NCU security team shifts to professional-staff structure

Travis Kohorn and PeeJay Suaco '19 patrol campus as members of NCU's full-time Campus Safety and Security team.

NCU security team shifts to professional-staff structure

By Jordan Robertson ’98 Executive Director of Operations

The landscape of city safety and security has changed significantly over the past two decades. Last spring, NCU’s Senior Leadership Team determined a more robust and agile response is needed to mitigate risk to the campus community and provide the appropriate level of full-time emergency response required for a campus in the heart of a major city.

To answer the demand for higher levels of safety and security oversight on campus, the Office of Campus Safety and Security has undergone a complete overhaul that includes employing at least five full-time security officers, scheduled in shifts to patrol the campus and positively engage the community 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The Office of Campus Safety and Security will continue to employ student officers for internal campus functions, but they will no longer be involved with external patrols. This change is budget-neutral, since the restructure reduces the number of student officers. While this eliminates some on-campus jobs for students, it moves NCU in a necessary direction to make sure NCU’s approach to security is consistently sound and quality-controlled. Placing security operations in the hands of full-time officers ensures optimal campus safety.

The full-time officers are now employees of NCU and committed members of our university community, who also serve as effective community relations personnel—internally and with our external neighborhood.

Michael Woods ’17 has been named Director of Safety and Emergency Management. He is a Minnesota native and NCU alumnus. After serving four years in the U.S. Marine Corps, Woods came to North Central and majored in Intercultural Studies. He has 10 years of private security experience, working most recently as a security director for a private school.

The goal of the new Campus Safety and Security team is that every single student, employee, and visitor feels safe in our community within the city.