ALTOONA, BLAIR COUNTY - Communication is key when it comes to a college campus.  Getting thousands of students, faculty and staff on the same page is a challenge.  Are local colleges and universities turning to social networks to get the job done?

How do you get a hold of a college student?  Simple:  send messages they can get right on their cell phones.

Kendall Hauer knew exactly what to expect when she got to Penn State Altoona.  The freshman from Baltimore checked out everything about the school from home, on Facebook.

“There was a lot of information about freshman move in day, where we were living, we could get information about the apartments, stuff like that, you could see pictures of what the campus looked like and what was going,” Hauer said.

The school set up its own MySpace, Facebook and Twitter pages two years ago.  Since then more than two thousand students have "friended" the school's Facebook page alone. 

“We really as a college need to stay on top of the trends with perspective students and college age students, so we really need to look at what they're using and we find the right way to communicate with them.  We find students are not looking at emails anymore,” Penn State Altoona University Relations Director Shari Routch said.

This makes it easier for students, too.  Communicating with a school office or program is a click away.

“There are so many emails you have to check, like you have your Penn State mail, E-Line, Angel, so there's like three web things you have to check for your email and Facebook would be a lot easier, it's just one thing you have to check,” Penn State Altoona Freshman Chris Perino said.

Being Facebook friends with your professors could come back to bite you.  Keep in mind what you want them to see or not know about.

“People can use it against you if you decide to make a choice and post pictures up there people shouldn't be seeing,” Hauer said.

Since almost all students have cell phones, the school has also designed a mobile version of their homepage.  It's a designed to format with cell phone screens and has the latest news and updates on campus.