Campus Threat-Assessment Teams Get a Professional Association

Before the mass shootings at Virginia Tech, threat-assessment teams were largely nonexistent — or dormant. Starting tomorrow they will have their own professional association.

The National Behavioral Intervention Team Association — abbreviated as the relatively pronounceable Nabita (nah-BIT-ah) — will provide professional development and support to colleges, schools, and workplaces that use what the group calls “caring prevention and intervention” to help troubled individuals and prevent violence.

“While many could argue that higher education is full of associations, as our field grows and evolves, new areas of specialized knowledge develop,” says a news release announcing the group. Its president, Brett A. Sokolow, and executive director, W. Scott Lewis, are partners in the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management, a nonprofit consulting firm that has helped hundreds of colleges set up behavioral-intervention teams.

Among colleges, schools, and workplaces, about 1,600 teams are now in operation, the vast majority of them becoming active only in the past two years, Mr. Sokolow said.

Annual institutional fees for colleges in the association range from $399 to $1,499, and the group is actively recruiting members. It has released a report, “Threat Assessment in the Campus Setting,” to mark its formation and plans to hold a national conference in December. —Sara Lipka