| Tonia Moxley

tonia.moxley@roanoke.com, 381-1675

Virginia Tech plans to conduct a partial test of its VT Alerts system at 10 a.m. Monday.

On-campus faculty, staff and students with vt.edu e-mail accounts should receive a test message. Outdoor sirens will also be tested.

The outdoor sirens require regular maintenance, as well as upgrades to the hardware and software that operate them. The test will ensure all such work has been done property, Tech spokesman Mark Owczarski said in an e-mail.

New software meant to speed up delivery of campus warning e-mails will also be tested.

Currently, it can take up to 15 minutes to send out 35,000 e-mail messages. The new software is expected to deliver them in two minutes or less, Owczarski said.

Other aspects of the alert system including text messaging, electronic message boards in classrooms, the university home page, e-mail to non-university e-mail accounts and voice mail messages will not be tested.

Officials conducted a full-scale system test last month, which found one minor glitch in the desktop alerts system. That glitch was fixed immediately, Owczarski said at the time.

Messages went out to 39,200 phone and text message subscribers and 41,300 e-mail subscribers. Six loudspeakers scattered around campus sounded. And 266 in-class electronic message boards blinked the test alert message.

VT Alerts is a multipronged notification system that allows officials to alert only on-campus faculty, staff and students of emergency security messages and severe weather alerts. It is also capable of issuing wider ranging alerts to off-campus subscribers.

The system was implemented in the wake of the April 16, 2007, campus shootings in which a gunman killed 32 students and faculty. Survivors, families of the dead and a specially convened state investigative panel criticized Tech's emergency notification efforts in that case.