This month marked the start of a new contact tracing program at the University of Southern California that’s leveraging the student ID card to notify students of possible exposure. The “Tap for Tracing” pilot program is enabling students to tap their university ID card when they arrive at one of five designated locations on campus to then be notified within 24 hours if anyone else who tapped in at that location has tested positive for the coronavirus.

Engaged staff at Rochester are pushing some of the limits of the Grubhub platform, using the system in unique ways beyond just mobile ordering. This healthy partnership between campus and vendor has led to a cooperative pushing of boundaries and valuable problem solving both before and after a global pandemic.

Card transaction system provider, TouchNet, has revealed its new U.Commerce 8 platform designed to support colleges and universities as they manage both their businesses and safely bring students back to campus. As a new hybrid experience of both virtual and in person learning has emerged, U.Commerce 8 delivers mobile first strategies, reporting and analytics, and insight into student engagement in an effort to identify trends, measure success and inform decisions.

Ohio State University is rewarding its students who complete daily health checks and fulfill COVID-19 testing requirements by offering gift cards and other prizes. Operating as a kind of loyalty program, students may win priority course scheduling, food and shopping gift cards or even MacBook computers.

New Mexico Tech has developed its own COVID-19 contact tracing app for students, faculty and staff to leverage around the campus community. The MinerSafe app is intended to help rapidly prevent coronavirus outbreaks should anyone on campus test positive.

The University of California at Davis has revealed a spring break grant program that will reward students who stay on campus during spring break week with $75 gift cards. This time last year, spring break across the country was marked by sharp spikes in COVID-19 cases, with some institutions doing away with the mid-semester hiatus altogether.

George Washington University has made changes to its residence hall visitor management policies that will keep the campus in line with COVID-19 restrictions. Students living in on campus housing can now invite one guest from their residence hall into their room at a time.

Rice University has brought back its Guest Meal Swipe Donation Program after halting the initiative during the Fall 2020 semester. The meal swipe donation program was designed to help address food insecurity for Rice students by enabling on-campus undergrads on 20 meals-per-week plans to donate any unused meal swipes to off-campus peers.

Trusted identity, payments and data protection provider, Entrust, launched its new Adaptive Issuance Visitor Management as a Service (VMaaS) solution. Entrust’s VMaaS is a cloud-based solution that enables a more modern, trusted approach to enterprise visitor management and security.

In this CR80Chat, Allegion’s Business Development Manager, Jeff Koziol discusses the limitations of the age-old brass key. We talk so much about the emerging technologies in the access control space that we almost entirely forget that many campuses are still leaning on metal keys for accessing secure or sensitive areas on campus.