labor through eliminating the need to individually program each student's ID with a magnetic stripe,” says Gary Aller, Gallaudet's executive director of business and support services. “The system was also easily expanded to include faculty and staff at a later date.”

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