Case Study: Reed College achieves a safer, more connected campus with Singlewire Software's InformaCast and Zoom Phone

Reed College Designs a Safer, More Connected Campus with Zoom Phone and InformaCast

Reed College, a small liberal arts campus in Portland with about 1,300 students, 500+ faculty and staff across 80 buildings, needed to replace aging on‑premises phone infrastructure while keeping the campus safety benefits of its InformaCast mass‑notification system. Key challenges included disaster recovery, equipment housed in old buildings not designed as data centers, and physical “black holes” where wireless and cell signals couldn’t reach people.

Reed implemented Zoom Phone integrated with Singlewire’s InformaCast Fusion to move voice systems to the cloud and centralize alerting. The integration eliminated the on‑prem VoIP and separate SMS/email services, simplified management and testing, enabled multi‑channel notifications (calls, SMS, email, overhead audio), and proved effective during a campus ice storm; Reed is now planning E911, recipient response polling, and expanded speaker coverage.

Reed College

Hailie Roark

Computing and Information Services Project Manager and Senior Infrastructure Administrator