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Mountain Empire Community College

While the town of Big Stone Gap, tucked into the western tip of Virginia, has just under 6,000 people, nearby Mountain Empire Community College (MECC) serves over 100,000 people in the entire region.

The Goal
Lana Kennedy, Public Relations in the Community Relations Department at the College, started using VISIX’s AxisTV to drive their digital communications in the spring of 2008, and they are extending their capabilities out into the community at large – not just to the school.

How’d They Do It?
One of the two Visix channel players on campus drives content to six LCD displays, while the second delivers content to all cable-ready households in the region on Comcast local cable channel 60. The displays at the college range from 37- to 42-inch screens and are placed in high traffic areas and entrances to buildings. Messages might be date reminders for enrollment and student clubs, cafe hours and food specials, special events, or pictures from the student barbeque.
The cable channel attracts participants for specialty and recertification classes in various fields, as well as advertising the college itself. MECC also runs videos of the graduation ceremony and other special events via their channel players. “We use three content windows on the displays – two smaller ones showing slides and the other half showing video, with a local radio station playing as background audio. We also use tickers across the bottom of the screen for various announcements,” Kennedy tells us.

In addition to the two channel players used at the college itself, they are adding three more in local high schools to display content on 47-inch LCDs. Using the split screen layout that works so well for the cable channel, one half will display relevant information for the high school – menus, announcements, even the occasional PowerPoint or video. The other half will show advertising for the college, including details of their dual enrollment plan in which high school students can take classes at Mountain Empire for college credit while they attend high school.

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