Western Kentucky University

Overview

Western Kentucky University (WKU) has long taken a different approach to campus security, one that looks less like a traditional facilities function and more like a modern IT operation. When WKU’s central IT group began building out Physical Security Technologies, a dedicated internal team focused on electronic access control and video surveillance, the goal was clear: create campus-wide standards that were scalable, trustworthy, and built for the long term.

Today, WKU runs approximately 20,000 active identities and around 600 controlled access points on Access It! with significant expansion underway. The university is deploying per-room electronic access control across its residence halls, with a significant expansion planned with the Elevate WKU partnership across the residential estate over the coming years.

The Challenge

When WKU’s IT group turned its attention to electronic access control, the landscape was a familiar one in higher education: security responsibilities distributed across multiple departments, inconsistent standards, and systems that had grown organically over decades rather than by design.

The university had already proven a better model was possible. WKU’s central IT group had built a successful campus-wide video surveillance program, delivered as a managed internal service, and wanted to apply the same discipline to access control. That meant consolidating onto a single platform, establishing clear standards, and putting the right automation and oversight in place from the ground up.

The requirements were specific. WKU needed extremely granular permissions management, a system that could integrate with their ERP to drive automated identity management, and open architecture to support advanced reporting and custom dashboards, the kind of operational visibility their team was already accustomed to on the video side and with many other IT-centric platforms.

"We really wanted to get into electronic access control, set standards on that, get everybody pointed in the same direction, and try to do a rinse-and-repeat model like we did with video surveillance.” — Jeppie Sumpter, AVP-IT, Information Technology Services, Western Kentucky University

The Solution

WKU selected Access It! as the foundation for its new access control program, deploying it as part of a broader overhaul that touched identity management, card production, and audit infrastructure.

With Access It! in place, the team replaced manual provisioning with a source-of-truth-driven approach leveraging automation from key data sources such as ERP and housing management platforms. Access is now assigned and updated automatically based on verified identity data, with delta-based logic that continuously reconciles the system against the trusted source. If something goes wrong — intentionally or accidentally — the automation corrects it.

The team also built custom dashboards on top of Access It!’s database to extend the platform’s native reporting capabilities. Access to the underlying data structure allowed WKU to develop audit processes and data-mining workflows that provided visibility well beyond what was available out of the box.

"It's a beautifully designed database. Most people would never know that. We can do a lot of interesting data mining in there for reporting and operational insight well beyond the native product capabilities.” — Jeppie Sumpter, AVP-IT, Information Technology Services, Western Kentucky University

Milestone Integration: Connecting Access and Video

A critical component of WKU’s environment is the bi-directional integration between Access It! and Milestone video surveillance, the same VMS platform the university had been running for years before adding electronic access control.

As both systems scaled, the integration became increasingly valuable. When WKU began deploying access control in its large residential housing projects, the connection between door events and camera feeds became operationally essential, not just a convenience.

The university police department, which is not always the primary client for a given set of cameras, now has access to most of the camera network for investigative purposes. The two systems operate in harmony across the campus environment.

“Once we reached real scale; cameras and readers co-located, especially across the large housing projects; that integration became the catalyst. Those systems work very much in harmony for investigative work.” — Jeppie Sumpter, AVP-IT, Information Technology Services, Western Kentucky University

“The bi-directional integration between Access It! and Milestone is something a lot of customers have, but WKU is one of the deepest users we have. They’ve built operational workflows around it that are genuinely impressive, especially what they’ve done in the residence halls.” — Larry Nienaber, Acre Security

Results

Looking Ahead

WKU’s access control environment continues to evolve. The current residential expansion is the largest near-term initiative, with the per-room lock rollout representing a meaningful increase in the scale of managed endpoints. The team is also working to bring new IP-based lock sets into the integrated environment.

“The platform does exactly what we expect it to do. We’ve been very happy with it.” — Jeppie Sumpter, AVP-IT, Information Technology Services, Western Kentucky University

“Higher education is one of the most complex environments you can deploy access control into. WKU figured out early that the answer was to treat it like an IT problem; standardise, automate, and build for scale. That approach has paid off, and we’re excited to grow with them.” — Larry Nienaber, Acre Security

About Western Kentucky University

Western Kentucky University is a public university in Bowling Green, Kentucky, serving approximately 16,300 students. Its central IT group, Physical Security Technologies, manages campus-wide electronic access control and video surveillance as an internal managed service, supporting departments, housing, and the campus police department.

Access It! is an on-premises access control platform from Acre Security, designed for complex environments requiring deep integration, granular permissions management, and advanced automation capabilities.