Two years ago this week, a Penn State junior died after she tried to escape a stalled campus elevator and fell 40 feet.

Katherine Ibanez, 21, of West Palm Beach, Fla., died Dec. 5, 2003, when seven occupants in an elevator stuck between the third and fourth floors of Atherton Hall pried the elevator doors open and climbed down to the third floor.

Friends and family said Ibanez was a generous and compassionate person, who loved her friends, reading and Penn State.

Her mother, Nancy Y. Ibanez, said her daughter wanted to go to graduate school and had goals of working in human resources with minorities.

Penn State University Police and representatives from the Office of Physical Plant (OPP) said Penn State has been increasing elevator safety by installing emergency phones and help stickers to ensure such a tragedy never happens again.

University Police Assistant Director Bruce Kline said police procedures for incidents of stalled elevators have also been "more detailed" since Ibanez's death.

"The unfortunate accident raised questions and motivated us to look at procedures more closely," he said.

University police get at least a few calls each week about elevator problems, Kline said, and their primary job is to make contact with the people inside the elevator and reassure them that help is on the way.

"The physical plant has added technicians to their staff, so they can respond within minutes and safely extract people from the elevator," he said.

Scotty Eble, a supervisor for the crew of elevator technicians, said that during the day, four to five technicians are on campus so they can respond within minutes to any trouble.

"The calls take precedence over everything else," he said. "Between our preventive maintenance crew and our full-blown technicians, usually someone is very quickly able to head over."

University officials began last fall to install emergency telephones in all of Penn State's 325 elevators, Director of Environmental Health and Safety Maurine Claver said.

The initiative is the result of regular updates to elevator safety at Penn State, and the project is "moving along" -- more than 65 elevator phones have been installed already, she said.

"We took a look at our elevator program, and we thought that would be a terrific enhancement for existing elevators," she said. "It's one of the pieces that makes elevator rescue faster."

Claver said it will take a few more years until all the campus elevators have phones. So far, she said, installations have been concentrated in the residence halls because of their frequent usage.

The cost of the project totals more than $2 million -- between $7,000 and $8,000 for each elevator, Kline said, because each elevator needs three phones for successful contact with the occupants.

Some of the money, he said, will come from the residence life budget and the rest will come from OPP's budget. The project will be spread out for several years, he added.

In March 2004, OPP employees also placed bright yellow stickers above the elevator buttons in campus elevators instructing students what to do if the elevator stops operating.

The stickers list five emergency steps occupants should follow in an emergency: push the alarm button, communicate with people outside, remain inside of the elevator, wait for the elevator technician and dial the number for campus police if a cell phone is available.

Some students have reported that the instructions in their elevators have been ripped off, covered up or written over.

Claver said the housing staff regularly checks the stickers in campus elevators to see if any replacements are needed.

In the event of becoming trapped in a campus elevator, Claver said, no student should ever attempt to leave the elevator.

"We haven't had many incidents of 'self-rescue,' " she said, "because of the timely arrival of university police working with OPP employees."

She added that students should never be concerned when riding campus elevators.

"I use elevators all the time, and I have no fear when riding any elevator," she said.