Many student-involved incidents and threats occur every year at colleges across the country. Student-involved incidents can be physically, verbally, or mentally concerning to the campus, and they can be criminal or non-criminal in their nature. Student-involved incidents may threaten a large population of a college’s campus, or with the fragile mental health of many college students, these incidents can be self-threatening, too.

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To deal with issues and incidents of this nature, Penn State University implements university-wide Behavioral Threat Management Teams (BTMT) at nearly every one of its branch campuses. According to the university’s official website, BTMTs are “committed to the safety and well-being of the University community through education, communication, planning, assessment, and management toward the goal of mitigating behavioral threats.”

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One of the primary functions for Penn State’s implementation of BTMTs is to provide methods and structure for separate administrative departments to collaborate and solve threatening problems together.

 

At Behrend and every other branch campus, BTMTs are constructed to follow the same structure as University Park’s BTMT.

 

“The idea behind BTMT is a really good one, especially at a campus like University Park, or the University of Michigan, or Ohio State,” said Dr. Ken Miller, Senior Director of Campus Planning and Student Affairs as well as the chair of Behrend’s BTMT.

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Here at Behrend, many of the administrative departments are already in collaboration with one another on a day-to-day basis, allowing the BTMT’s structure to work effectively when needed.

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“We are not siloed, anyway. We really do work together, and we work together well. If we have a concern about a student or faculty member or community member, we tend to have a team approach,” Miller said.

 

Six additional Behrend administrative staff members join Miller on Behrend’s BTMT. These team members include James Amann, Director of Police Services; Susan Daley, Director of Personal Counseling; Randy Geering, Director of Business Services; Dr. Patricia McMahon, Director of Health and Wellness Center; Dr. Sarah Whitney, Assistant Director of Academic Administration; and Kelly Shrout, Assistant Director of Student Affairs. Together, these individuals provide the BTMT with all of the necessary resources to swiftly act and resolve any campus incident.

 

“We come together as a team and say, ‘How can we help what’s going on? How can we help with the student?’ to make sure that, whatever is the issue, it can be addressed in a safe manner,” McMahon said.

 

Typically, most of the threats and concerns that the BTMT come across are reported by faculty and staff as opposed to student-filed reports, according to Miller. However, anyone is able to report an anonymous report to the team.

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“When somebody is a threat either to the campus or themselves, they seldom do that by themselves. They tell other people what they’re thinking. Or, they demonstrate behavior that’s unusual or concerning to other people. Other people see that, and we just want people to report it,” Miller said. “You can do it anonymously. Just give us an opportunity to intervene before something major happens. That’s our goal really. It’s about threat mitigation; it’s about getting people the resources they need so that it doesn’t blow up,” Miller said.

 

Reports all are entered into a database that is accessible to Behrend’s BTMT members. Each of them have constant access to a database that contains all of the reported threats and concerns on campus.

 

“We call it a drop-everything moment. If a concern comes in, that is something that I will address immediately,” Miller said.

“The main thing about BTMT is if you see it or hear it, we want you to share it. Let us know,” Miller said.

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The BTMT’s hotline can be reached at 814-863-2868. Additionally, incident reports can be filed at btmt.psu.edu.