Samuel Smith of Minot flashes an ID to personnel working at the front desk of Maine Maritime Academy’s Curtis Residence Hall.—STAFF PHOTO BY NICK GOSLING

CASTINE — As brittle leaves fall to the ground and the year trudges toward winter, students, faculty and administrators at Maine Maritime Academy (MMA) are noticing a different way of life at their 66-year-old college.

The change, taking place primarily at Curtis Residence Hall, the school’s only dormitory and home to 560 students, is MMA’s revamped security policy that, in time, will spread throughout the entire campus.

It’s a change occurring on campuses nationwide in response to the Virginia Tech shootings in April that left 33 people dead and 29 wounded.

At MMA, security cameras now watch several entrances to Curtis Hall and all but two exterior doors to the dormitory are locked. Students and staff come through one main entrance, flashing IDs to communication specialists located at a front desk 24 hours a day.

The door to Heath Services, the other unlocked door with access to the dorm, is open during specific hours throughout the day, but is watched by a camera and guarded by a security officer.

Biometric hand locks, which use hand measurements and shape to identify individuals, have been ordered and will be installed on exterior doors, allowing entrance through more than two doors. Students can exit through any of the dormitory’s doors.

The school’s 13-person security force, armed with pepper spray, has added a loudspeaker to its one vehicle and a mass notification e-mail and text message service, called e2Campus, will soon keep students, staff, parents updated not just with crisis situations, but school cancellations, closures and other events. The school’s Web site (mma.edu) has been updated with an emergency information link to a Web page that displays breaking news.

Tom Perkins, the academy’s director of security and a 23-year veteran of the Maine State Police, said when he started a year ago he saw a totally open campus, except for several hours at night, with little security infrastructure like cameras and other devices.

“I was concerned really from day one that we needed to do some security upgrades,” he said.

It’s then that a community policing program began. Security officers became more proactive, building relationships with students and gaining information on issues and problems from them on campus.

Brainstorming on security upgrades to MMA began one day after the Virginia Tech shooting.

“One of Virginia Tech’s problems was getting the word out to everybody,” said Jeff Loustaunau, MMA’s commandant of midshipmen. “We looked at ourselves and said just how would we get the word out in that kind of crisis.”

Getting the word out seemed an integral part of how MMA would tackle the security issue.

“How do you communicate with people in a crisis and not only what’s the crisis and what’s the problem, but what do you need the people to do about it?” said Loustaunau. “In other words, do you want students to stay in buildings, do you want people to evacuate a building, do you want people who are coming from off campus to stay off campus?”

Six communication specialists were hired this year to man a dispatch center/security desk in Curtis Hall, 24 hours a day — just one part of increasing communications campus-wide.

The school also aligned itself with the Department of Homeland Security’s National Incident Management System (NIMS) in an effort to respond to any crises, with the help of outside agencies.

“If there’s a crisis, including anything from a Katrina-like event to a Virginia Tech-type event to something where we’ve called in outside resources, there is a management structure that comes in,” said Loustaunau. “If we do need outside resources they will be able to come right in and integrate right into our structure, which will allow us to be a lot more effective with less confusion.”

With NIMS, the academy is working with several local agencies, including the town office and Fire Department, the Hancock County Sheriff’s Office and the Hancock County Emergency Management Agency.

With physical devices such as locks and cameras, the school has begun small with the dormitory before spreading to other buildings.

After looking at several proposals from security system vendors, MMA administrators decided to focus on Curtis Hall and looking at what works and doesn’t work. Then, security measures can be spread building by building, depending on what each building is used for and how many students are located in them throughout the day, said Perkins.

Student cooperation has been instrumental in the entire process. With only one entrance to the building 24 hours a day, administrators are urging students to not prop doors open or let other people in side doors.

While there has been some grumbling and frustration, overall students are adjusting, as well as pointing out deficiencies in the security system.

“The students have been extremely cooperative knowing that this is for their safety and well-being,” said Loustaunau. “There’s not been very much grumbling and there’s been a lot of things were students have come in and said ‘Well, how about could we do it this way maybe, instead of that way.’”

Already the school has caught some offenders, including under-18-year-old juveniles and students from other colleges trying to sneak into the dormitory.

The upgrades to school security haven’t been inexpensive.

The communication specialists are mostly recrafted positions, their salaries coming out of the general operating budget, said Dick Ericson, MMA’s director of fiscal operations.

Last spring the school received extra funds from the state legislature to address special project needs. Of the $400,000 appropriated, about $180,000 went toward upgraded security measures, said Ericson.

“Up to this point we’ve spent a very small percentage of that,” he said.

At the University of Maine in Orono, a school of 15,000 students and employees, the events at Virginia Tech were not a wake-up call, according to the school’s public safety director, Chief Noel March.

UMO, one of the safest state campuses in the country, according to March, was also one of 12 schools across the country that was the target of a copycat threat the day following April 17.

A new emergency contingency response plan was put into place in June of 2006, March said, to deal with all hazards and manners of risk, including everything from a rampage shooter to a chemical spill.

Like MMA, the school works proactively. This year a student behavior review team, formally an ad hoc group, began meeting weekly.

The team, an administrative group that includes the director of UMO’s counseling center, the director of judicial affairs and other professionals, reviews student information and then determines “appropriate resources and responses to emerging student behavior,” said March. The team looks at specific student cases, paying heed to red flags that roommates, classmates, coaches, faculty members, etc. might bring to attention.

March calls it an “early warning of students who may need professional help.”

A workplace threat assessment team, led by the human resources department, was put into effect last year and does much of the same for employees of the school.

“We’re trying to manage risk by being preventative, proactive and collaborative,” said March.

UMO has staff of 20 full-time police officers and five security officers focusing on protection of property to patrol 208 buildings on 660 acres of developed property. All the school’s police officers are trained by the Maine State Police and work with Orono and Old Town officers.

The two biggest components added at the school this year include a siren warning system, mounted on top of the student union building, and a text message service, much like that at MMA.

“The siren doesn’t indicate evacuate,” said March, who said students, faculty and staff would seek information from the Web site or the school’s information phone line upon hearing the horn. “It may indicate leave campus, it may indicate stay secure indoors. The key point of the siren is to get information.”

At a much smaller school, the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor with 300 students, administrators have begun a review of their emergency plan but made no changes as of yet.

Sarah Luke, associate dean for student services, said as part of a reaccredidation visit earlier this year, administrators at the school decided a thorough review and improvements to its emergency plan should be done.

In particular, Luke said administrators at COA have discussed shifting from a situation specific plan to a plan that addresses situations by levels of emergency, the level determining what kind of response team gets activated.

Rather than saying if the school has a major hurricane, officials will follow 15 specific response steps, said Luke, the hurricane will fall into a specific level, say level two, where a repair team needs to address the problem.

Work will likely take place on the plan before Jan. 1, said Luke.

COA has one director of public safety and two night watchmen. There are no cameras on campus and students have the option of keeping many doors unlocked.