The University of Notre Dame is recognised as one of the USA’s leading institutions of higher learning, standing at the forefront in teaching, research and service to society. With over 12,000 students, the university attracts people from all over the world, offering undergraduate, professional, and graduate students a chance to pursue their academic endeavors in a unique scholarly community. Notre Dame has revolutionised its approach to education by developing a catalogue of AV core standards built on Crestron technology. Each core standard is specifically designed to transform spaces, such as conference rooms, classrooms, auditoriums, study spaces, seminar rooms, and offices.
The Campus Crossroads Project was the largest building initiative in the history of the university, featuring more than 800,000 square feet of classroom, research, student life, media, performance, meeting, event, and hospitality space. The project’s three state-of-the-art buildings overlook Notre Dame Stadium and feature academic spaces, libraries, and lounge areas for receptions. With a history of successfully deploying intuitive technologies across campus, Jason Railton, manager of ND Studios AV Technologies, Notre Dame and his team were asked to integrate their AV core standards for all three buildings. Their task was to create revolutionary new spaces and help bring the university’s vision to life.
Crestron control is used throughout the Campus Crossroads Project, providing anyone who enters infinite control at all times. With Crestron touch screens and Notre Dame’s easy-to-use interface, users can easily and quickly customise the space. Crestron DigitalMedia is used inside classrooms, teaching labs, conference rooms, and tutoring areas to distribute content for a more immersive learning experience. In addition, each building features unique spaces for students, faculty, and guests to network, celebrate, and host events on campus.
The Office of Information Technologies has been transforming traditional classrooms into active learning spaces, completely changing the way students and faculty interact within the classroom. Crestron’s DM NVX serves as the backbone for these intuitive learning environments and enable students and faculty to share content collaboratively. “Crestron NVX was not only an optimal solution for our active learning classrooms, but it has enabled my team to design and deploy our core standards for these dynamic spaces,” said Railton.
To outfit new conference rooms, the university has adopted the Crestron Flex platform as part of their AV core standards. Notre Dame needed a solution that was simple, intuitive, and could natively integrate with their existing video conferencing platform. Crestron Flex meets their needs and provides everyone who enters the space a consistent user experience, exceptional audio, and image quality.
Railton continued, “One of the newest additions to our core standards is the Crestron Flex line. When we switched our video conferencing platform, we needed a hardware solution that would give us a consistent user experience, exceptional audio, and image quality, and Crestron Flex does just that.”
Since the opening of the Campus Crossroads Project, Railton and his team have redesigned over 175 classrooms across campus with Crestron technology utilising the same core standards. Crestron has helped the university provide a consistent and seamless user experience across all of their campuses worldwide. As they continue to work on expanding their core standards across campus, Crestron will continue to serve as Notre Dame’s technology backbone.
