Talking Stick - July/August 2011 - 44

CONVERSATIONS

Creating a Safety Net for Students
Members share how they align themselves with other campus departments to provide a network of care for the welfare of their students.
Participating in this conversation are Richard DeShields, associate dean of students for housing and student living and senior conduct ofﬁcer at Central Washington University in Ellensburg; John Buck, associate dean of students at Webster University in Saint Louis, Missouri; Stacy Klippenstein, vice chancellor for student affairs at Montana State University-Billings; and Paula Bland, director of residence life at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

JOHN BUCK

Richard DeShields: Central Washington
University has had a problem-solving team for over 15 years with the intention of discussing incidents across the campus and preventative measures to ensure that students’ rights and responsibilities are supported and strengthened. This team – made up of our university police, counseling clinic, diversity center, student conduct, wellness, and housing areas – typically discusses incidents across the campus and assigns case workers while also focusing on prevention efforts. About four years ago, we started asking ourselves about the caseload, the follow-up for individual students, who else on the campus ”needed to know” some of the information, and what processes we have in place to answer these questions. This led to the creation of a second team, our Threat Assessment Team. Do you all have similar teams, and what do you see as their purpose? Who makes up the team?

STACY KLIPPENSTEIN

PAULA BLAND

of a BIT Team meeting is to gather any and all information available at the time, assess the situation, project any potential issues in the immediate and intermediate future, and develop initial methods of intervention deemed necessary. Our BIT Team is composed of representatives from three key ofﬁces: public safety, counseling, and the dean of students’ ofﬁce. As a result, this provides us with a pool of ten staff members, any one of whom has the authority to convene a BIT Team meeting at any time composed of one representative from each of these three departments. The BIT Team at Webster essentially serves as the university’s Threat Assessment Team as well, providing an initial assessment of the situation and then bringing in any additional internal or external resources and personnel as needed. If the BIT Team meeting is required for an issue involving a member of the university’s staff or faculty, the dean of students’ ofﬁce role is replaced by human resources.

RICHARD DESHIELDS
44
TALKING STICK

John Buck: At Webster University, we have a Behavioral Intervention Team (BIT) that is designed to be a quick-forming and nimble team that can investigate and address the behavior of a student who is troubled, in crisis, or has been observed exhibiting troubling behavior by a member of the university community. The overarching goal

Stacy Klippenstein: At Montana State
University-Billings (5,400 students, a commuter “urban” campus, the College of Technology location separated from the main campus), we have developed two teams: the Student Behavior Team (SBT) and the Whatup Team. For the purposes of this conversation, I
Talking Stick - July/August 2011

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Talking Stick - July/August 2011
