Virginia Tech Remembers: April 16, 2008

College Threat Assessment Project

We have developed Recommended Practices for Virginia College Threat Assessment, a publication that is available to all institutions of higher education as a guide for using a threat assessment approach to prevent targeted violence. This publication is modeled in part after our “Guidelines for Responding to Student Threats of Violence” that we developed for primary and secondary schools.

This project began in response to Virginia's 2008 law (§ 23-9.2.) requiring each public institution of higher education in Virginia to establish a violence prevention committee and a threat assessment team.

In partnership with the Virginia Center for School Safety and Virginia Department of Health, we convened a forum on college safety in July 2008 that was attended by representatives from 38 Virginia institutions. A report from the forum identified key issues and training needs for the development of college threat assessment teams.

In spring 2009 we introduced our new recommended practices in a series of statewide workshops on college threat assessment.